The animated version is nihilism, and the movie version is existentialism.
Nihilism: "Life has no purpose, only process. The so-called ultimate purpose is nothingness (Nietzsche)". Nihilism believes that life is meaningless, there is no meaning of survival, and there is no meaning of death. Survival and death are equally meaningless.
Existentialism: "I think, therefore I am (Descartes)." Existentialism is human-centered and respects human personality and freedom. Human beings live in a meaningless universe, and human existence itself is meaningless, but human beings can cultivate themselves on the basis of their original existence and live a splendid life.
Let’s talk about the animated version first. In the animated version, machine prostheses with only the brain have become more popular. People can use high technology to make their bodies physically perfect, that is, "perfect body". Then the body can defend everything. Harm, is the existence of the "soul" (brain) itself a kind of life? A life that does not require a physical body?
In the animation, Motoko Kusanagi's doubts about the spirit and the flesh: Is the soul (brain) affecting the body (prosthetic body) or the body (prosthetic body) affecting the soul (brain)?
Suzi likes to dive deep on the bottom of the sea alone. A colleague asked her what she saw on the bottom of the sea? She said: "Under the water, I feel fear, worry, loneliness, darkness, and maybe...hope."
She explained the reason for this feeling: after having a prosthetic body, people can not spend time on the body, but Every day is impacted by a massive information network. This information constitutes an individual and limits the individual. Because people are obsessed with the differences of individuals, they cause humans to be imprisoned. This is the limitation of "existence". It needs to break through existence to reach nothingness in order to obtain free. Her feeling in the prosthetic body is the feeling that the soul (brain) is imprisoned by the prosthetic body. Because she is a human being, she can only be limited to the body. Whether this body is made of meat or iron, people want to prove their existence. You can only use a cage to imprison yourself.
The "puppet master" in the animation is a high-level living body that is free from the physical prison. A soul without a physical body can live in any prosthetic body and become a human being. He said to Suzi: "You and I are like looking at things through a mirror, and what you see is nothing but illusion." It means that all material existence is an illusion. Your confusion lies in your attachment to the material. You need to break away from the material to become a higher soul form. , In order to get absolute freedom. You see that I am a soul without a body and do not exist in the world, and I see you as a body without a soul, and you do not exist to me.
Nietzsche believes that in order to obtain absolute freedom, the soul must be separated from the body, because the soul cannot transcend the body.
The puppet master combined with Suzi and said: "Humans themselves are constantly changing, and the "ego" that hopes to maintain themselves has been restricting you... I am connected to a huge network, and I am only a small part of it. For those of you who have not yet come into contact with the experience, you may only be able to perceive it as a ray of light. We have all been in one corner, so we need to be connected next to each other. All of our aggregates depend on only a few functions, but Now is the time to break through the barriers that bind us and rise to a higher level of structure."
When humans do not need memory, because memory can be stored at any time, life should become another form. Every life is a node in the flood of information, and no one exists. Just like human DNA, DNA does not remember a certain person, it only remembers data, and everyone does not exist in human DNA.
At the end of the animation, Suzi recalls the words of the puppet master: "When I was a child, what I said was a child, what I felt was a child, and what I thought was a child, but when he became an adult, he would abandon the childlike heart." What is in front of you is neither called " The procedure of the "puppet master" is not a woman called Shao Zuo.
At this time, the element is already in a high-level form, a soul without individuality, stepping into the abyss of nothingness, human beings' attachment to the flesh is only a "child" stage, and the childlike innocence (attachment to the self) will be abandoned as an adult.
Let's compare the movie version again. The element in the movie version is a test product, combining the human brain (soul) with the prosthetic body (physical body). But her brain has been forcibly deleted the memory, that is, a person who has no memories.
There is a tenet of existentialism, which is to reconsider the existence of Dasein itself, so that the forgotten "Dasein" can be recalled. The element whose memory has been deleted is such a person who was "set" at the time of "birth", and all she did was cut off this "set", retrieve the memory, and find the meaning of her own existence.
The government in the movie is divided into two factions. One is to use this setting to brainwash the people and make people become a "soul non-existent" body; the other is to want people's self-consciousness to control the righteous body and become a "soul". The body of "existence", the person with a soul.
Descartes believed: My existence is a combination of spirit and flesh.
For the deep-diving shots like the animation, Suzi said something completely different: In the abyss, all external information was cut off, and I couldn't see or feel anything. At this time, Suzi found that apart from the refraction of the outside world on him, he did not exist.
It wasn't until the puppet master appeared and told her that the memory had been deleted, and the memory could be restored by stopping the drug, and Mozi gradually recovered his soul. His own childhood and memories constitute the specificity of a person's existence.
In the final battle, the injured puppet master and Suzi lay on the ground together. The puppet master wanted Suzi to leave the material world with him and enter the higher-level "nothingness", but Suzi refused. Suzi was unwilling to leave this perseverance and illusion. In the world, she feels that existence is meaningful.
At the end of the film, Motozi became an existent, soulful person. She said: "We are obsessed with memory and feel that it defines us. But what defines us is our behavior. My soul tells the future of the righteous person, Human nature is our virtue." The film raises various questions about memories and illusions, because people will distort facts in memory, memories and illusions, imaginary and reality, these coexist in the human soul, it is difficult to distinguish between true and false, but What does it matter? It does not define the existence of human beings. What people need to do is to transcend memories and do some real things that conform to their own wishes in order to obtain existence. Nothingness is beautiful, but it is a dream of nothingness, and I prefer to exist as a human being.
What existentialism agrees with is that the meaning of life lies not in the presupposition of others, but in our own choices, and we are responsible for our choices.
The animated version is Zhouzhuang's Mengdie, while the movie version is Confucius "The world has the way, but the Qiu is not easy."
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