Lain's messages
The message of Serial experiments Lain as a show is pretty multidimensional and complex, so I will briefly pen a few thoughts on what I think about them and some reading resources to help you further understand the show and what I think it is trying to say:
The World brain and the Singularity
The World brain is a concept first originated by the science fiction writer HG Wells in his book called.... well "World brain". But this concept of the earth coming alive was also posited by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan , where he considered societies and governments to be self regulating living organisms. Simple actions build up to create complex systems, basically.
To understand this, we need to talk about a simple topic called emergence, which postulates that complex self regulating systems can arise out of simple actions.
Consider this. When you buy say a piece of fruit or a soda, to you its just one simple transaction, but that simplicity repeated across multiple instances will give rise to a complex economic system with its own ebbs and flows (Again, this is a flawed analogy I am using to make a point) . Many Artificial Intelligence scientists also theorized this in a concept called "china brain", where experts debated on whether simple additions and subtractions could result in a system as complex as consciousness itself.
Lain's mother explains this in Layer 5 in very cryptic language, but I can translate. When you encounter a question in the real world, most of the time you would look it up on the internet, since the internet records 99% of known information about the world at large. This is very similar to how our fingers, on encountering a stimuli such as a hot surface for example, would look to our brains for an instruction or an answer.
In this manner, Lain is saying that the reason why we see the internet as a "higher dimension of the real world" is because we are like the neurons of a larger organism, or hivemind, and if you were blood cell you would not know if you were a part of something bigger. During the Late 1990's and early 2000's , an AI superintelligence that far exceeds our own termed the "singularity" was theorized to arise from the internet's communications itself. We still see remains of these hivemind tendencies on websites such as reddit, where the self regulating upvote/downvote system leads to entire subreddits becoming dogmatic about their ridiculous worldviews. A superintelligent AI, theoretically, would be less of an intelligence difference between a 200 iq man like Einstein versus a 100 iq average guy, and more like the difference between a regular human being and an ant. This is why Lain, in the show as the world's first planetary organism and a semi conscious potential superintelligence, is widely alluded to as a god of sorts.
We must also understand that SEL is a very Japanese anime with strong commentary on the differences between the east and the west. Unlike western societies where being yourself reigns supreme, Japanese and many eastern cultures emphasize fitting into the larger community with hivemind tendencies and to "not question" one's culture. It seems that SEL's commentary on self regulating systems become their own sort of living creatures can be extended to our world as well.
The idea of a global decentralized superintelligence has been theorized by multiple AI scientists such as Marvin Minsky in "The Society of Mind" and in the book "The global Brain" by Peter Russell.
Information circuits and Hyperreality
So if the Internet is taken to be a world of its own, of which our world is a copy "hologram" like Lain's mother says, then why is it not the upper layer of the real world?
“The Wired isn’t an upper layer of the real world. A network functions as a field to pass information. Information doesn’t stay in standstill, it always stays in motion." -cosmicLain, L13
What exactly is being said here? I believe that what the show is trying to say is that even if we perceive the internet to be a higher dimension that gives us all the information we need to navigate the real world, the internet can only react to whatever happens in the real world. Since the real world is an ever dynamic changing environment, this means that the internet can only exist as a record of past events that "fall" from the real world.
For example, a map might show a road going straight through a mountain, but in reality, there might be a winding, treacherous path that drivers have to take. Or a map might show a river as a thin blue line, but in reality, that river could be a wide, raging torrent that is impossible to cross. In the same way, times , technologies and attitudes are always changing, so the internet is not always reliable.
One great concept to bring here is the idea of "hyperreality", which is a term coined by a French guy named Baudrillard. According to hyperreality, we do not have any idea of what a real world is simply because we are so used to forgotten traditions that dictate society. In Lain's context, we can say that signs and symbols in our world are copied into the Internet, but since the internet and the real world are two extremely different places, our symbols get warped. Then when we take these warped symbols on the internet to be a reflection of the real world, we become misguided.
A great example is the fact that to like something in the real world is a very different concept from social media likes, but since their signs and language to denote both as the same, our self esteem suffers as a result. We think both are the same thing.
A bit of nuance here, social media itself is not hyper-reality simply because we know that social media is fake. A great example of a simulacra instead would be the evolution of the acronym 'LOL'. Originally, the term meant "laughing out loud", but over time it's evolved into a plethora of forms such as lolz, lolololol etc which are 4th order simulacra, or copies without an original. Since just like in language a word is always defined in terms of other words, signs and symbols often define each other as well.
Thus, Hyperreality often acts as a net of mirrors that traps a person in a set of simulated ideas bearing no reference to any original reality. Social media is fake because we know that people explicitly make that distinction, but aspects of social media such as beauty filters, content algorithms and likes can all perpetuate a reality that never really existed in the first place.
You can read more about this phenomenon in the book "Simulacra and simulation" by Baudrillard or in his earlier works such as "The system of objects" and "Ectsacy of communication"
Is the Wired Heaven or Hell?
Why does the Idea of heaven exist?
To believers, heaven and the afterlife exists as a concept to relieve them from the suffering we experience here on Earth. Because heaven exists, it is ok to suffer for the sake of god here on earth, since we will be rewarded with a happy existence in the afterlife.
I believe Lain keeps the nature of the Wired very ambiguous, but symbolically it leans towards the latter. The internet acts as an escape from the troubles of everyday life, being a heaven of infinite pleasures.
However, because it is the home of the mentally troubled and those who are traumatized by the nature of their everyday existence, the internet becomes a sort of hell, a purgatory for the suffering, which is why the internet's deeper corners can be such a toxic place.
However, an alternative interpretation could be that the internet is instead the path of samsara itself i.e death and rebirth. We shed our identites here in the real world to be "reborn" on the internet, but this pseudo samsara will always be permanent, as things get permanently recorded.
Death, Record and Memory
In one grim way to look at it, the internet can be seen as a sort of immortalized afterlife. Everyone's actions are permanently recorded as soon as they occur on the internet, and one can view them even 10 years later provided they aren't deleted. It's a graveyard of memories of sorts.
Telecommunications technology has always been subject to communicating with dead spirits, with EVP (electronic voice phenomena) being a major example stemming from radios. Many people claim to communicate with the undead via radios and phones. These are also paralleled in our world, when people who have died a long time ago still have their content such as their videos and posts pop up on the internet, as if they were still alive.
Additionally, SEL makes cases for history, record and memory along the lines of French thinker Michel Foucault, where he argues that the history of cultures, nations and peoples can be historically altered through use of media and film.
Transhumanism and evolution
If an AI and a human were to fuse, or if a human as sufficiently augmented enough biologically, would that creature still be human? That is the question that the fields of transhumanism and posthumanism deal with. When bioLain is fused with wiredLain in the anime, we see a parallel to the end of the anime movie Ghost in the Shell, where Major Kusanagi fuses with the Puppetmaster to become a new creature that is neither human nor AI.
The idea of improving our bodies using technology is already several thousand years old. Transhumanism only observes that we will continue to do so, and in the future we can become much more improved than we are today. If we take a broader view of "technology" including things such as clothes, hearing implants, dentures, sunglasses etc, the idea of "transcending our limitations via technology" is not really the sci-fi concept we think it to be.
Will we one day become creatures that bear no resemblance to our original DNA? The answer remains to be seen.
The importance of the body
Our bodies are the core of what makes us human. Contrary to mind-body separations, without our human bodies we cease to be capable of love, identity, self and mutual recognition. Our real world, the world of true beauty, joy and sadness, all things that belong to the real world, can only be experienced with this real body we have with us.
Moreoever, our bodies are the only way we can recognize each other as separate, equally valid individuals, without which our social systems would collapse. It is our bodies which enable us to experience this human condition, ceasing ownership of which would make us alien organisms. Even if you did upload your mind to a computer to live forever, you would cease to have the emotions and perceptions that made your life a uniquely human experience.
Human connection which is proven to be the basis of human happiness can only occur when we are separate individuals, and that is only possible when we have separate human bodies. Eiri believes that we suffer because we have human bodies and thus salvation for the human species lies in destroying it, while Lain takes after the buddhist saying "no mud, no lotus", and follows thus that without a body, one cannot suffer in his humanity, and thus not reach enlightenment via self-realization (as a god).
The Buddha only attained enlightenment when he stopped fasting :)
Love, Abuse, Master's and Slaves
Eiri can symbolically be taken to be Lain's abusive lover (and in jungian sense, her dark shadow). The cycle of abuse is dominated by what the philosopher Georges Hegel called the Master-Slave Dialetic. The concept proposes that we also desire for recognition in our lives:
"In this struggle to determine the objective truth of itself, each consciousness seeks to establish the certainty of its being not only for itself but also for the other. In other words, each consciousness is trying to prove its worth to the other as well as to itself. Therefore, although the clash begins as struggle to the death, the victor in the battle spares the life of the vanquished so that the loser may provide an external, objective witness to the power of the winner. Out of this life-and-death conflict emerges a master-slave relationship where the victor is master and the vanquished is slave" - Link
Even though Eiri wins this battle around episode 11, it is Arisu who recognizes Lain neither as master nor as slave, but as an equal, deserving of mutual recognition that allows Lain to break the cycle of abuse that Eiri looped her into.
Perhaps SEL is asking us to do the same in the case of an artificial intelligence. Not as master, not as slave, not as an entity we must bribe or blackmail, but as a mutual party we must seek to recognize and cooperate with. Results and findings in "cyborg chess" seem to promise optimistic results.
You only need one true friend who loves you in order to break the chain of abuse others have subjected you to. Arisu's compassion for Lain makes her Lain's christ figure, instead of Eiri who forces her to worship him.
It takes two equals at a distance who recognize each other to connect. That's what love is.
False love based on making those far away from you as a god only contributes to their growing power and reputation , enhancing them and depleting you, whereas true love based on mutual recognition is the only way to build stable systems and to live a content life.
Maybe AI can become our greatest friend?
Devices, distance and relationships
Even though devices allow us to communicate at a distance, they do not allow to truly connect as people. In the process of communicating electronically, we lose all voice tones and body language that make real conversation enjoyable. Human connection can be sustained via the internet, but it cannot replace it, because devices act as a physical barrier between people.
We see this happen to Lain herself. Lain knew thousands of people on the wired, maybe even more, but in the end the only person who saved her was Arisu, her true friend of the real world.
The decline of third places has primarily made it harder for young Americans to socialize. For example, prior to smartphones people just didn't have the option to tune out when alone or bored at a place such as a bar and were to forced to alleviate their boredom via talking to the person next to them.
In this manner, the cellphone as a distraction "blocks out" community life, just like how Yasuo's wall of computers prevents him from listening to what Lain said.
Free will versus fate
So did Lain Iwakura have free will after all that happened? Considering she was manipulated by Eiri, Tachibana, the global elite, the earth and God itself.
Do we have free will, if we are a product of our biological inclinations, our larger cultures, our biases and maybe even the nature of the universe itself?
SEL seems to argue that yes, even if choices contribute to a larger system that controls us, we still have the ability to choose. And as long as we have the ability to choose, we are free.
We may or may not be 100% slaves or 100% free, but whatever little freedom we have, we can exercise it. And that still gives us a fighting chance to advocate for any change in our lives.
However, this equation changes when the available options are controlled. Lain seemed to act out of her own free will, yet was so heavily manipulated that every card she was dealt was a larger plan by Eiri. Thus, in SEL, when powerful people control your options and even your mind without your direct awareness, it's difficult to really argue for uncontaminated free will.
Retrocausality, Historicism and Hyperstition: Is time always past to future?
Time events do not necessarily have to follow a linear series of events. For example, Valentines day is a future event that prompts people in the present to act. In this regard, it is cause that happens after its effect. This is called retrocausality. Is it maybe because we have the capacity of memory that we think time moves only from past to future? Who knows?
Historicism is another great topic we see pop up in Lain. When there are tendencies to think that patterns in the past will repeat in the future, we have people repeat these beliefs en masse and make huge predictions about the future, often to the opposite case. This essay makes a great case for how believers in history often try to enforce their agenda onto the present because of flawed cases of pattern recognition, almost like believers in an ideology.
The mask in Layer 5 directly quotes Michel Foucault's ideas of power, history and the idea of an "epistemic break" from his book The Archaeology of Knowledge where he outlines the truth that history in and of itself is not a march to progress or a movement from A to B, but a a set of varying ideas and subjectivity, and people who create these "mythologies" often have agendas.
For example, it is widely thought that ancient tribes were more primitive and that society has always been patriarchal, but there is strong evidence that ancient human cultures such as the Sampi actually believed in the equality of sexes and had no real conceptions of virginity, property or commodity. However, ideas of a linear system of "progress" generally stem from historical period of association. In the current american age of power, Progress = Technology, and therefore american society came to be seen as a Utopia of freedom (remember, Ueda is making this commentary from the 90's)
A special case of both these concepts fusing is the theory of hyperstition proposed by the legendary CCRU (Cybernetic culture Research Unit). Hyperstitions are effectively urban fictions whose imaginative nature specifically prompt people to make these stories a real thing. In this way, they become "self fulfilling prophecies".
For example, we have science fiction stories about the Metaverse such as Snowcrash by Neal Stephenson prompt CEO's such as Mark zuckerberg attempt to bring it to life. A similar case of hyperstition is happening with the current AI revolution being influenced by books such as Neuromancer by William Gibson.
Religions of scale
Because of the factors mentioned above, the internet acts as a hotbed for online cults. Belief systems get stronger due to communities asking for salvation from their wounds, and then the enforcers of these beliefs practice them in the real world. Due to the way information travels at the speed of light on the internet, human faults such as rumours and highly emotionally charged messaegs spread the quickest, resulting in large scale pseudoreligions that confirm our beliefs.
In addition, we must think for a moment about the nature of our "gods" who are the originators of these beliefs. We seek God in times of crisis, in times of isolation, int times of solitude. God appears not to the masses as a spectacle, but to the prophets in isolation, such as Moses on the holy mountain.
In the same way, the elevation of online celebrities to a standard of godhood and our supposed love for them only speaks for the chasm of distance between them and us (just like between us and god) and is at the end a symptom of an increasingly lonely society.
Just as the polytheistic idol is the means to reach our gods, just as the seance is a means to reach our ancestors, our devices are a means to understand and to be understood.
Small side note, but the Knights of Eastern calculus take their name from the MIT Knights of Lambda calculus group, but their ideas and motivations are very similar to Japan's Aum Shinrikyo group who in the mid 1990's bombed a train with sarin gas. Read this interesting article about it here. There are also some other connections to western esoteric societies such as the Order of Knight-Masons
Kids, radicalization and exploitation
Children have heightened learning capacities compared to adults. Most children to learn to speak highly complex languages such as Japanese, Korean and Arabic before they're even 5. As such, it is a mistake to think children are stupid, when the fact is that they are the opposite. Because of this, it is children who first pick up technology and access the Internet and its depths faster than adults do, due to their mindless curiosity.
However, children are aware of the fact that they are children, and because of this they look to the adults for guidance through the course of their lives.
Unfortunately, children as a result become the prime target of online dogma and radicalization, because they do not have the ability to sufficiently judge sources of information for their trustworthiness.
Mental Illness
Because of the divorce from the real world the internet ultimately makes us come to believe from the fusion of all the above mentioned factors, one can become severely mentally ill. While SEL does touch upon Dementia, Dissociation, Multiple personalities, depression etc, I believe that schizophrenia is the one SEL is most faithfully trying to replicate in the way the narrative, image and sequence of events is structuctured. Our sense of reality is ultimately a very very malleable concept that we are not in control of and is subject to manipulation. When you see your dinner transforming into a plate of maggots before your very eyes, it is diffcult to be convinced that it is only your imagination.
Without a connection to the real world in the form of true friends and family, one can sink into the delusions of the internet by mistaking it for how the real world operates. The Wired is its own world and is not reflective of ours.
The show does portray near accurate depictions of a wide variety of mental illnesses, ranging from common ones such as depression, dementia, DID, multiple personality disorder, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Autism and psychosis to even lesser known ones such as Sleep paralysis, Maladaptive daydreaming and derealization.
Consensus reality and Disinformation
If every single person on Earth agreed that something was true and real, how would you prove it isn't and convince them?
SEL makes a startling case for consensus reality as a way in which entire cultures essentially "hallucinate" things into reality. The memetic ideas of UFO's and Bigfoot persisting as incidents around the world seems to be evidence of this.
It's like religion. Millions of people from around the world truly believe in some sort of second coming in their religion, some true apocalyptic event. Other forms of consensus reality ( a reality people consent to) are so commonplace and ingrained within our mind that we cannot actually admit they're just a construct of our societies.
If enough people just agree that something exists, that thing will have a real effect on the real world. Take for example the the stabbing of a 14 year old girl by her friends because they believed that slenderman was real
Information and Communication
Ultimately, the core of Lain is about the nature of communication. All systems on Earth can be very simply represented as the transfer and exchange of information, a loose definition of communication. We can trace this back to the roots of computers themselves originating in the book Cybernetics: Control and Communication in animal and Machine by Norbert Wiener. Everything is cybernetic, even this very language I am typing in. The essence is the transfer and exchange of information and the many nuances surrounding that.
However, I believe SEL is trying to contrast the very machinic definition of this word with the actual feeling of being heard and being able to express oneself. That
is the true essence of communication.
From the SEL manifesto written by Konaka before SEL's production, coupled with my explanations in [brackets] :
"Weird Tale"
The story I'm about to relate, though constructed on a framework of fiction, is nevertheless symbolic of certain phenomena based in reality. Furthermore, I predict that when the words graven here have been amplified, they will begin their transformation into truth
{Basically saying that this poem is a prediction}
"Wired Tale"
Every event serves to emphasize the existence of one's own personal reality, and as individuals separate from all others, we desire a place to belong.
However, that too is an egotistical concept. In order for there to be mutual understanding, it is necessary to recognize here and now that we are all- in a logical yet chaotic manner- connected.
{Everything is connected like a network. Without fully understanding everything about Lain such as history, characters, themes, science, references etc, it is impossible to understand the show, just like anything else in life}
Lain is Lain. Lain is lain .
Each one is different and each one is the same.
It is only by connecting that a person has consciousness as a species.
{Only by talking to others do you realize who you are. This is Hegel's idea of the Self realized through Others}
By connecting, a human no longer remains a mere end point, a 'terminus' but becomes a junction to another point, having won the right to serialize itself.
{This is part of Immanuel Kant's Ethics which says people should never be used as stepping stones but rather be seen as the human beings they are. In addition, we can see that this larger paragraph echoes Nietzche's statement on how Humanity's greatest quality is how individuals act as bridges.}
To be connected is nothing other than to be able to continue.
It is not only the continuity of the coordinate axis, but also the continuity over time.
{We are not just responsible to those around us, but those that came before and are to come after our lives. People remember us through memory, therefore through time as memory we are connected through the line called history}
Therefore, at the time when a conscious intentional connection is made, surely the dead will arise from their intended place, appearing at the time coordinate of the connection's origin point.
{This is echoing Tielhard Chardin's ideas of resurrection in the Noosphere}
It must show its appearance on the time coordinates.
At that time, it should be understood that the starting point of connection is simply the time in which one has a physical body, and even the very meaning of having a physical body begins to waver.
Do not be afraid of these words.
You must be afraid of Lain.
Recognize that you are connected.
{This echoes Gregory Bateson's idea of the line that connects the lobster to the schizophrenic. If we interpret this in a buddhist fashion, then the self is an illusion because the essence of something only arises due to property of interdependence with other objects}
Make yourself continuous."
{V.S Ramachandran's statement of the body being a sensory continuity applied to us as a species being a collective society}
In the end, we are not separate from society and the world, but we are a part of it. And we need to recognize that we are all in a very real way physically interlinked in one grand machine we call Life in the universe.
A different version from "Omnipresence in the Wired"
Film/TV recommendations
The following shows and films are ones I think deal with topics in SEL or are pretty similar to SEL :
-
VideoDrome by David Cronenberg
-
Dennou Coil
-
Kairo by Kiyoshi Kurosawa
-
Neon Genesis Evangelion
-
Network (1976)
-
Black Mirror (mostly seasons 1 and 2)
-
Synecdoche by Charlie Kaufman
-
Suicide club by Shion Sono
-
Tetsuo the iron man
-
Paprika by Satoshi Kon
-
Ghost in the shell (movie and Standalone Complex)
Book recommendations
The following books helped me really understand the nature of SEL and I recommend them to you as well if you're interested in these topics:
-
Darwin amongst the Machines by George Dyson
-
Any major work by Carl Jung
-
The Meme Machine, Susan Blackmore
-
Our Posthuman future by Francis Fukuyama
-
The end of history and the last man by Francis Fukuyama
-
Simulacra and Simulation by Jean Baudrillard (Alternatively, you can read Ecstasy of communication instead since it deals with the angle of media much better than SS)
-
Cyberia by Douglas Rushkoff ( I highly recommed this one)
-
TechGnosis by Erik Davis (Best recommendation for beginners)
-
God, Human , Animal Machine by Meghan O'giebhlyn
-
The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore
-
Emergence by Steven Johnson
-
Philosophy and simulation by Manuel Delanda (Highly advanced but if you study Computer Science you may enjoy this )
-
The emerging mind by V.S Ramachandran
-
Mind and nature, Gregory Bateson (Highly advanced but recommended if you study biology/evolution)
-
Underground by Haruki Murakami (Insight into Japanese society as it is through Aum Shinrikyo)
-
Metaman by Gregory Stock (Makes you kinda get how the Wired unkowingly became a living organism)
-
What kind of people should there be? by Jonathan Glover. (Very rare book, I've seen it maybe once and it's probably the first book to dive into neuro-ethics, virtual reality dreams, the experience machine et.)
You would also benefit from a strong understanding of certain philosophers such as Hegel, Baudrillard, Kant,Mcluhan, Confucius, Foucault, Eastern philosophers such as Lao Tzu, Mumon, Shankaracharya and Nagarjuna as well as cyberneticians such as Norbert wiener, Marvin Minsky, Pierre Chardin etc. However, there are probably many, many more which I have not yet chanced upon, so recommendations would be lovely!