A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

and

Serial Experiments Lain

 

By

Yukatado

 

Media and Pop Culture of Japan

 

Joseph Murphy

 

Tuesday, April 01, 2003

 

In the 1710, George Berkeley published A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, which posits that nothing exists outside of perception. Two hundred and eighty eight years later, Serial Experiments Lain aired on television. The latter’s thirteen episodes almost parallel the former’s fifteen arguments, though not necessarily in the same order. The strongest comparison lies in how well Lain demonstrates the way in which reality exists in perception, and especially in the divine.

To be is to be perceived. At least, this is what George Berkeley attempts to make his reader understand in his Principles. However, Berkeley does not fall into the same trap that many supporters of idealism do. Often the argument that something only exists as it is perceived, is explained simply as the manifestation of electro-chemical impulses moving about within the brain. Simple and straightforward enough; however, the logical fallacy therein, is that this assumes that there exists a brain, and that there exists electro-chemical impulses that can move about within it. Berkeley, however, realizes that there must be something separate that perceives things, including brains and electro-chemical impulses. “But, besides all the endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercise diverse operations, as willing, imagining, remembering, about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself” (Berkeley, Sect. 2)[a]; “The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed – meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it” (Sect. 3). Furthermore, Berkeley expands, on his point, demonstrating that despite the vast differences of human perception the world over and people dying, there is always something that perceives, such that the world does not blink out of existence when one dies, i.e. ceases perceiving; and also accounts for the continuity of the human experience of the world. The following quote, taken from an Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy[b] entry detailing Berkeley’s works best sums this up:

The test of reality is externality, in the sense that the ideas are produced in our minds by no activity of our own, but by another Spirit, and produced in such a constant and uniform manner that, arbitrary as the connection between them is, we learn to predict what will actually happen, and find that we are living in a world that is identical with, in the sense of similar to, that of our fellow humans. The significant and interpretable character of the ideas presented to us in sense-experience points to reason, as well as will, in its Author. The permanence and continuity that characterize our changing experience find their explanation in the reasonable constancy of the divine Will which is actively present in it all. The world is a constant creation; the infinite Spirit is ever speaking to the spirits of men.

 

Serial Experiments Lain features a fifteen year old girl, Lain, who begins to hear and see things of which others are unaware; for example, whilst riding the subway, she begins hearing the telephone conversations, all of them, running over the telephone lines above the train. She calls them noisy and tells them to shut up, thinking that she is hearing the other passengers, and the noise stops. However, the other passengers, who up until now have yet to open their mouths, simply look up, surprised and confused as to whom she is speaking (Ep. 1)[c]. Later, as she becomes increasingly connected to “The Wired,” – a term used in Lain for a sort of extended Internet, including television, cell-phones, radio, etc . . . – she begins to discover that the border between the Wired and the real world is not as precisely defined as one may think. She is able to fully manifest herself on the Wired, unlike most people, who can only manifest ears, maybe eyes, or even if they are particularly talented, a mouth, as is shown in one scene. It is later revealed that the so called God-of-the-Wired is using her to break down the barriers between the real world, and the wired, and yet, repeatedly, Lain herself is shown to be either God, or some Christ-like manifestation thereof. This is revealed in scenes like a giant version of her parting the clouds in the real world[d]; her appearing on a crux-shaped walk-way; her ability to impose her will, several times on the real world, for example, resetting peoples’ memories; and finally, at the end, wherein she deletes herself from the real world in order to bring it all back to the way it was before everything degenerated. In the end, she becomes the omnipresent, ever-perceiving entity that keeps the world alive and consistent, without her in it.

One of the prevailing themes within Lain is that one does not need a body. A body is created by the self to confirm one’s own existence. Chisa Yomoda, who kills herself in the beginning of the series, does so because she was able to transfer herself, or that which perceives, onto the wired. Similarly, the man who took the accela, a device that alters one’s perceptions, kills himself in front of Lain at the nightclub; and then there is the suicide of Dr. Eri who developed the Protocol Seven. Finally, whilst Lain does not actually kill herself, one wonders if she ever actually existed in the real world.

This of course, is only a part of the whole question of what really exists. “It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word, all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding” (Sect. 4). On the one level, Lain’s world is supposedly the real world, within which a medium for communication, the Wired, was built by men. However, Norbert Wiener, in Cybernetics, shows us that the manner in which networks are built, is the manner in which the human nervous system is constructed. Therefore, it is entirely possible to connect a human being to a computer, and by extension, the Internet.

Father: Let me give you one little warning . . . When all is said and done, the Wired is just a medium for communication and the transfer of information. You musn’t confuse it with the real world.

Lain: The border between the two isn’t all that clear. I’ll be able to enter it soon. In full range. Full motion. I’ll translate myself into it. (Ep. 4)

 

Furthermore, if the universe as we know it is nothing more than a series of perceptions, sewn together in the mind, then it is also possible to posit that the real world, as Lain knew it, was nothing more than a creation within the Wired. Considering that Lain has such considerable power both within and outside of the Wired, this may certainly be the case; however, as we shall see, it is in fact not the case.

Dr. Eri, who assumes for himself the position of “God” on the Wired, believes he has created Lain as an “executable program with a body” (Ep. 11). He believes himself to be God because he created the Protocol Seven. However, he falls into the trap mentioned earlier. “All sensations are caused by impulses in the brain. You just need to block the unpleasant ones. Select only the happy, pleasant ones” (Eri, Ep. 12). What he fails to understand is “that consequently, so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit” (Sect. 6). It is in the following scene, sporting some of the most important lines of the series, that we discover that the Wired really is just part of the real world, but that the real world too is created by someone or something else.

Arisu: What did you do?

Lain: Nothing. I've just been watching.

 . . . and . . .

Lain: The program that inserted code synched to the Earth's characteristic frequency into the Protocol Seven code, which would raise the collective unconscious to the conscious level, did you really come up with the idea by yourself?

Eri: What are you getting at? It can't be . . . It can't be! Are you telling me that there really is a God?!

Lain: It doesn't matter. Without a body you can't understand.

Eri: It's a lie! I . . . I'm omnipotent! I gave you a body in the real world! You were omnipresent, scattered through the Wired! I gave you an ego!

Lain: If that's true of me, what about you?

Eri: I'm different! I -

Lain: The Wired isn't an upper layer of the real world.

Eri: What do you mean?

Lain: Inside the Wired, you were God all right. But what about before the Wired was created? You're just an acting God, standing in for someone who was waiting for the Wired to reach its current state.

 

Here we see several very important points related to what Berkeley says in section six of his article. The first is that Lain was always just watching. Secondly, Eri is actually a “created spirit,” for while he was omnipotent on the Wired; he was originally a human being that eventually killed himself, transferring himself onto the Wired. Third, Eri himself admits that he found Lain as an “omnipresent, scattered through the Wired” and gave her a body in which to reside. Fourth, Lain forces Eri to realize that the Wired is only recent, and an invention of man, however, something had always been around sustaining the reality in which and by which the Wired was created. After Eri makes a body for himself and gets killed by Lain, and then she resets the world without her ever having existed in it, we discover that Lain herself was that Eternal Spirit, i.e. God, in the mind of which reality subsists. Further evidence of Lain’s divinity can be derived from by the fact that she is also omnipotent both inside and outside the Wired, and in episode five, the doll, when prompted to tell Lain something she did not know, explains that she already knows everything, i.e., she is omniscient. Thus, the series demonstrates that Lain is what most Christian theologians agree are three major aspects of God: omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.

After resetting the world, however, Lain seems to have left residual traces of herself in the world in some form or another. Most likely, when Lain was put into a body, her own memories and experiences became part of the collective unconscious, so at breakfast, her “father” looks over to her place at the table and starts talking to someone that is not there; Taro receives an e-mail that briefly shows Lain’s image; but most importantly is Arisu’s desire to immediately thinks to message Lain about going to Cyberia club, only to realize that there is no Lain. “Nothing. I just thought of something strange. If you don’t remember something, it never happened . . . If you aren’t remembered, you never existed” (Ep. 13). Later on, a much older Arisu runs into Lain, who is ceaselessly observing, only this time, from an overpass, and Arisu could swear that she had met Lain before. It is possible that despite Lain, in episode twelve telling Arisu that she was always her best and only friend, despite never having connected with her, Arisu is the most connected to Lain of them all.

It is important to note that Lain herself, denies being God. Earlier, in episode eight, cemented is the idea that multiple Lains exist on the Wired. Later on, Lain freely admits that there were not multiple Lains, but that she was just a part of everyone. Here develops a divergence between Berkeley’s idea of an Eternal Spirit, or the Divine, ceaselessly perceiving the world, and the way in which Lain’s creator conceives of this Eternal Spirit. For Berkeley, it is quite simple: the Eternal Spirit is God. However, Lain, who denies her divinity, is more likely the Collective Unconscious, which Eri’s Protocol Seven was meant to bring to the fore. This is, of course, why Lain is able to delete herself as an individual entity, a manifestation of the Collective Unconscious, but cannot delete the unconscious memories of herself from the minds of the people she knew, as she is still the Collective Unconscious.