An issue addressed quite clearly in episodes 7 and 8 are the concepts of creating multiple, distinct entities to represent you and the relationship between protecting the mind through organ replacement vs transition to a prosthetic body. We'll be starting with the latter since it's a bit simpler, but first, the summaries:
Episode 7:
The team is assigned the task of investigating the activities of a foreign revolutionary mascot who makes a trip to Japan once about every 5 months and has purportedly survived several assassination attempts. After tracking the man from a meeting to a warehouse, they discovered several robotic replications of him. It wasn't until they entered the core of the facility that they discovered the man himself, deceased and plugged into a device that made weak copies of his frozen consciousness and stored them into android doppelgangers.
Episode 8:
After an organic heart is illegally transplanted into a 6-year-old girl from the previous body of someone entering into a prosthetic body, the team is responsible for finding the responsible party. At first, they begin investigating a company that grows human organs within pigs using DNA from both (thinking that a mole might have been harvesting the organs to sell them), they find that the payments for the organs had been tampered with in the system. Later, they stumble upon the perpetrators in the act of acquiring organs, and it turns out to be a group of Robin Hood Med Students intent on stealing the organs and selling them cheaply to those who can't afford them. They track them to a warehouse district and capture them, along with a large collection of contraband organs.
While we've already discussed the notion of moving oneself into a prosthetic body in the first post, there is still the matter of breeding one's human organs in an alternate body for extraction if need be. While it is obvious that this would be an enormous leap forward in healthcare possibilities, it is also important to assert that this would only be moral if there was some means of developing such organs in a body that did NOT belong to an actual human being. If we got to the point where we were breeding humans to use them as objects and treat them as property to be slain at one's whim, we would be re-entering debates on the concept of slavery which is already considered to be morally reprehensible by the developed nations of today. Is there some sense in which manufacturing our own variations of God's creation for our own repurposing could be seen as sinful or an act against God's wishes? In this case, I think not, as we would simply claim that the essence of God's intent for the form of man is maintained during the process of organ transplant. So long as the process does not entail taking advantage of another human life, harming it, or potentially condemning it in some other abstract manner, the act remains pure. Repurposing ourselves for general self-improvement is more questionable, and was already addressed in the first post.
Now, to address the topic of clones, both organic and inorganic. Concerning organic clones, we must first define in what ways these clones would be used and the extent to which they would be sentient. If a clone was designed for medicinal usage, it would be more akin to the scenario concerning organ growth, which, we already clarified was sinful usage. Even if such organic clones were designed to lack sentience, it would still be in violation of a potential human soul or spirit's ability to have interactivity or understanding of its environment. Because of this, the mere act of designing an organic clone lacking the same level of sentience as an actual human would be an abuse of the human existence since the new life would be a human intentionally diminished in form from the "ideal" image God expects us to aim for. It would be akin to an art student intentionally sabotaging the teacher's personal project when asked to look after it. Humans are entrusted with the human body and therefore have a responsibility to ensure its continued, positive condition. Such conditions are designated as those which provide the tools necessary for the life of the individual to have a stable existence similar to the lives of other humans, in as good a quality as possible.
If organic clones were designed to be literal copies of the individual, it wouldn't exactly be sinful, so long as it was treated the same way as an individual who just gave birth to a child. We can determine that it would be wrong to grow a clone with accelerated growth or already existing at a particular age because it would contradict the "stable existence similar to the lives of other humans" part of our definition. As long as an unmodified clone was treated like a new life of its own, it would be a valid way of giving birth to a human (though potentially less "authentic").
Back to the topic of inorganic clones, i.e. androids. We'll mostly have to contend with whether or not a person's consciousness will actually be present within the clones. If it is a surrogate android, the principles applying to it are treated much like prosthetic body usage. Someone is simply living their own life through an alternative shell. In this case, the android in question wouldn't even be a spiritual clone since it would share the same consciousness. It would merely be a physical clone due to the ability of the individual to switch between the original body and the other body/bodies.
If someone truly had independent inorganic clones, either by replicating their consciousness (if that were even possible) and putting it into the empty mind of an android (with a spirit) or by designing AIs that simulated the behavior that they would normally exhibit (without a spirit), such an act would usually fall under the realm of deception as the person wouldn't be portraying themselves as they truly are. Even if such AIs periodically reported their experiences and acquired knowledge to the original being, this contradiction still applies (unless the notion of their usage became ubiquitous and there was a means of identifying such androids easily). When it gets interesting is if, in the former case, people found a method of using multiple consciousnesses as a means of living independently with the sole purpose of rejoining the consciousnesses and pooling their experiences together later on. In that sense, the people would be able to legitimately say they are the person in question because later on the essence of that person would eventually become aware of the experiences. At that point, the person has entered the realm of human advancement to where their existence is similar to that of a prosthetic body, though in the plural. The sense of "self" is perceived through a collective whereby the collective itself becomes a single entity to be recognized as the prosthetic body. Combined with the power of the Internet, and these devices could be universally synced up so that they operate in unison with one another, processing all of their experiences simultaneously (since each is an independent consciousness). Furthermore, if an organic variation of that state were to be possible, it would be the same as the prosthetic body scenario (elaborated on in the first post) only if human lives were not sacrificed in the process of its development.
All in all, the concept of having clones and/or growing clones must be framed with an understanding that
1) Any organic human with a life must be attributed the same rights any other human would be.
2) Having clones is morally limited in that one must not deceive others into thinking they are interacting with the actual person as opposed to a robot.
3) Any attempt by an individual to live as multiple entities tied together into a single mind would be similar enough to the existence of a single prosthetic body that its characterization has already been addressed previously.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Sensory/Motor Control Piracy and Ghost-Hacking (GITS 4-6)
The next thing I'd like to address in the world of Ghost in the Shell is the notion of a "limit of access" and where that boundary lies. Episodes four through six of the series highlight instances in which people are completely unaware of how they are sharing information with others, even sharing their existence as a human resource in some ways.
Episode Four:
Togusa gets a call from an old acquaintance who is suspicious about the goings-on in the police task force dedicated to solving a cold case known as the Laughing Man case. After the acquaintance's subsequent and sudden death, Togusa receives a file with pictures which he realizes are all coming from within the eyes of the task force. The entire police team was being spied on without their knowledge, cameras in their eyes watching their every move. The episode ends with a press conference concerning the illegal use of these "interceptors" - as the cameras are called - when it is interrupted by the Laughing Man cyber terrorist ghost-hacking one of the interviewees. In this case, "ghost hacking" is the term for hacking into the cyberbrain of the individual and manipulating their body "directly," even manipulating the mind of the victim. The Laughing Man threatens the corrupt police superintendent, telling him to resign or face execution.
Episode Five:
The team investigates the Laughing Man case in full force at this point, identifying a likely suspect and keeping tabs on him as he types away at a series of computers from a hotel room with police similarly watching him from an adjacent hotel room. Major Kusanagi, however, decides to examine the history of the Laughing Man's activities, profiling him, evaluating his hacking skills, motivations, methodology, etc. He blackmailed companies and hacked their industrial pursuits until their production went down and stocks dropped to the point that they had to cave in. And then he proceeded to do this repeatedly. Eventually, she decides to protect the police superintendent, and in the meantime, the suspect ends up getting shot in the head by mysterious man. In the assembly the superintendent attends, Kusanagi detects a strange signal operating somewhere in the room.
Episode Six:
The signal turns out to be a hacking process that targets one of the bodyguards. Kusanagi and co. jump in to fend off the hacking assassin, but soon after thwarting him, more assassin's appear from the crowd. Before long, it would seem that several people are spontaneously succumbing to the hack and joining in the fray, trying to kill the superintendent. By the time they can get the superintendent away and isolate the assassins, all traces of the hack are gone except that the people themselves have become delusional. Regardless of their past lives, they end up believing themselves to be the Laughing Man or a strong supporter of him, inspired with the singular motivation to kill the superintendent. Unable to comprehend the sequence of events, the team officially adopts the Laughing Man case, and the superintendent, lying in the hospital, decides to resign having already barely survived a bullet wound from earlier that day.
The main items of interest here are the "interceptors" introduced in episode four and the "ghost hacking" concept that becomes a cornerstone for the development of the series' themes. To start with, we first need to understand that our technology has always existed apart from us. It is highly likely that we will get to a point at which our technology fuses powerfully with our own physical development. Cameras are getting smaller and smaller, eventually fitting into our pocket. Then comes Google glass placing the camera just in front of our eyes. When we eventually devise a method of modifying or substituting our eyes for something else capable of digitizing the information our eyes would receive, we enter the realm of possibility concerning interceptors and their ilk.
As I've already discussed bodily manipulation in the first post, we'll simply start with the increased accessibility and lack of privacy such technology would invite. While the series makes it clear that it is illegal to have interceptors put into place without authorities' approval or foreknowledge, the fact of the matter is that such things will always happen. But what about the simple concept of gaining access to the digital sensory information of another individual? Can we assume that something like that would be illegal? Not necessarily. There are going to be people who, for convenience' sake, will want to leave such things open. Say someone wants to understand what it feels like to play the piano. A person could digitize the experience and then have that movement and sensory information downloaded and replayed, like a motion picture, except the person is in the picture, actually doing the thing they are "playing," automatically moving to match the musician's actions. Or as part of an educational experience, people decide to switch sensations in one way or another to be in "another person's shoes". You could even have the possibility of people renting out their bodies to others which gets into all sorts of trouble. All of these things would likely eventually be tried in one form or another, and they would be casual, everyday events, so how would laws be properly designed to avoid punishing such uses while still punishing "illegal" use, especially if the possibility of "hacking" in this way becomes standardized and easily accessible to others?
It is easy for us to determine what elements of this process would be considered Biblically moral as it is similar to the exchange of digital information as it exists today. Don't use other people's material without permission (Stealing/Plagiarism). Sharing online profiles is permitted (sometimes), but using that access for deception is sin (Slander/Misrepresentation). The real issue is where to extend the policy line: how do we define the laws that govern such a world? Is there any kind of Biblical basis for such laws?
A literal law exists ("You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another." Lev 19:11), but a better example for the essential motivations of the law lie in Ephesians 4:28, "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need." Through a critical analysis, we can observe a need for several things:
1) The fruits of one's work must come from one's own efforts ("work with his own hands").
2) The process of doing that work must be legitimate ("honest work").
3) One must be willing to share what they have earned with those in need.
Therefore, actions that oppose these priorities fail to uphold the desired principles in the text.
Should a person choose to offer up their own efforts for others to use, it's fine for people to use them so long as they don't attempt to masquerade those efforts as their own, much like plagiarism issues of today's society. Laws regarding motor function and sensory "files" would probably have similar laws regarding their distribution and use.
While not a belief that the law would mandate, the third principle is not something we should ignore. The church has a long history of supporting the notion of giving to the poor, and people have long interpreted this in the form of giving money to the church or to the poor for the sake of benefiting the impoverished. A form of "giving" for this type of reality would be for people to supply to the poor access to the information that only those with cyberbrains have access to, perhaps even generating analog conduits for the digital information for public use, i.e. a machine that does the motor control for you forcibly, externally, that way your muscle memory adapts and the person "learns" the file contents (just as an example). These would be possible albeit complicated methods in which someone could fulfill the third aspect of the criteria (those with the abilities could also just use them for the benefit of those without).
The morality regarding this issue would come extremely close-knit with the piracy controversies of today's digital world, especially because someone could go to watch a film and simply record the experience. Even the movie theaters would lose their ability to reel in people because the literal experience of sitting in a theater could be transmitted to someone via the Internet. To the extent of our knowledge, there would also be no method of stopping these things from happening. The ability to prove whether someone had done wrongdoing (i.e. recording one's sensations in a movie theater) would probably require scanning techniques that we today wouldn't be privy to, so at the very least, we can't make a definitive determination as to whether such activities would be detectable in the first place.
Finally, the concept of "ghost-hacking": This is, by any use of the idea, grossly inhumane and directly in opposition to God's moral reality. Ghost-hacking implies an overwhelming of the will of an individual and replacing their mind with another persona, possibly even indefinitely modifying the nature of the original mind. Ideas can be inserted, removed, and manipulated to such an extent that absolute control over another individual becomes completely plausible. Since God cares about the nature of our own will and judges us based on how we confront and deal with the various stages of our life, intentionally re-writing the history of a person's actions and forcing them to believe certain things overrules God's development of this mind.
Where people might think the morality gets a little more gray is when people intentionally begin brainwashing themselves and each other as members of a society. It's a given that doing it without someone's permission would be immoral, but if someone simply requests that you hack them and turn them into a different person...how does God feel about that? Is this essentially "suicide" because we are taking the easy way out and re-writing the behavioral code for our soul (if indeed the mind and soul are tied together in some way. Seems somewhat reasonable considering the effects of brain modification on the psychological behavior and ideologies embraced by an individual)? Or is this a legitimate shortcut to one's salvation?
The question can be answered in the illumination of two ideas: Romans 10:9-10 and the Biblical narrative itself. Firstly, if a person were to be influenced by a ghost-hack to become a Christian and to love God, God would accept them, for "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." The Romans passage clearly affirms that regardless of the method, if the person believes themselves to be a Christian and dedicates their life to sincerely seeking God, then even if they acquired that motivation through external manipulation, they will be saved, so long as they aren't complicit in said manipulation. If, however, a person is aware of the intentional re-purposing of a person's beliefs manually, then they have conducted themselves sinfully. Why? Because the entire Biblical narrative is about setting people free of oppression, ensuring that a person's will is not bent by another person or by a society of people. God praises those who remain true to Him in the face of people bending their will.
As for the argument that ghost hacking could be a legitimate means of evangelism, let's examine God's motivations for creating humans. He designed humanity not merely to love Him outright, but to have free will. Eventually that free will turned into a weakness when it caused humanity to become sinful through the Fall. Despite this however, God expects humans to attempt to better themselves, to mold themselves to be like Him. The only reason for this is because He wants humans to develop, on their own, an internal motivation for the pursuit of love, joy, righteousness, and the other Fruits of the Spirit.
If someone is mechanically forced to become faithful to God, then the person(s) who are aware of it and who don't work against its occurrence is/are guilty of bending that person's will, violating their free will, and violating the nature of that which God has designed. This is as much an argument against genetically forced Christian-dom as for ghost hacking due to the similar abstract ties it has with the oppression of an individual's free will.
Episode Four:
Togusa gets a call from an old acquaintance who is suspicious about the goings-on in the police task force dedicated to solving a cold case known as the Laughing Man case. After the acquaintance's subsequent and sudden death, Togusa receives a file with pictures which he realizes are all coming from within the eyes of the task force. The entire police team was being spied on without their knowledge, cameras in their eyes watching their every move. The episode ends with a press conference concerning the illegal use of these "interceptors" - as the cameras are called - when it is interrupted by the Laughing Man cyber terrorist ghost-hacking one of the interviewees. In this case, "ghost hacking" is the term for hacking into the cyberbrain of the individual and manipulating their body "directly," even manipulating the mind of the victim. The Laughing Man threatens the corrupt police superintendent, telling him to resign or face execution.
Episode Five:
The team investigates the Laughing Man case in full force at this point, identifying a likely suspect and keeping tabs on him as he types away at a series of computers from a hotel room with police similarly watching him from an adjacent hotel room. Major Kusanagi, however, decides to examine the history of the Laughing Man's activities, profiling him, evaluating his hacking skills, motivations, methodology, etc. He blackmailed companies and hacked their industrial pursuits until their production went down and stocks dropped to the point that they had to cave in. And then he proceeded to do this repeatedly. Eventually, she decides to protect the police superintendent, and in the meantime, the suspect ends up getting shot in the head by mysterious man. In the assembly the superintendent attends, Kusanagi detects a strange signal operating somewhere in the room.
Episode Six:
The signal turns out to be a hacking process that targets one of the bodyguards. Kusanagi and co. jump in to fend off the hacking assassin, but soon after thwarting him, more assassin's appear from the crowd. Before long, it would seem that several people are spontaneously succumbing to the hack and joining in the fray, trying to kill the superintendent. By the time they can get the superintendent away and isolate the assassins, all traces of the hack are gone except that the people themselves have become delusional. Regardless of their past lives, they end up believing themselves to be the Laughing Man or a strong supporter of him, inspired with the singular motivation to kill the superintendent. Unable to comprehend the sequence of events, the team officially adopts the Laughing Man case, and the superintendent, lying in the hospital, decides to resign having already barely survived a bullet wound from earlier that day.
The main items of interest here are the "interceptors" introduced in episode four and the "ghost hacking" concept that becomes a cornerstone for the development of the series' themes. To start with, we first need to understand that our technology has always existed apart from us. It is highly likely that we will get to a point at which our technology fuses powerfully with our own physical development. Cameras are getting smaller and smaller, eventually fitting into our pocket. Then comes Google glass placing the camera just in front of our eyes. When we eventually devise a method of modifying or substituting our eyes for something else capable of digitizing the information our eyes would receive, we enter the realm of possibility concerning interceptors and their ilk.
As I've already discussed bodily manipulation in the first post, we'll simply start with the increased accessibility and lack of privacy such technology would invite. While the series makes it clear that it is illegal to have interceptors put into place without authorities' approval or foreknowledge, the fact of the matter is that such things will always happen. But what about the simple concept of gaining access to the digital sensory information of another individual? Can we assume that something like that would be illegal? Not necessarily. There are going to be people who, for convenience' sake, will want to leave such things open. Say someone wants to understand what it feels like to play the piano. A person could digitize the experience and then have that movement and sensory information downloaded and replayed, like a motion picture, except the person is in the picture, actually doing the thing they are "playing," automatically moving to match the musician's actions. Or as part of an educational experience, people decide to switch sensations in one way or another to be in "another person's shoes". You could even have the possibility of people renting out their bodies to others which gets into all sorts of trouble. All of these things would likely eventually be tried in one form or another, and they would be casual, everyday events, so how would laws be properly designed to avoid punishing such uses while still punishing "illegal" use, especially if the possibility of "hacking" in this way becomes standardized and easily accessible to others?
It is easy for us to determine what elements of this process would be considered Biblically moral as it is similar to the exchange of digital information as it exists today. Don't use other people's material without permission (Stealing/Plagiarism). Sharing online profiles is permitted (sometimes), but using that access for deception is sin (Slander/Misrepresentation). The real issue is where to extend the policy line: how do we define the laws that govern such a world? Is there any kind of Biblical basis for such laws?
A literal law exists ("You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another." Lev 19:11), but a better example for the essential motivations of the law lie in Ephesians 4:28, "Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need." Through a critical analysis, we can observe a need for several things:
1) The fruits of one's work must come from one's own efforts ("work with his own hands").
2) The process of doing that work must be legitimate ("honest work").
3) One must be willing to share what they have earned with those in need.
Therefore, actions that oppose these priorities fail to uphold the desired principles in the text.
Should a person choose to offer up their own efforts for others to use, it's fine for people to use them so long as they don't attempt to masquerade those efforts as their own, much like plagiarism issues of today's society. Laws regarding motor function and sensory "files" would probably have similar laws regarding their distribution and use.
While not a belief that the law would mandate, the third principle is not something we should ignore. The church has a long history of supporting the notion of giving to the poor, and people have long interpreted this in the form of giving money to the church or to the poor for the sake of benefiting the impoverished. A form of "giving" for this type of reality would be for people to supply to the poor access to the information that only those with cyberbrains have access to, perhaps even generating analog conduits for the digital information for public use, i.e. a machine that does the motor control for you forcibly, externally, that way your muscle memory adapts and the person "learns" the file contents (just as an example). These would be possible albeit complicated methods in which someone could fulfill the third aspect of the criteria (those with the abilities could also just use them for the benefit of those without).
The morality regarding this issue would come extremely close-knit with the piracy controversies of today's digital world, especially because someone could go to watch a film and simply record the experience. Even the movie theaters would lose their ability to reel in people because the literal experience of sitting in a theater could be transmitted to someone via the Internet. To the extent of our knowledge, there would also be no method of stopping these things from happening. The ability to prove whether someone had done wrongdoing (i.e. recording one's sensations in a movie theater) would probably require scanning techniques that we today wouldn't be privy to, so at the very least, we can't make a definitive determination as to whether such activities would be detectable in the first place.
Finally, the concept of "ghost-hacking": This is, by any use of the idea, grossly inhumane and directly in opposition to God's moral reality. Ghost-hacking implies an overwhelming of the will of an individual and replacing their mind with another persona, possibly even indefinitely modifying the nature of the original mind. Ideas can be inserted, removed, and manipulated to such an extent that absolute control over another individual becomes completely plausible. Since God cares about the nature of our own will and judges us based on how we confront and deal with the various stages of our life, intentionally re-writing the history of a person's actions and forcing them to believe certain things overrules God's development of this mind.
Where people might think the morality gets a little more gray is when people intentionally begin brainwashing themselves and each other as members of a society. It's a given that doing it without someone's permission would be immoral, but if someone simply requests that you hack them and turn them into a different person...how does God feel about that? Is this essentially "suicide" because we are taking the easy way out and re-writing the behavioral code for our soul (if indeed the mind and soul are tied together in some way. Seems somewhat reasonable considering the effects of brain modification on the psychological behavior and ideologies embraced by an individual)? Or is this a legitimate shortcut to one's salvation?
The question can be answered in the illumination of two ideas: Romans 10:9-10 and the Biblical narrative itself. Firstly, if a person were to be influenced by a ghost-hack to become a Christian and to love God, God would accept them, for "if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." The Romans passage clearly affirms that regardless of the method, if the person believes themselves to be a Christian and dedicates their life to sincerely seeking God, then even if they acquired that motivation through external manipulation, they will be saved, so long as they aren't complicit in said manipulation. If, however, a person is aware of the intentional re-purposing of a person's beliefs manually, then they have conducted themselves sinfully. Why? Because the entire Biblical narrative is about setting people free of oppression, ensuring that a person's will is not bent by another person or by a society of people. God praises those who remain true to Him in the face of people bending their will.
As for the argument that ghost hacking could be a legitimate means of evangelism, let's examine God's motivations for creating humans. He designed humanity not merely to love Him outright, but to have free will. Eventually that free will turned into a weakness when it caused humanity to become sinful through the Fall. Despite this however, God expects humans to attempt to better themselves, to mold themselves to be like Him. The only reason for this is because He wants humans to develop, on their own, an internal motivation for the pursuit of love, joy, righteousness, and the other Fruits of the Spirit.
If someone is mechanically forced to become faithful to God, then the person(s) who are aware of it and who don't work against its occurrence is/are guilty of bending that person's will, violating their free will, and violating the nature of that which God has designed. This is as much an argument against genetically forced Christian-dom as for ghost hacking due to the similar abstract ties it has with the oppression of an individual's free will.
Sunday, October 6, 2013
Consciousness and God's Image (GITS 1-3) Continued
Continuing the discussion, we need to determine whether a person's
gender identity has an impact on the state of their consciousness and,
in turn, the way in which they experience life issues and deal with
them. We can assume that God has a plan for how events are to turn out,
that He will have prepared obstacles to test us in our respective
lifetimes, and that humanity would eventually reach the point where it
is capable of rendering the physical nature of the human body malleable.
Method of Thought 1:
"We must pursue God's 'intended experiences' for us"
We can confirm, based on the gross variation present between male and female perceptions and psychology, that the way in which one sees him or herself results in a particular way of experiencing the world. It would therefore make sense that whatever gender we exist as would have some connection to the intended "experience" and set of "trials" we would experience (as that experience is shaped by our perceptions which are in turn shaped by our gender and psychological state). So this line of thinking gives us the impression that one's gender identity is crucial to one's spiritual development.
Logically following from that realization is the need to identify to what extent gender identity play's a role, in what ways specifically, and exactly how the effect occurs. The setting of Ghost in the Shell could wholly re-define how individuals even perceived the concept of "sex" though. With the technology to live within an alternate body, effectively changing one's outward sex, and yet fully manipulate the hormones and chemicals manipulating the brain (and thereby one's consciousness and sex according to brain chemistry), we can clearly see that the GITS world attempts to free itself of such constraints. In this way, the mental/emotional/social faculties of an individual could be maintained as one sex while their outward appearance is changed to that of the other sex. The level of personal manipulation is limitless, so determining where God would draw the line is most important to our investigation.
So we've gone from "God cares about the state of our consciousness" to "gender state affects the state of our consciousness" to "God cares about gender state in so much as it affects the state of our consciousness." So then, in what ways does gender affect consciousness?
1) Outward Appearance:
Appearance-wise, our own consciousness has no sense of what we look like, except through a mirror, so it might seem as if it's inconsequential in that domain; however, there are passages in the Bible in which men are criticized for attempting to appear as women and vice versa: "A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God," (Deut 22:5) and "For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man," (1 Cor 11:6-7). Some may pose arguments that such specific situations are relevant only to the historical culture of the ancient world, but I think we can, at the very least, make the assumption that, foregoing any notions of hair length and the like, there is a clear intent to uphold not the idea that men can't have long hair necessarily, but that, if such a thing were to indicate the man were attempting to pretend to be a woman, then it is considered sinful, which is a concept that transcends simple cultural limits. So, if we intentionally alter our appearance to appear as the opposite sex, or to be recognized as such, it is sinful due to the fact that we are lying about who we are to others (that particular section of Deuteronomy is highly devoted to laws describing deceit and lies).
2) Social Ramifications:
Societies generally treat women and men distinctly from one another, therefore it is extremely easy to conceive of experiential differences between males and females which in turn would affect the perspective through which they understand those experiences and thereby the resulting consciousness and spiritual development. Other people's perception of the individual and the individual's perception of themselves and their role in society would both be affected dramatically. The only reason such a distinction would be less significant is if the society in question lacked differences between the male and female identity completely, if, culturally, men and women had become unisexed.
3) Mental/Emotional Effect:
Although it has already somewhat been discussed, any modification to brain chemistry would have an extremely powerful effect on the individual's experiences which should be well known to anyone who has a basic understanding of neuroscience and psychology. Now, to what extent the brain can be modified before it enters the realm of a "sinful modification" would require a keen analysis and an awareness of the intentions of the subject undergoing the changes. Naturally, anything that is meant to heal the subject from self-damaging or detrimental effects would need to be counteracted and would be excused; however, if the individual started using hormone changes as a means to alter their sexual identity, that would be considered sin if, as we discussed, the purity/sinfulness of actions are determined by how closely their experiences align with the "natural" development of the individual.
So, if all of these experiences are used to develop a gender-based identity, and if any alterations to these experiences would result in changes to consciousness, then we can assume that God finds sinful any actions that would alter our gender-based identity so long as distinct gender-based identities have direct ties to the development of consciousness.
Method of Thought 2:
"We must pursue, ultimately, the defeat of a self-interpreted, broken world."
Beginning with a counterpoint question: Change in consciousness leads to change in spiritual development?
Granted, all of these differences result in changes to one's consciousness and the way in which they experience the world, but why must it be assumed that changes to experience result in changes to one's spiritual status or development? Surely there are ways in which a person can purposefully alter the type of experiences they would otherwise have in the future and yet not necessarily affect what God would "intend" for them to experience? The fact is that God would know that they would have made that choice and would have taken it into account. Besides, most of people's attempts to change their bodies or lives/experiences are attempts on their part to better tune the same things towards what God's "ideal" for them would be. For example, the argument for a person who gets a nose job is someone who thinks that by changing their appearance, they will make the image that they were born with - a broken image resulting from the broken state of the world - gets a little closer to the more idealized appearance of the human body, thereby making them more attractive/likeable/approachable to others which can only help their ethos with others and, consequentially, their ability to minister to them and act as a positive representative of Jesus Christ by exemplifying an "ideal" human existence more closely.
In a similar case, a man who desires a sex-change can argue that he has a consciousness that is more attuned to that of woman, and that it is only because of the broken nature of the world that he ended up with a male body in the first place. He would attribute his suffering as a "female in a male body" to the sinful state of the universe and group it with other such luck-based sufferings like being born in a poverty-stricken region or being born with substantial medical problems. It's not their fault nor is it something that can change so easily. The counterargument to such an idea would be that it is purely a psychological issue and that, through therapy, the individual can be "healed" and regain their sense of being the "natural" gender, or in this example, the sense of being a man as opposed to a woman, mentally/emotionally.
Gender-Confusion Conclusion:
Sadly, we as humans lack the ability to fundamentally determine which of these arguments is correct; we can merely know that they are "correct" ideas according to their respective viewpoints of the world.
It is a fact, however, that wherever suffering exists, sin exists. And it is also a fact that there are people who are gender-confused, and suffer as a result. Therefore, it is a "wrong" state for people to exist as a male within a female body or as a female within a male body. Either their minds should be changed or their bodies should be changed. The fundamental difference of opinion lies in people's idea of what has been wrongly modified by the broken world: the mind or the body. 1) This isn't
something that we would be able to determine on a large scale - if we could determine it at all. Instead, we would have to examine the issue on a case-by-case basis. 2) As already stated, we can't know whether a person was supposed to be male or female within the "perfect" version of our world (the one in which male and female distinctions exist). Therefore, we have no power to assume such knowledge and cannot adequately make judgement calls upon others in God's place for not agreeing with our assumptions on the matter. It is something that only God can know. Does that mean we should no longer attempt to convince other people of our perspective? Of course not. That would destroy a person's fundamental potential to argue and discuss things. It's more like such an act is in accordance with determining whether someone will be saved or not: it is something personal to the person's heart and is between them and God, not something that others can be sure of.
So, people can't know whether another individual is acting in accordance to God's understanding in this domain. All we can do is attempt to communicate to others the need for inner reflection and contemplation regarding whether such an act is truly something that God desires for them to do: choosing between the dual calls of remaining within "the image of God" provided and remaining true to the original mind God gifted the individual with. Furthermore, one can't argue that another person's original mind is necessarily masculine or feminine since that person is the one who makes such a judgment. This is partly because the "image of God" includes both the male and female identities.
What then should an individual person examine to make their own decision as to whether what they are doing is in accordance with God's wishes? We can guarantee that God's highest priority will be the healing and teaching of others and oneself. Therefore, while we have thought patterns that yield a reality in which our souls are sincere and positively developing, i.e. perpetually pursuing the truth of the matter, then as long as we don't allow ourselves to commit other acts of sin in the process, any attempt we make to make the "right" decision (as we have determined it) will always be the "best" choice that we could have made under the circumstances (Jeremiah 29:13). Beware, though, because this ideology runs dangerously close to the practice of assuming that whatever we do is right simply because we are judging it to be so. We must always take care that in this process we don't make assumptions about our reality and believe something to be "right" simply because it is convenient for us.
Take note that Crossdressing would still be akin to a deception, however, and is a form of lying that is still sin. If someone decides that, with everything they can understand about the universe, changing one's gender identity is not sinful, they should still either be all the way one or the other. Tricking people and lying to others, as well as yourself, is never something God would condone.
In the same way that we would forgive a dog for biting its owner when it is severely in pain or frightened, we can rest assured that God will forgive us for potentially "biting the hand that feeds" when we are likewise confused and afraid in this broken world.
Ghost in the Shell 1-3 Conclusion:
What does this all mean in regards to the crazed world of Ghost in the Shell? Whatever actions one takes must be done in the spirit of remaining true to God's wishes, as closely as possible. Therefore, actions that would otherwise be sinful in the first place, such as changing bodies from male to female simply to have sexual fantasies (as the government official of the first episode did) would be wrong by the fact that they are a perfect example of sexual immorality: obsessing over the feelings, sensations, and physical objectivity of the act of sex instead of understanding the significance of and embracing the spiritual and emotional connection that such an act confers upon its participants. The discussion concerning "sex-change operations" by switching bodies completely can be tied directly to my statements earlier in the post.
For the question regarding whether it is morally permissible for humans to trade in biological bodies for mechanical ones at all has similar dynamics: If you believe that God would find it to be sinful and still do it, then obviously you have sinned, for you have denied what you thought to be God's law. God cares about your devotion to goodness, righteousness, and love, so regardless if something is actually wrong or not, if you still do it believing it to be wrong, then you have acted in opposition to what you believe God is commanding you to do, which is direct disobedience of Him. If you don't think it is sinful, then by all means go ahead, especially if you think that it will help you in your fulfillment of the Great Commission.
All in all, the first three episodes of Ghost in the Shell have explored a range of topics that our society has already begun to address to a certain degree, but will most assuredly be dealing with in a future probably not so far away as we think. Prosthetic technology - along with computing - advances more quickly than we can keep up with sometimes, and it would do us good to ensure that we investigate such conflicts before we are overridden by them. GITS has certainly started the conversation quite well, especially considering the series is already a decade old now. Check back for more discussions on potentially controversial topics.
Method of Thought 1:
"We must pursue God's 'intended experiences' for us"
We can confirm, based on the gross variation present between male and female perceptions and psychology, that the way in which one sees him or herself results in a particular way of experiencing the world. It would therefore make sense that whatever gender we exist as would have some connection to the intended "experience" and set of "trials" we would experience (as that experience is shaped by our perceptions which are in turn shaped by our gender and psychological state). So this line of thinking gives us the impression that one's gender identity is crucial to one's spiritual development.
Logically following from that realization is the need to identify to what extent gender identity play's a role, in what ways specifically, and exactly how the effect occurs. The setting of Ghost in the Shell could wholly re-define how individuals even perceived the concept of "sex" though. With the technology to live within an alternate body, effectively changing one's outward sex, and yet fully manipulate the hormones and chemicals manipulating the brain (and thereby one's consciousness and sex according to brain chemistry), we can clearly see that the GITS world attempts to free itself of such constraints. In this way, the mental/emotional/social faculties of an individual could be maintained as one sex while their outward appearance is changed to that of the other sex. The level of personal manipulation is limitless, so determining where God would draw the line is most important to our investigation.
So we've gone from "God cares about the state of our consciousness" to "gender state affects the state of our consciousness" to "God cares about gender state in so much as it affects the state of our consciousness." So then, in what ways does gender affect consciousness?
1) Outward Appearance:
Appearance-wise, our own consciousness has no sense of what we look like, except through a mirror, so it might seem as if it's inconsequential in that domain; however, there are passages in the Bible in which men are criticized for attempting to appear as women and vice versa: "A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God," (Deut 22:5) and "For if a wife will not cover her head, then she should cut her hair short. But since it is disgraceful for a wife to cut off her hair or shave her head, let her cover her head. For a man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God, but woman is the glory of man," (1 Cor 11:6-7). Some may pose arguments that such specific situations are relevant only to the historical culture of the ancient world, but I think we can, at the very least, make the assumption that, foregoing any notions of hair length and the like, there is a clear intent to uphold not the idea that men can't have long hair necessarily, but that, if such a thing were to indicate the man were attempting to pretend to be a woman, then it is considered sinful, which is a concept that transcends simple cultural limits. So, if we intentionally alter our appearance to appear as the opposite sex, or to be recognized as such, it is sinful due to the fact that we are lying about who we are to others (that particular section of Deuteronomy is highly devoted to laws describing deceit and lies).
2) Social Ramifications:
Societies generally treat women and men distinctly from one another, therefore it is extremely easy to conceive of experiential differences between males and females which in turn would affect the perspective through which they understand those experiences and thereby the resulting consciousness and spiritual development. Other people's perception of the individual and the individual's perception of themselves and their role in society would both be affected dramatically. The only reason such a distinction would be less significant is if the society in question lacked differences between the male and female identity completely, if, culturally, men and women had become unisexed.
3) Mental/Emotional Effect:
Although it has already somewhat been discussed, any modification to brain chemistry would have an extremely powerful effect on the individual's experiences which should be well known to anyone who has a basic understanding of neuroscience and psychology. Now, to what extent the brain can be modified before it enters the realm of a "sinful modification" would require a keen analysis and an awareness of the intentions of the subject undergoing the changes. Naturally, anything that is meant to heal the subject from self-damaging or detrimental effects would need to be counteracted and would be excused; however, if the individual started using hormone changes as a means to alter their sexual identity, that would be considered sin if, as we discussed, the purity/sinfulness of actions are determined by how closely their experiences align with the "natural" development of the individual.
So, if all of these experiences are used to develop a gender-based identity, and if any alterations to these experiences would result in changes to consciousness, then we can assume that God finds sinful any actions that would alter our gender-based identity so long as distinct gender-based identities have direct ties to the development of consciousness.
Method of Thought 2:
"We must pursue, ultimately, the defeat of a self-interpreted, broken world."
Beginning with a counterpoint question: Change in consciousness leads to change in spiritual development?
Granted, all of these differences result in changes to one's consciousness and the way in which they experience the world, but why must it be assumed that changes to experience result in changes to one's spiritual status or development? Surely there are ways in which a person can purposefully alter the type of experiences they would otherwise have in the future and yet not necessarily affect what God would "intend" for them to experience? The fact is that God would know that they would have made that choice and would have taken it into account. Besides, most of people's attempts to change their bodies or lives/experiences are attempts on their part to better tune the same things towards what God's "ideal" for them would be. For example, the argument for a person who gets a nose job is someone who thinks that by changing their appearance, they will make the image that they were born with - a broken image resulting from the broken state of the world - gets a little closer to the more idealized appearance of the human body, thereby making them more attractive/likeable/approachable to others which can only help their ethos with others and, consequentially, their ability to minister to them and act as a positive representative of Jesus Christ by exemplifying an "ideal" human existence more closely.
In a similar case, a man who desires a sex-change can argue that he has a consciousness that is more attuned to that of woman, and that it is only because of the broken nature of the world that he ended up with a male body in the first place. He would attribute his suffering as a "female in a male body" to the sinful state of the universe and group it with other such luck-based sufferings like being born in a poverty-stricken region or being born with substantial medical problems. It's not their fault nor is it something that can change so easily. The counterargument to such an idea would be that it is purely a psychological issue and that, through therapy, the individual can be "healed" and regain their sense of being the "natural" gender, or in this example, the sense of being a man as opposed to a woman, mentally/emotionally.
Gender-Confusion Conclusion:
Sadly, we as humans lack the ability to fundamentally determine which of these arguments is correct; we can merely know that they are "correct" ideas according to their respective viewpoints of the world.
It is a fact, however, that wherever suffering exists, sin exists. And it is also a fact that there are people who are gender-confused, and suffer as a result. Therefore, it is a "wrong" state for people to exist as a male within a female body or as a female within a male body. Either their minds should be changed or their bodies should be changed. The fundamental difference of opinion lies in people's idea of what has been wrongly modified by the broken world: the mind or the body. 1) This isn't
something that we would be able to determine on a large scale - if we could determine it at all. Instead, we would have to examine the issue on a case-by-case basis. 2) As already stated, we can't know whether a person was supposed to be male or female within the "perfect" version of our world (the one in which male and female distinctions exist). Therefore, we have no power to assume such knowledge and cannot adequately make judgement calls upon others in God's place for not agreeing with our assumptions on the matter. It is something that only God can know. Does that mean we should no longer attempt to convince other people of our perspective? Of course not. That would destroy a person's fundamental potential to argue and discuss things. It's more like such an act is in accordance with determining whether someone will be saved or not: it is something personal to the person's heart and is between them and God, not something that others can be sure of.
So, people can't know whether another individual is acting in accordance to God's understanding in this domain. All we can do is attempt to communicate to others the need for inner reflection and contemplation regarding whether such an act is truly something that God desires for them to do: choosing between the dual calls of remaining within "the image of God" provided and remaining true to the original mind God gifted the individual with. Furthermore, one can't argue that another person's original mind is necessarily masculine or feminine since that person is the one who makes such a judgment. This is partly because the "image of God" includes both the male and female identities.
What then should an individual person examine to make their own decision as to whether what they are doing is in accordance with God's wishes? We can guarantee that God's highest priority will be the healing and teaching of others and oneself. Therefore, while we have thought patterns that yield a reality in which our souls are sincere and positively developing, i.e. perpetually pursuing the truth of the matter, then as long as we don't allow ourselves to commit other acts of sin in the process, any attempt we make to make the "right" decision (as we have determined it) will always be the "best" choice that we could have made under the circumstances (Jeremiah 29:13). Beware, though, because this ideology runs dangerously close to the practice of assuming that whatever we do is right simply because we are judging it to be so. We must always take care that in this process we don't make assumptions about our reality and believe something to be "right" simply because it is convenient for us.
Take note that Crossdressing would still be akin to a deception, however, and is a form of lying that is still sin. If someone decides that, with everything they can understand about the universe, changing one's gender identity is not sinful, they should still either be all the way one or the other. Tricking people and lying to others, as well as yourself, is never something God would condone.
In the same way that we would forgive a dog for biting its owner when it is severely in pain or frightened, we can rest assured that God will forgive us for potentially "biting the hand that feeds" when we are likewise confused and afraid in this broken world.
Ghost in the Shell 1-3 Conclusion:
What does this all mean in regards to the crazed world of Ghost in the Shell? Whatever actions one takes must be done in the spirit of remaining true to God's wishes, as closely as possible. Therefore, actions that would otherwise be sinful in the first place, such as changing bodies from male to female simply to have sexual fantasies (as the government official of the first episode did) would be wrong by the fact that they are a perfect example of sexual immorality: obsessing over the feelings, sensations, and physical objectivity of the act of sex instead of understanding the significance of and embracing the spiritual and emotional connection that such an act confers upon its participants. The discussion concerning "sex-change operations" by switching bodies completely can be tied directly to my statements earlier in the post.
For the question regarding whether it is morally permissible for humans to trade in biological bodies for mechanical ones at all has similar dynamics: If you believe that God would find it to be sinful and still do it, then obviously you have sinned, for you have denied what you thought to be God's law. God cares about your devotion to goodness, righteousness, and love, so regardless if something is actually wrong or not, if you still do it believing it to be wrong, then you have acted in opposition to what you believe God is commanding you to do, which is direct disobedience of Him. If you don't think it is sinful, then by all means go ahead, especially if you think that it will help you in your fulfillment of the Great Commission.
All in all, the first three episodes of Ghost in the Shell have explored a range of topics that our society has already begun to address to a certain degree, but will most assuredly be dealing with in a future probably not so far away as we think. Prosthetic technology - along with computing - advances more quickly than we can keep up with sometimes, and it would do us good to ensure that we investigate such conflicts before we are overridden by them. GITS has certainly started the conversation quite well, especially considering the series is already a decade old now. Check back for more discussions on potentially controversial topics.
Tuesday, October 1, 2013
Consciousness and God's Image (GITS 1-3)
Brief setting and story:
The world of Ghost in the Shell is one in which the future has advanced towards the point of cyberization. It is wholly commonplace for individuals to have cyberbrains within them, allowing them to directly access computer software with their mind. This likewise gives them the capacity to transmit signals from brain to brain wirelessly. There are A.I. robots, invisible cloaking, whole prosthetic bodies, and the ominous "ghost" hacking in which people themselves are hacked and controlled by an individual.
Episode 1:
we are introduced to the daily lives of the members of Japan's Public Security Section 9, a specialized cybercrime task force. The group's leader Chief Aramaki acts as the standard good-guy supervisor with all the cards up his sleeve. The true characters in which we see some development are the commander, Major Motoko Kusanagi, her combat-specialist Batou, and the non-cyborg Togusa (though he still has a cyberbrain).
Items of interest in the episode include...
- a criminal without a prosthetic body saying to the Major, "You people are cops? There's no hope for justice in our system now." The Major responds, "Straighten up your own act before whining about the world. Or if that's too much, wear a blindfold, zip your mouth, and live in a cave. Or the alternative..." [threatens to shoot the man in the head]
- the "kidnapping" of a government official by replacing the brain inside with an alternate and storing the original within a brain-case.
- the fact that the government official in question made a habit of switching bodies with robotic geishas during sexual encounters as a means of entertainment
- Major Kusanagi advising Togusa to get a robot body if he is so concerned about his aim getting worse (she spots him at the shooting range).
Episode 2:
The second episode traces the events of a machine of war gone haywire, concluding with a seemingly deceased weapons engineer with a weak body seeking revenge on the family of religious people who imposed their anti-cyberization morals on him, therefore leading to his early, bodily death. Transferring himself to a cyberbrain and implanting it into his latest tank-design, he seeks out his family, ready to reveal to them his new steel body, neither with pride nor vengeance, but instead simply to make the statement that it can be done, that it is acceptable to have such a thing.
Episode 3:
The episode follows an attempt by a socially awkward ambassador's son to try and create a meaningful relationship with an android. The android, having an outdated design, is only capable of recording and replaying existing input and it is discovered that her various conversations and comments about love are all from a particular movie, all except one line: "I am sorry. I truly did love you," she says as she restrains him for the police. The question is then posed as to whether this android really did carry some sort of "ghost", a spirit that existed beyond the mere technology.
With these three episodes together (no more, since it is already a lot of content) we should fixate on a few things. The existence of a consciousness existing separate from its physical body is a matter of continual occurrence in these episodes, what with being kidnapped by switching bodies, or even switching bodies to experience sexual pleasure differently. These instances are all only possible because of this disassociation, but what is Ghost in the Shell meaning to say about the basic concept? Both the Major's retort to the criminal referenced earlier and the engineer from the second episode exemplify the answer: The world has moved on from such antiquated "purity" sentiments. Either you can accept the fact that the world is now willing to have a wholly malleable sense of personal identity through one's body, or you can't and should either pretend it isn't real or get out.
I would say this particular subject gives us more than enough material to cover for an opening discussion. Firstly, we will need to recognize that one of the central issues at hand is the exchange of a human body or human characteristics in preference for a technologically enhanced version of the same. Therefore, in order to come to a clear analysis on the biblical ramifications of such a concept, we must first investigate the meaning of the phrase "made in the image of God" (Gen 1:26) as the logical argument against it would be that the human body should not be modified due to its divine quality inherent in its being made in God's image. Barring any kind of counterpoint concerning our natural desecration of other "God-created images" in nature for our purposes or the fact that we as humans have no problem replacing human anatomy with prosthetics when it is for healing, prevention of future damage, or reinforcement of a naturally-occurring weakness in the body, it would do us good to prove that the physical appearance of the human body is not the significant aspect here.
Well, judging from the fact that God himself is Spirit (John 4:24), it would make sense that it is the immaterial essence of humans that make us like Him. What does God do? 1) He reasons: It is only possible for God to devise a solution to a complex and abstract spiritual conundrum such as curing humanity's sin if He has the capacity to reason out the solution. 2) He makes decisions: In order for Him to "always do good" he must always be presented with or be aware of the capacity for evil, therefore, any action on His part is an act in which he decides upon a course of action based on an infinite possible number of variations. 3) He creates: Obviously he created us, the universe, and his legion of angels. He embraces the spirit of creation and "discovering" the new and innovated. 4) He seeks out relationship: Our creation was for the sole purpose of God developing a personal relationship with His creation, something that can only be done when we are likewise given the capacity to forge relationships. Why would we have that capacity? Oh right! Because we are made in the image of God. If we looked like centipedes, would this change anything? No, not so long as our consciousness was akin to the present. Therefore, it is our consciousness and mental and emotional faculties that separate us from the rest of creation, or in other words, that make us like God.
The concept that the image of God is somehow embedded in the physical form of man is only significant in so far as creation is an example of God's physical wonders - they share the fact that they focus on the appearance and tangible nature of their objects. Because God's essence is spirit (and we have already defined that God's image is embedded in the "spirit" of human relationship), then we can say that to claim that man's physical qualities matter would likewise imply that the physical state of man is either significant in the same way that the world is significant OR that the physical state somehow has an impact on our cognitive state ergo spiritual state. For now, we'll look at the first of these: first of all, God gave us dominion over all of the animals of the Earth. In a sense, he gave us the reins in directing the Earth. We manipulate every aspect of the Earth to our own ends: the animals, the rocks, the soil, the water, harnessing the power of nature's energy. Everything that has been physically crafted by God has been ours to wield and control as we see fit, to suit our own purposes - and so long as those purposes remain in alignment with God's purposes, such control should be permissible.
Harnessing that which God has provided for us as a means of advancing and developing ourselves seems like a natural extension of that, from cybernetic enhancement to genetic modification. God encoded our bodies in a way He knew we would eventually be able to understand. He would've had to have known that we would eventually decipher it to some degree and begin manipulating our basic components for our own R&D. Same goes for everything we've learned about how our body works. If we can find a way to enhance or functionally improve the experience we have as humans, doesn't that simply mean that we have found a method of building upon the tools that God has gifted to us and are using them to take things farther than what he initially provided for us? Would we say it is wrong to enhance our vision using a microscope? I think not... One might say that God wouldn't have wanted us to make such changes to the bodies he crafted personally, but it's more accurate to recognize that he personally crafted EVERYTHING and that the universe was designed to be our play pen, even from the Christian perspective. God wants us to grow, explore, innovate, create, transform, experiment, discover, and ultimately experience life, and if he is fine with us moving passed what he has "initially given us" in terms of technology, then he most certainly has no problem with us manipulating other physical aspects of ourselves.
Given that, we need to identify/evaluate whether any physical processes in our bodies can affect our consciousness and, if so, search for biblical grounds for understanding the unique predicament of physical-mental connections, i.e. certain hormones make us more/less male/female. Is the manipulation of THOSE physical properties permitted by God since they have an effect on how we experience the world, i.e. how we define ourselves as female or male? This is particularly relevant to our discussion because the ability to switch from one body into another, the complete segregation between body and consciousness, makes the role of the body's characteristics in consciousness-development (a spiritually-defined sense of development) fall into confusion: If my spirituality is defined by the state of my consciousness, then why does it matter what my body looks like in terms of God's divine will? Is there any way a manipulation of that body-consciousness relationship could be considered sinful, i.e. negatively affect my consciousness development?
A discussion for next time...
The world of Ghost in the Shell is one in which the future has advanced towards the point of cyberization. It is wholly commonplace for individuals to have cyberbrains within them, allowing them to directly access computer software with their mind. This likewise gives them the capacity to transmit signals from brain to brain wirelessly. There are A.I. robots, invisible cloaking, whole prosthetic bodies, and the ominous "ghost" hacking in which people themselves are hacked and controlled by an individual.
Episode 1:
we are introduced to the daily lives of the members of Japan's Public Security Section 9, a specialized cybercrime task force. The group's leader Chief Aramaki acts as the standard good-guy supervisor with all the cards up his sleeve. The true characters in which we see some development are the commander, Major Motoko Kusanagi, her combat-specialist Batou, and the non-cyborg Togusa (though he still has a cyberbrain).
Items of interest in the episode include...
- a criminal without a prosthetic body saying to the Major, "You people are cops? There's no hope for justice in our system now." The Major responds, "Straighten up your own act before whining about the world. Or if that's too much, wear a blindfold, zip your mouth, and live in a cave. Or the alternative..." [threatens to shoot the man in the head]
- the "kidnapping" of a government official by replacing the brain inside with an alternate and storing the original within a brain-case.
- the fact that the government official in question made a habit of switching bodies with robotic geishas during sexual encounters as a means of entertainment
- Major Kusanagi advising Togusa to get a robot body if he is so concerned about his aim getting worse (she spots him at the shooting range).
Episode 2:
The second episode traces the events of a machine of war gone haywire, concluding with a seemingly deceased weapons engineer with a weak body seeking revenge on the family of religious people who imposed their anti-cyberization morals on him, therefore leading to his early, bodily death. Transferring himself to a cyberbrain and implanting it into his latest tank-design, he seeks out his family, ready to reveal to them his new steel body, neither with pride nor vengeance, but instead simply to make the statement that it can be done, that it is acceptable to have such a thing.
Episode 3:
The episode follows an attempt by a socially awkward ambassador's son to try and create a meaningful relationship with an android. The android, having an outdated design, is only capable of recording and replaying existing input and it is discovered that her various conversations and comments about love are all from a particular movie, all except one line: "I am sorry. I truly did love you," she says as she restrains him for the police. The question is then posed as to whether this android really did carry some sort of "ghost", a spirit that existed beyond the mere technology.
With these three episodes together (no more, since it is already a lot of content) we should fixate on a few things. The existence of a consciousness existing separate from its physical body is a matter of continual occurrence in these episodes, what with being kidnapped by switching bodies, or even switching bodies to experience sexual pleasure differently. These instances are all only possible because of this disassociation, but what is Ghost in the Shell meaning to say about the basic concept? Both the Major's retort to the criminal referenced earlier and the engineer from the second episode exemplify the answer: The world has moved on from such antiquated "purity" sentiments. Either you can accept the fact that the world is now willing to have a wholly malleable sense of personal identity through one's body, or you can't and should either pretend it isn't real or get out.
I would say this particular subject gives us more than enough material to cover for an opening discussion. Firstly, we will need to recognize that one of the central issues at hand is the exchange of a human body or human characteristics in preference for a technologically enhanced version of the same. Therefore, in order to come to a clear analysis on the biblical ramifications of such a concept, we must first investigate the meaning of the phrase "made in the image of God" (Gen 1:26) as the logical argument against it would be that the human body should not be modified due to its divine quality inherent in its being made in God's image. Barring any kind of counterpoint concerning our natural desecration of other "God-created images" in nature for our purposes or the fact that we as humans have no problem replacing human anatomy with prosthetics when it is for healing, prevention of future damage, or reinforcement of a naturally-occurring weakness in the body, it would do us good to prove that the physical appearance of the human body is not the significant aspect here.
Well, judging from the fact that God himself is Spirit (John 4:24), it would make sense that it is the immaterial essence of humans that make us like Him. What does God do? 1) He reasons: It is only possible for God to devise a solution to a complex and abstract spiritual conundrum such as curing humanity's sin if He has the capacity to reason out the solution. 2) He makes decisions: In order for Him to "always do good" he must always be presented with or be aware of the capacity for evil, therefore, any action on His part is an act in which he decides upon a course of action based on an infinite possible number of variations. 3) He creates: Obviously he created us, the universe, and his legion of angels. He embraces the spirit of creation and "discovering" the new and innovated. 4) He seeks out relationship: Our creation was for the sole purpose of God developing a personal relationship with His creation, something that can only be done when we are likewise given the capacity to forge relationships. Why would we have that capacity? Oh right! Because we are made in the image of God. If we looked like centipedes, would this change anything? No, not so long as our consciousness was akin to the present. Therefore, it is our consciousness and mental and emotional faculties that separate us from the rest of creation, or in other words, that make us like God.
The concept that the image of God is somehow embedded in the physical form of man is only significant in so far as creation is an example of God's physical wonders - they share the fact that they focus on the appearance and tangible nature of their objects. Because God's essence is spirit (and we have already defined that God's image is embedded in the "spirit" of human relationship), then we can say that to claim that man's physical qualities matter would likewise imply that the physical state of man is either significant in the same way that the world is significant OR that the physical state somehow has an impact on our cognitive state ergo spiritual state. For now, we'll look at the first of these: first of all, God gave us dominion over all of the animals of the Earth. In a sense, he gave us the reins in directing the Earth. We manipulate every aspect of the Earth to our own ends: the animals, the rocks, the soil, the water, harnessing the power of nature's energy. Everything that has been physically crafted by God has been ours to wield and control as we see fit, to suit our own purposes - and so long as those purposes remain in alignment with God's purposes, such control should be permissible.
Harnessing that which God has provided for us as a means of advancing and developing ourselves seems like a natural extension of that, from cybernetic enhancement to genetic modification. God encoded our bodies in a way He knew we would eventually be able to understand. He would've had to have known that we would eventually decipher it to some degree and begin manipulating our basic components for our own R&D. Same goes for everything we've learned about how our body works. If we can find a way to enhance or functionally improve the experience we have as humans, doesn't that simply mean that we have found a method of building upon the tools that God has gifted to us and are using them to take things farther than what he initially provided for us? Would we say it is wrong to enhance our vision using a microscope? I think not... One might say that God wouldn't have wanted us to make such changes to the bodies he crafted personally, but it's more accurate to recognize that he personally crafted EVERYTHING and that the universe was designed to be our play pen, even from the Christian perspective. God wants us to grow, explore, innovate, create, transform, experiment, discover, and ultimately experience life, and if he is fine with us moving passed what he has "initially given us" in terms of technology, then he most certainly has no problem with us manipulating other physical aspects of ourselves.
Given that, we need to identify/evaluate whether any physical processes in our bodies can affect our consciousness and, if so, search for biblical grounds for understanding the unique predicament of physical-mental connections, i.e. certain hormones make us more/less male/female. Is the manipulation of THOSE physical properties permitted by God since they have an effect on how we experience the world, i.e. how we define ourselves as female or male? This is particularly relevant to our discussion because the ability to switch from one body into another, the complete segregation between body and consciousness, makes the role of the body's characteristics in consciousness-development (a spiritually-defined sense of development) fall into confusion: If my spirituality is defined by the state of my consciousness, then why does it matter what my body looks like in terms of God's divine will? Is there any way a manipulation of that body-consciousness relationship could be considered sinful, i.e. negatively affect my consciousness development?
A discussion for next time...
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