I'm not a shell fan, I've only seen the 95 theatrical animation movie of Oshii Mamoru. I think the 95th edition is great because the whole work is full of philosophical thinking about the spirit and flesh, and vaguely reveals some bold speculations about the direction of human evolution. Saw the live-action version today and was a little disappointed. Sure enough, it's just like what the shell fans said, this is clearly a cyberpunk-style little tadpole looking for his mother, the show is not enough, love to come together? The vast philosophical dimension of the original work is compressed into the definition of freedom and justice, and at the end, it is almost embarrassing. But after thinking about it carefully, I was relieved. The release of a movie means that there is a demand for the box office, and a demand for the box office means that the audience must be considered. However, not everyone has dabbled in the history or philosophy of Western philosophy. Of course, the live-action movie must consider the level and quality of the public.
However, as a standard Hollywood sci-fi movie, this film can only be said to be quite satisfactory. Dressed in a cyberpunk coat, the lining is still American heroism. Scarlett is still very stylish, and the role of Motoko is very suitable for her. Although the hot optical camouflage long johns made her shorter and fatter, it still did not affect my love for her.
However, after reading it, I feel that the future world, apart from those cool and black technologies, is any different from our present? Maybe not. Crime and violence are still there, and the world is still in chaos. This is a common feature of all cyberpunk science fiction works: they are generally dystopian themes, and most of them show the conflict between technological development and human nature, the blurred boundaries between humans and artificial intelligence, and the ubiquitous networked information platforms.
From the 95 theatrical version of "Ghost In The Shell" to the live-action version of the movie, doesn't it reveal our fear of the unknown direction and results of scientific development?
Why don't we think about the source of fear and mistrust?
The direction of human social development is forward-looking, so it is full of predictions, but biological evolution is a summary of the past. However, we have never figured out where we came from. The seemingly simple cells and genes are still full of too many mysteries. We also don’t know where the origin of consciousness is, and how the consciousness without matter arises from the matter of the unconscious. When the 95 version of Motoko was thinking about the chariot in the final battle, the evolutionary tree on the museum wall was actually a bit misleading. Humans should not be at the top. In fact, humans are just a small treetop in the evolutionary tree of life. Evolution may have a goal, but that goal is not aimed at us, nor at any particular creature. Maybe this pointer is just a rough framing of our planet.
But it has to be admitted that in the process of evolution, humans are the only species full of intelligence. Although we don't know much about some of the above evolutionary issues, we can use our own ideology to build a social model that belongs only to us, we can use our ever-growing wisdom to transform the world, and we have invented a robot that can go to the moon. Spacecraft, also made submarines that can dive to the Mariana Trench. There are also all kinds of modern medical means to treat disease and delay life for us, and so on.
Humans are just like beings, and we can do more and more things, as Suzi said to Bart in the 95 theatrical version: "As long as technology can do it, human beings will find a way to achieve it, as if this is life. It’s like the core of the game.” From this, it can be seen that works like Attack in the Shell are actually based on reality, and can completely project the future according to reality (disregarding the technical flaws of the work). The prosthetic transformation that replaces part of the human body with machinery should be possible. For example, people like Pixels who have prosthetic bodies in addition to the brain, because the pursuit of immortality is the dream of human beings!
This is the irony of cyberpunk works, making humans think about the new survival challenges faced in such a digital age.
Problems are not solved, new things come with new problems. In this case, the world of shelling does have a lot of cool and black technology, but in a sense, it has something in common with our society today. Crime, corruption, terrorism, political conspiracy, etc., still exist in various forms. Just like the previous post from Nuohuo: "Are we only able to run in place and run forever? Although we have experienced the use of fire, agriculture, iron, printing, electricity, aerospace, body transformation and consciousness uploading, isn't it? Is our drama destined to be no different from the Homo sapiens who walked out of Africa 100,000 years ago?"
I think yes.
We have successfully evolved reason, which is undoubtedly great, but we never admit that our reason has huge limitations. So we are both a great species because of this (perhaps just self-inflicted) and at the same time subject to a cognitive cage.
Reflecting on reason is reflecting on the insufficiency of our intellect - human analysis, reasoning, logic, etc. are only part of the brain function, it develops knowledge, but it also leads to our thinking being basically binary opposition and black and white. Isn't this the biggest source of human problems? We think we are very rational and very intelligent, but precisely, this rationality and wisdom can easily become our cage and the starting point of human stubbornness and conflict.
Krishnamurti has already addressed this issue in A Lifetime of Learning:
In our insatiable lust for knowledge, we lose love, we wear away our sense of beauty, and our susceptibility to cruelty; we become more and more specialized and more and more fragmented. Knowledge cannot replace wisdom, and no matter how many explanations there are or how much knowledge is gathered, it cannot free a person from suffering. Knowledge is necessary, and science has its place; but if the mind is suffocated by knowledge, if the cause of suffering is dismissed by explanation, life is wasted and meaningless.
This should be the source of our fear of transhumanism and future technology, right? Although technical knowledge is important, it cannot solve human inner pressure and psychological conflict. We gain technical knowledge without understanding the overall process of the world and the self. The damage caused by uncontrolled greed, belligerence, or desire is enormous, and everything is rooted in irrational passion. When technology becomes an appendage to their ends, technology can thus also become a means of destruction.
Should we reflect on our habitual thinking patterns? Should we recognize the limited dimension of our own consciousness? Should our consciousness also evolve with life? Instead of staying in the one-sided and conflicting understanding of things before? Whether it is the 95 theatrical version or the live-action version just released, while the total amount of information we create is accumulated in geometric progression, the spiritual existence of human beings and the way they evolve have far exceeded the load that the original physical body can carry. , we should reflect and weigh, how to continue to survive in this self-woven world?
I believe that true greatness is not to rule others above technology, but to rule oneself from the biased and unhelpful bred by ignorant desires.
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