The Link Between Body & Mind

tell me it can't be L tell [Music] me I can do this [Laughter] too as you're probably aware or will soon learn I love vague and Abstract topics considering what the idea of self really means the possib abilities of what a soul could be and how limitation forms it or what the point of faith is these topics are great but also admittedly a kind of escape from me I take my mind as what creates value in my life exploring and researching in the hopes that I can make my Mark or connection with others through what's inside my head rather than with my body or what it looks like because we all know that the body is a temporary State whatever kind of life we Face age takes its toll and one day the body fails it's a terrifying thought that the culmination of so many memories emotions and connections which comprise a person just stops but the mind the mind we're not so sure about not knowing exactly what it is we can't make that same statement that it just stops one day that's part of why I've dug so far into these topics ones where the body is often just a physical representation of themes relating to the mind I want to believe a split between them two that I don't have to face a universe which will carry on without my awareness one day and yet every single idea I've had to try and prove this value is shaped by my body say an injury left me without the use of my limbs I certainly have different experiences different relationships and goals into such a vastly different mind from those experiences it's undeniable whatever my fears that there is a link between the body and the mind so today I wanted to explore that a bit more through some narratives you probably know maybe some you don't looking at how strong this link is what the balance of it should be and if our common conceptions about this balance are right or wrong so with a warning of spoilers ahead for superal experiments Lane Akira in cyberpunk Ed Runners let's explore this undeniable link which terrifies me so much [Music] I think it's only appropriate to start with serial experiments Lane because it provides the most classic example of how the mind and body are thought about and showcases how that traditional thinking could be wrong now the anime is a trip of a series where in short a young girl named Lane essentially merges human consciousness with an internet likee collection of devices and their functions named the wired due to a protocol put in place in its most current release by Masami ERI one of the key designers on the project he placed his own code in memories within it meaning that when he dies he reemerges on the wired as its God of sorts able to use it to its fullest extent and even manifest in the real world to communicate with Lane who he tries to convince to join him in the wired erri is in short terms an [ __ ] it's pretty plain to see from his actions that he has a God complex complete with in a following for himself known as the knights since as he believes a god means nothing without worshippers given he has these same Powers either way it's a move which really showcases his ego this up self-indulgent logic continues into his overall beliefs where he spins scientific principles to state that the body is holding humans back seeing us as having escaped from Evolution citing details like an incident rate of cancer so low we couldn't possibly be evolving he thinks an escape of all humans to the wired is the answer without these fleshy prisons holding us back we could achieve a higher layer of human existence where the Mind reaches Beyond physical limits comparing us to machines the logic is like that of trying to run a modern game on that Windows XP desktop in your parents basement when you were a kid the hardware which is stuck in time limits the software which isn't now part of that Hardware limitation is because of the body's desires and needs as he bluntly States it they keep their bodies merely to satisfy the desires of the flesh we require water food sleep and so on factors which take away from the abilities of the mind to tackle larger more evolved and important problems and stick us back on the same ones all life has always faced survival there is a logic there I mean it is chasing the same exact problem that's existed well since life has the more time spent eating and sleeping the less time spent uncovering what's next in the universe we would be further ahead if the greatest Minds never needed sleep right we can also consider desires and how they extend the requirements to survival past the necessary point we need to eat but we also overeat because we like the taste we need to sleep but we stay in bed all day because lying down feels good those pleasurable aspects which drive us to desire survival in our modern context become ends of their own and we Chase those quite heavily these two aspects are what Erie looks down on about humans and what's expressed in the series we see clubs full of people partying nondescript with these children in the same space as if no adult could be asked to care at all so focused on Pleasure they forget how inappropriate it is Lane's sister leaves from a man's apartment after something we can assume happened without a word as if all they were for each other was an outlet of pleasure lacking any real connection need to think that leaving these things behind would evolve us how much further ahead we'd be if we didn't have that nagging aspect to the back of our mind saying go eat Nutella out of the jar instead of writing and recording this script as such eerie and probably we sometimes see the removal of the body as a sort of Ascension the prison of the flesh Left Behind as we reach a new height of the Mind alone no longer burdened by the least presentable aspect of the human nature it makes sense but does it only make sense because we haven't observed a state of humanity without bodies how do we know that pleasure would be gone or that our worst aspects would be left behind I think lay actually starts to show us the opposite now Lane is a lonely girl her family is distant and probably not actually real most of her friends are just mean to her in a slightly friendly way and shits alone in an empty room most nights only accompanied by the shadows of stuffed animals on her window sill I've spoken about it before but every time I watch it I'm reminded of the worldbuilding details that the series has the empty rooms and the cold silence all bathed in these cold blue tones it's fantastic how much they communicate what the characters are feeling and their motivations and actions through the scenery and their their outfits and details like that alone anyway if you want more geeking out like that there's a card on screen to that video but for this one we'll just move on and say that it's bad enough for the young girl this loneliness that when everyone starts receiving emails from a willingly deceased member of their class chisa Lane is the only one who takes it as more than an awful prank the email speaks about how chisa is still alive she's merely giv up her body and once more to join her desperate for connection Lane follows This Thread and actually communicates with chesa starting by upgrading her dust Gathering basic Navi into a more intense model and eventually ending on her entire room becoming a literal tumor of Technology this changes a lot in her as well with her father unable to recognize the girl standing defiantly before him we can see it in interactions like this one that they begin to have I think that my little girl perhaps has become obsessed with the wired don't ever get it confused with the real world you're wrong the border between the two isn't so clear a once shy timid girl is now much more confident assertive and at times even angry or lightly sadistic the more she delves into Tech the more unknown she becomes it shocks her just the same people begin to tell Lan about seeing her doing Wild Things She has no memories of and her Legend spreads across the wire that she desperately seeks to understand what she or as she believes her other selves have done this split weighs on her driving her to try more and more to control the wired and information overall to prevent this spillover for other s with mental breakdowns plenty from it all there are many ways to see this with such an abstract series and believe me we have here but I think one of the most interesting ways is to see these other selves as aspects of her which are now freed to act on their own without the limitation a body provides sort of like gas contained in a jar it has the energy to disperse and become only a vague trace of the hole but can't because it's contained but if you open the LD it goes everywhere and any anywhere the self contained within a body is quite limited and distinct we know exactly where we end and where we begin if I as myself want to pick something up I have to be somewhere within 4T of it to do so I couldn't reach the camera right now the will of my mind to handle that object is only exerted within the confines of my body's abilities to take a thought which is in my head and make it appear in the physical world I have to expand energy to move it through impulses from my brain to my mouth in these specific sounds of a design ated language this requirement of time and space and energy to express the Mind keeps it contained distinct I and those around me are aware of all of its extents but if everything was simply happening with the mind as the outermost observable thing then those aspects of time space and energy would fall away it's possible that every thought we have which now wouldn't need to be spoken about through a mouth or written on paper would just happen as it did freed into the world without energy expended now based on some direct dialogue from the show I think uh the video that's in the card on screen now more accurately describes what the creators intended to be happening in serial experiments Lane but I think it's also very valid and interesting to see this kind of reasoning as what's happening with L's other selves they're not actually full selves but just the unrestricted flow of her mind lesser qualities which never warranted energy before her most impulsive thoughts the ones which normally die in the transition of body to mind where we have to decide if they're worth the energy to make them real or now freed the moment they happen she can cause a scene in a club or organize a rave or spread rumors about a friend because whatever intrusive thought comes into her head will instantly be spread into reality without a body limiting it it could happen without her knowledge because her perspective is still limited no one can observe everything at all times so this expression facilitated through hardware and software like the wire that spreads Consciousness out further occurs where she's not aware just as aware she is it's not really other selves per se but simply the fact that she isn't aware of every space and moment which she's in without a body other aspects of her are literally Beyond her control without a container to keep them in in the same way that objects outside of your range are outside of your control only now those objects are your thoughts but it's not just the instantaneous nature of it which would change things but also the Precedence the mind would now take as things are the body comes first we have our hierarchy of needs and no one is coming up with a philosophical principle on 1 hour sleep and 5 days without food because the body will be busy screaming that it needs sleep and food to survive the energy we have simply has to go elsewhere what this introduces is Interruption if you spend eight hours in a row writing eventually your stomach will start to send signals of hunger to your brain interrupting the thoughts you're using to write the train of ideas ends and has to be picked back up later this is annoying of course there are any number of days where I wish I could just carry forward what was in my thoughts and my feelings at that moment for days on end to create some kind of Masterpiece but there have also been times where I spent weeks writing 70 pages on a flawed topic to the point of obsession and it would have been even more if I didn't have to eat and sleep to create a break of something more positive without the body's requirements and without the desires I held elsewhere in chasing pleasure i' still be writing about that topic to this day and that wasn't even the worst one it was about experience So eventually I would have made it work but I think some topics could be even more dangerous what if like what Lane experiences that topic was a question which couldn't actually be answered thinking of something like who am I there is no one true idea of self we change from our surroundings and we change our surroundings and we change from our surroundings and we change our surroundings and we transform our surroundings and we train our surroundings and this continues on forever the only state without change is death so if you search for the 100% true self by the time you find it what you find will no longer be all of the self to observe oneself is to change oneself now we all Wonder this to some extent at least if you're watching videos like this you probably do and we're all fine mostly anyway because we can wer for long periods of time and often we always end up interrupted with food and sleep and social requirements the lot of what the body needs were prevented from thinking into Oblivion Lane being much more without those needs gets entirely Lost In The Weeds of these impossible questions with nothing requiring her to ever stop but she eventually finds is that she has no true state of self erasing herself and all of her memories from the world as such the question couldn't be answered so you just get rid of the question overthinking all her actions and everything forever she becomes almost inconsolable non-existent while she's free to create a new self in the end it's a somewhat depressing State that's only reached from an unlimited mind and there's also an aspect of simple quality drop to the immediate of a world without bodies this is a principle easily observed you can either do the job fast or do it right we all know that saying because it's true to some extent at least speed and quality are at odds the products you buy online that are crap out after three uses are because of this they focus on how many can be produced and sold not how quality they are now consider that thoughts are often products whether from content or from the exchange with another mimicking trade we are somewhat selling what we say now if you have limited words with which to reach someone you have to carefully pick and choose which ones to use your thoughts become refined inefficient so that others with their own limited time and energy can understand the point that you're trying to make imagine a book where each word costs you 10 cense a you'd be inclined to speak efficiently to be simple but poignant balancing that cost in the impact it can have but if there's no cause to it whatsoever you can be much more liberal with inclusions adding scenes or dialogue with only tangential value the same is true of simple expression if you aren't Limited in any way by the expanding of energy or time as instant communication between Minds would be then you have no reason to actually polish those thoughts you can simply spew them out unrefined and vague because right behind it is every other thought you'll have just the same instead of careful and understandable wording you get a mind flow for every single work where your grocery list and Saturday plan suddenly appear in the middle of your inner analysis of Dr morose Island no container means no recognizable shape this could play a role in why Lane becomes so antagonistic maybe she feels that Alice shouldn't be thinking of a teacher the way she is and wants to express that but not having to refine the thought in any way she simply spreads the rumor to shame her instead of carefully expressing why it might be detrimental her first thought the initial reaction is expressed without refinement when she sees SE all these dolls of herself chattering away with just noise rather than substance I think this idea can really fit that scene is expressing a Mindless flow of meaningless talk as these thoughts of laying out there and unrestricted start to fill up the space what all of this means is that the Mind might not be as Flawless as we think the body isn't as much a prison as it is a required Balancing Act since true Freedom isn't always as rosy as it seems after all absolute freedom means the freedom to be negative just as much as positive we see this with eie and his mentality that he's better than others for giving up the flesh he's a manipulative and angry man spending most of his time trying to convince laye that she's a collection of software to be used not an actual person as she believes he wants her to be controllable and Reliant not independent let's look deeper at him though to try and really understand what this is saying in the final episode with the world reset to a previous date we see him prior to his death his a man walking down the street mumbling his grievances about how he's better than the work that his company gives him he thinks he's above them then we consider how he placed his own memories in the wired and escaped into it he could have done that with anyone right picked say the best person he knew to to continue on to the new world to be a sort of God of the wired but he did it with only his mind he wanted the power he wanted to become a God the eie that we see as a God then is an exaggeration of these worst qualities he had with a body there they were limited merging only as far as others allowed him to in restricted space his anger and manipulation were tempered But Here Without these restrictions he ends up creating the knights who manipulate the world for him and try to take vulnerable Minds into his control becoming the boss he thought he should be living behind the body didn't suddenly rid him of his ills just because he didn't find pleasure and base desires anymore all it did was allow the desires of his mind to grow and there's no guarantee that those will be healthier than the ones of the flesh he simply exaggerated at his worst now all his reasoning was just justification to try and fulfill a God complex when we think about that how easy it can be to trick ourselves can we really say that the mind is greater than the body there would also be a lot lost in this transition because we're so acutely aware of our bodies we think of often about their phones but is actively aware of what they facilitate we see this when the series goes even further off the deep end and laye merges human consciousness with the wired so that everyone is connected on an unconscious level I hate to plug another video in the middle of this one but if that's something that you are really interested in Young's idea of the collective unconscious and how some how this series expresses it I will put a card on screen to a video I did on that before not required watching I just want to you know make sure if if you have that interest you can chase it uh but for today it really just means that the body is useless Lane can communicate to everybody and manipulate the world at will from mind alone everyone is connected instantly so she shouldn't be lonely anymore right and yet she is across the story she's been slowly departing from her only real friend Alice but the others were more like light bullies actually Alice expresses concern for Lane multiple times most notably saying lately it seems you've been slipping away again because she was spending so much time trying to develop a means of connection on this higher plane she started to miss the connections which existed in her life the one person who actually cares about her enough to dig through the squalor her home devolves into as she becomes mind of her body ending up crying before Lane as she explains this new form of connection a space where Lane's unrestricted worst thoughts ruined alicea's life by spreading her darkest secrets an attempt to connect everyone removing the literal separation caused by bodies actually drove them further apart why is that well at least part of it is how similar bodies are and how dissimilar minds are the body is a defined thing we all have lungs and a liver and a kidney and a heart things which are physically required for the body to function and create similar feelings to be able to communicate with anyone we have to have these things in common and what they cause in common as well once again speaking about food or drink or sleep almost everyone knows the pleasure that comes with a good meal cuz we all have to eat it's basically forced common ground to connect over now the mind oh what even is it how's it defined where's it start and where does it end people have been debating the metaphysical space and content of the mind since the dawn of educated beings and we still don't have an answer because there probably isn't one even if it's just chemicals in the brain they're observe to us we can't bond over how they move for each one of us as such there's much less common ground with the mind in being fully unique and undefined we can't bond over it as easily as the body as just Minds we can't reach out and hold someone's hand or pass them food or do all of these small things which are part of bonds and communication this is what Alice expresses when not understanding what Lane is saying at all she pushes through her fear to take her friend's hand and place it on her heart they have very little to understand about each other right now these very different people they've become but they both have a heart which beats they sit and feel that together a defining trait of human life and a warming quality about it and bond over it that pulse is something understood by everyone who's lived unlike Lane's ideas that she just expressed it is a form of limitation when it ends that's it our minds being tied to it despite their nebulous form form probably end when it does too and that's a true sadness but it's also the proof that we're alive and the way that we know others are too it's what separates us but also what allows us the common ground to connect because our limitations the requirements to keep it beating we come together and overcome the differences of the mind for the similarities of the body sharing our food and our drink and our spaces to sleep they limit us but drive us to make the best of what there still is leading our time to be spent on quality not just on quantity including how we are with the others and in that it proves a value to connection as Minds free to go anywhere and do anything forever is connection really valuable there's no cost to it eventually we could become connected with everybody but with a body where we have to expend energy and miss out on other connections for the other we prove that the people we choose are valuable valuable enough for our limited time to sit there and allow Lane to feel that heartbeat isn't something everyone can do it's only something someone who chose to be in that space and be around her could do so that limitation is a big part of their connection the mind is an amazing thing but we can't assume it would stay so without the body the restrictions one provides might be key to that worth that we find so we've seen how important the link between the two is with serial experiments Lane there is and probably has to be a connection between mind and body but what is the waiting of that and how will it impact us is it better for the body to control the mind or the mind to control the body let's start with the former and how can be seen in the classic Aira well I might have had an unpopular take on the movie before I do think its classic status is deserved it's a work with interesting ideas and a superb presentation that should be remembered and watched we start off with the apocalyptic disaster which creates this world and then a few of the denisons of it the pills a gang of teenagers on motorcycles tetsuo was the runt of the gang with the war Spike and always at the will of the others if one needs saving it's going to be him we see this all the way back to the moment he and Kida the leader of the gang met at an orphanage the latter bought some of the kids who stole the forer's toy and returned it to him starting this bond that persists into current time but it isn't all good as it also Bru some resentment Teto is tired of being weak which is shown each time kanada takes control or fights for him he's the least physically Adept shown mostly in their training on the bikes at Corners the others take easily tetso is the one to wipe out a little bit shorter a little bit lighter and just a little bit younger he remains is the weakest of a lot well these differences aren't enough to make them super distinct it's just enough to be felt and as they're growing up enough that Teto is never catching up given this is a world where psychic powers and energy exist if everyone only has a certain amount and his was going to this to his powers not his body then it could explain why he's the runt of the group even if he spends the same energy and time trying to be tougher get stronger it simply might not work the same for him as it would for con and so this is just how things are in a way he can't help doe to his body he makes some comments here and there but he the run because he doesn't have the physical means to change that situation he can't just will himself to become larger it would be like someone who's blind trying to see they can want to as hard as possible but it doesn't overcome the fact that their body simply won't allow for it to occur they stay that way because that's how they are this is the limitation of the body and we we can see it in smaller scales too for instance basketball is a lot easier if you're tall sure any height could play but professional players are all huge because of the advantage it provides it's more possible for them down to unassisted biology the same would be true for fighting or controlling a larger bike for tetso this is where we see the body really starting to control the mind because of the mental impact this situation creates he quite the inferiority complex saying his breath that he could handle con his bike as the other hops on to it confidently it's a clear picture of one in control and another jealous of that control tto's complex is due to these uncontrollable factors and it Alters him deeply as a person he views everything in physical comparison he's weaker than Kida his bike is worse than Kida these observable factors determine his mindset and his goals and motivations while the others actually relax a bit or hang out in their usual spaces he sits out side observing what Kan has that he doesn't in their bikes how he thinks an act is entirely DED from the body in this idea of control now a big part of this is assisted by how the World Views this relationship between form and thought as well if they lived in a place where complex thought could earn you a good living or make you popular Teto would have come out of this differently there wouldn't be a real reason for him to feel inferior about himself through the body however their world is one rot with violence the school is a torn up mess of uncontrolled students who get into fights for fun and try to have adult relationships at a young age they emerge out into a world where biker gangs plow through traffic caused by mass protests with bombings and a military full of violence it's thrown through a might is right kind of world and so what's going to control the relationship between body and mind is this what do the world telling them is more important what's going to be at the Forefront of their young minds for for both their value as a person and their safety it's going to be physical strength how can they be stronger to win those fights both for safety and popularity how can they make a point to the detached upper class and in the long term what's the point of it all these are youths failed by a society with no prospects no matter how good they do in school they'll never have a job which let them escape a harsh world so what they find instead is the most immediate pleasures of the body and what those have been observed to be able to bring them Conquest over another and having a girl hanging on their arm for sources of value all these surroundings create the balance the world has decided that the body is more important so we have a boy whose own world is all about physical skill in this game existing in a wider world where the mind has never really appeared to get anyone anywhere and all the while he simply isn't physically geared to be as strong so what is his mindset going to be but a tool for the the body the only way thought is worth something is if it achieves a greater aspect of physical form whether that's actually in their own form or how they can accentuate it with tools the body becomes the mind so it makes sense that when he's taken in by the konel and this latent ability the thing which might have held him back before is discovered and activated he ends up going on a rampage it starts off small fighting off a few soldiers and damaging buildings eventually crushing tanks and by the and destroying a whole Space laser that fails to kill him no bigger man with a better bite can tell him to back down anymore it's quite ironic he has what's essentially the capacity of the Mind awakened and all the energy that it houses and it's only used for physical domination it's quite direct when he comes to fight with Kida having torn through the city and when the foe's weapon dies he says the Ain Fair tat fight with your bare hands to which the former responds now do you you understand how it feels being little and helpless the root of it all is the body who can be the bigger man Tetro uses the powers of the mind to overcome that deficit and make himself the larger one simulating a physical form with these mental Powers he stands up and above due to the Rocks a false height that's how deep this relationship of body over mind runs that when the Mind becomes the source of the power its expression is only utilized to achieve what the greatest of the body could the body has constrained the Mind here leading it to much worse places based on the society his mentality was formed within this could explain why tetso eventually deforms into a mass of mutating Flesh from his powers overflowing because the only thing in his mind is to become physically powerful what it ends up doing to his body is literally growing feeding the ladder from the energy generated by unlocking the former he's focused on growth for so long that it becomes an unstable goal of his inner mind in the link between the two the Mind becomes a puppet of the body used only to facilitate its growth it's in contrast to the older psychic children whose forms are much weaker in showing age as children they were put in a totally different environment from tetsuo where his school was covered in graffiti and full of violence they were transported to a clean facility which appears to be outside of the city and everything that brings with it instead of principles which attacked them they had scientists who sat next to them calmly aside from the experiments of course but what we see them being tested on are mental Pursuits some are manipulating objects but they're also sketching the complex insides of black boxes and bending the images on TV this is using the mind for Pursuits of the mind not of the body of course some part of it is also the medication and control being used on them in captivity but we see that with the waiting in that direction their forms shrink in Recoil rather than growing in this tumorous fashion like tetos the conditioning of which should feed which is internalized and represented in their appearance there is a link between the two which can't be beat and the only determination is balance which will be more important to us and in our surroundings which is truly more important it's a very complicated situation with many factors having a direct impact on our forms and the mentality within them but very clearly with Teto we see how poorly the body can impact the Mind mutating into this terrible form a lot of potential is wasted into purposelessness and dangerous growth the energy which could have lifted a society to new heights is instead wasted tearing it to Pieces either way there's danger the disasters which destroyed Tokyo now twice were due to these powers of the mind but it makes one point very clear neither is isolated these two sides of our forms will always be linked [Music] we can't forget though that we did make mention of how the mind can shape the body as well if the key is balanced in some way then the other side of the scale could also be dangerous right well I think we see this in cyberp Punk Edge Runners as name implies it's a bit of a cyber Punk story and probably the most common element in that genre is body modification where flesh is replaced with metal to achieve a different look or purpose like we see with the Ripper do Edge Runners who has multiple sets of arms for different tasks rather than training his limbs in specialized and generalized ways as a doctor now would he simply swaps them out for whichever fits the situation each surgery could have a different set with distinct dexterities and functions what this means is that the mind creates the body his physical form changes for the purposes his self wants to achieve the same could be said of someone who wants to fight getting a cannon in their arm their desire for conflict is expressed in their form or someone who wants to be taller getting different legs their inner self which feels more expressed in a larger height is made real as we see the mind is very surely creating the body here there are pretty practical and great applications within this the simplest example is illness if someone has a body which is weakened due to sickness injury or anything of the sort they could achieve a healthier form through body modification if that's something they felt was warranted of course the same could be said of body dysphoria what someone feels inside could become fully what they see on the outside now there's a whole conversation to be had about whether this is actually the best course of action or whether rigid social standards simply make it seem so but what we can at least state that given our current conditions it's easy to see the benefit in body modification based on the world we live in I could say I would undergo some amount of it so my outer self was more align with my inner one the body more matched to the Mind however another key aspect of cyberpunk Worlds is money Landscapes ruled by Mega corporations built on the backs of extreme poverty and harsh class structure the rich get extremely richer and the poor suffer body modifications then aren't cheap and the control over their production and purpose is decided by those who can afford and produce them when we stop thinking about it in a vacuum would it actually be a benefit night city is the example of a setting with those qualities with arasaka and militech holding power over almost everything the former even has a dedicated Academy to produce its workers although it's really nothing more than a paid barrier to entry David Martinez are main characters on the low end of this scale with a single mother working to the Bone to pay for his education at that Academy hoping this would pave away for him out of poverty as right now they came into for to keep the washer running but at every chance whether it be a price with required upgrades for class social standing as the principal suggests he would do better somewhere else or physicality literal barriers those in power seek to exclude David despite his near-perfect grades in terms of differences between he and the other students there isn't really anything except money unlike in Ura where tetsu had a physical difference here it's one that only exists socially in terms of currency but this creates a physical difference because of body modification those with money can now afford to become more Adept in terms of body than those without David's classmates who are chromed out in comparison to his flesh are able to chip in skills which work with their cybernetic Parts in order to beat him senseless and try and prevent him from coming back to class the idea of Merit has been removed those who can pay not those who can train become the strongest so the Gap created by nonsensical biological unfairness hasn't narrowed due to body modification but is actually widened as now Rifts can be intentionally created that's the thing to be able to rid the world of them means the same thing as being able to create them the Practical implementation of these Technologies is much different than the idealized look at them in a vacuum the point of them isn't to assist those with illness or to help lessen the pain caused by a mismatch of body and mind the point is to make money the former is just a byproduct of the latter they can use to sell it as the differences between body and mind become monetized and money becomes rather apparent when David loses his mother tonight's City and the almost ambient gang Warfare which coats it they end up as the innocent victims literally caught in the crossfire and then it's not just the accident that kills her but the response to it whether left to die in the street by fast responding medical squad for slower ones and receive lackluster care or more could have been done because they couldn't afford the subscription packages for a speedy response or better treatment of course this has an impact on David he ends up having to break into his own apartment and sit there in the mental torment of what he's lost in the bully he has essentially claiming that it was deserved he already built up energy which couldn't be expressed turns angry and all this anxiety and his worst moments yet lead him to a drastic decision to get his first implant his mother sold them on the side to bring in more funds and she died before completing the handoff for a sand Devan the milit grade piece that allows the user super speed essentially David rushes to a ripper do to get his spine taken out and replaced with this implant a quick but bloody and horrific scene and still bleeding from this operation he charges into class and assaults his tormentors quite firmly giving them what they probably deserved we do see that the principal worked both ways it did also give him a chance to fight back when he stumbled upon it showing that it can close that Gap so it's not all gloom and doom but it also reveals something negative about how much control the mind has over the body in this world David was in a horrible place literally the worst moments of his life with his anxiety through the roof a teenager still developing he wasn't ready to make good decisions when faced with these conditions backed into a corner by everything around him he was forced to push back and the mind can only do so through the body the changes in his body which are permanent because there's no way Doc is actually putting his spine back in after this were driven not by careful decision and an expression of the self but by what these harsh conditions forced him to express it wasn't a lifetime of feeling different and careful consideration things that make this true it was just what he was feeling in one moment not to say it's less true just that it's less indicative of his it's a distraught mind becoming physically expressed in perpetuity the ability to change his body was directed by the pressures it placed on him so Knight city was changing his form not David Martinez this means that when considered in full most of what this body modification has done is allowed the mental torment of the corporations to take a physical form on its victims to put it in our world imagine getting a tattoo on a drunken night in the moment it seems like a great idea of course it's something you want to be a part of you forever but later on with a clearer and more true head you realize it was a mistake and regreted it it's not something you actually think should be defining in part of your body so you have to go through the process of having it removed or altered so you don't see it in the mirror every day and feel not at home in your body or having to explain it to everyone you get close with we understand the principle that situations can lead us to make decisions we regret and in rare cases like that or say an injury they impact our body the Mind changing the form now imagine you didn't get a tattoo but you changed your entire face or voice or in David's case your literal spine suddenly we have the potential for our depression or anxiety the worst of us that our conditions create to have a massive impact on our bodies going forward just the same as good emotions could do it those moments then become coded in ourselves as we feel them look in the mirror and see them forever but once might have been forgotten in just a couple weeks is now a part of who you are unless you can pay for something new it's there forever this is something else about how the body limits the mind one is more volatile than the other our bodies change very gradually over time even if we decide we want them to look or feel different it's a long process of something like medication or diet and exercise aside from injury or surgery the body isn't very plastic in short term but the Mind well our minds can change in a matter of days if not hours we can feel something as very cord of what we want in our mind to be moving forward and then give it up because of exhaust or energy or effort or simply finding something new and being more excited for it depression or Joy anxiety or excitement emotions can swing quite wildly and unexpectedly the body then is a sort of rock like we discussed with Lane very much limiting how far the mind can reach into extremes which might be harmful those feelings are linked and if we're sad our bodies will react to it but they don't permanently alter from just a couple hours or days our form pulls us back from the depths of the the mind but these body modifications remove those barriers remove that rock if we feel the need to beat someone up with the cybernetics we can go and have that procedure done go do it while it's still bleeding and then have to live with it for the foreseeable future span of a few days or maybe even moments altering us for good and then what happens when the world is specifically geared to bring us to our worst moments which are now so easily expressed in the body David C down a bit when he finds some comfort in a group of edge Runners though a crew led by Maine a very ched out older brother-like figure for him in their Antics and Company he finds a sense of power and value that was lacking in his life as he starts to finally take something back from this world that stole from him so frequently instead of while just sitting alone at home engaging with brain dances to escape or laying around sad we get montages of him out and about enjoying what good night City can have but this upward momentum there's not much negative to be expressed from his mind into his form and so when he does get more Chrome it's more thought out like increasing his lung capacity for better jobs which she's also training to support at the same time there's very little regret to be found in something like this with this happiness what he's bringing into reality is actually helping him and improving his life rather than leaving him with a reminder of bad times but it doesn't last forever because well night City a job goes wrong main goes cyber psycho driven to his extremes by cyberware or more accurately the stress this world induces to make him feel the need for all those mods in the first place and David loses a lot of the people who made his life better he's there the moment that Maine dies even escaping with his arms that they made a promise on not too long ago if he bid it David could take them the hold this leaves for our main character can't be understated as it would for anyone dealing with a loss like this isn't easy to move on from what made our life feel like was worth living it's a tough process not of days or weeks but months or maybe even years but we have to because it's all we can do remembering bits of what was lost but not allowing to Define us forever not letting loss become us but in this world it can David rather than moving on from the loss of main is able to become M those arms that were a mismatch for his body he changes all of it to make them fit he builds up the exact same kind of form going from scrawny kid to bulked up leader of a group just the same as his mentor in this world where mind shapes the body remembrance can go much further you don't have to move on because you can recreate the loss isn't actually dealt with because he's preventing the loss in his body making his physical form a representation of a better time than his mind wants to be in a time when the crew was still alive and he had much more fun than he does now the plasticity of the form the mind taking precedence over the body is actually holding his mind back instead of a rock to ground him it becomes a way to extend these detrimental thoughts he has making them real and creating a cycle where a negative mental state impact the body in a worse way which impacts the mind in a worse way which impact the body in a worse way and it never ends you look in the mirror what's left isn't even you but just a collection metal if David's mother saw him now just a couple of years later at most she wouldn't even be able to recognize him so is this really him chasing his body removed parts of himself that didn't Define him but through his memories and their rigidity helped create a mark of who he is a solidity to it all and that's gone forever as this cycle feeds into itself more and more we can understand why cyber psychosis isn't actually from the Chrome but the reaction to it a world which is so harsh it forces people people to destroy themselves to try and feel valuable literally robbing them of everything which defined them just for a chance to maybe be happy to maybe be remembered the change becomes so physical and undeniable and for what none of it helped them survive or Truly find Joy if he didn't have that ability maybe he would have moved on from Maine those arms would have just been a memory something lost to time rather than a reminder in every single action that he took the literal way with which he interacted with the world world the worst of the Mind was granted immortality in his form these body modifications which make our minds Masters over our forms have a great potential for good even if it's expressed destructively we see how much David gets to fight back from having them a kid with no prospects who does manage to get remembered by Edge Runners at least they did make some kind of a difference in his life but in a harsh world where the mind is so often abused do we want it to be able to be made physical so instantly and permanently do we want every bad moment we have to become a scar on the body as well as on the soul night city is an extreme case and we'll never reach anything like how easily bodies are changed in that world but in that exaggeration it does show that the body we have is a part of creating and maintaining us and if we change it at will just from our worst moments it might not be for the best the answer is more likely the conditions what is causing that pain we wish to change what is making us feel not at home in our bodies is it anything actually real or just an idea that Society has said is real asking us to change our bodies for ideas which only persist from being unquestioned and old sounds pretty nonsensical to me [Music] anyway that will wrap things up for this one if you've been around for a while you know it's a bit more like a style I used to do so um as always uh transparency comments help the video do well in the algorithm so I have a bias in asking for them but generally um and genuinely uh let me know what you thought of me kind of bringing this back a little bit and how it's a different look at more specific aspect of a series than overall um because it's something I kind of lost confidence in for a while so if it's something you want to see definitely let me know and I'll keep trying to put these together cuz it it went well was fun to do so I'm glad I got back to it U but specifically on this topic um also um if you see any other ways that this was expressed in these series or other series uh that you think did a good job of it let me know down below because it again it is like that intro is very true to me like I'm I realized putting it together why I make a lot of the videos I do which is because I want to believe that the Mind do something greater so that I'm not facing the void one day um I think definitely like a gellan has some elements of this that was actually originally one of the ones I thought about putting in here um but I I felt like going for Edge Runners instead just because it's been a while I I know I kind of took a step back from it but I wanted to get back into it again um I'm sure if I looked at my list I could find a few others that did it but I'd definitely be interested to see your takes on it and if you have any like specific philosophies that really relate to this let uh drop those down below as well because that could help me and other people know what to really get into to explore this topic further than just narratives but anyway that was a lot of rambling I don't know if people like these outros I just started doing them again maybe they're good who knows important links in the pinned comment which is now just Discord and patreon where these lovely people help me keep rambling mad chaos to you biweekly but a big thank you to everyone for your time and uh while I'll just leave you with thanks for watching and I hope I'll see you again soon

Channel: ProfessorViral

Views: 22,547

Keywords: anime, manga, video essay, professorviral, prof, analysis, discussion, explained, lain, sel, serial experiments lain, akira movie, akira, cyberpunk, edgerunners, tetsuo, kaneda, david, lucy, maine, rebecca, self, mind, body, philosophy

Id: g7ieh7i2fpY

Length: 51min 25sec (3085 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 06 2024