avatar – Page 3 – A Piece, of the Sky

Altered Carbon (the Japanese version) posits something not seen before: the complete division of the mind and the body – which seems to also be the secret to immortality.

In Ghost in the Shell – except for a few individuals, like Major Motoko, with full cyborg bodies (shells) – most people in the world still have their own bodies and souls (Ghosts). Only their brains are enhanced by being cyberized, like having a powerful digital and electronic prosthetic, for the brain. You don’t need AI, if you can just use the creative benefits of a natural brain.

A cyberbrain is nowhere near as transferable as a stack – which is like the Ghost, of Altered Carbon: it holds the memories, the consciousness, the personality and the mind of the person.

In Altered Carbon, the stack – the soul, the Ghost, or the mind – is the only true marker of life. If the stack dies, only then does the person die – not when the body dies i.e. so-called “true death.” Isn’t a great deal of self-hood and identity tied to the body? Life isn’t an online role-playing game, where you can just change your avatar’s skin. Altered Carbon posits that the mind can live on, without the body, stored in the cloud or uploaded to a new sleeve (body), but what kind of existence would that be? I am not for or against; it is just a possible downside.

Have we already reached the limit of the body’s aging capacity, at 120 years or so? The rush to give up on the body has been at the heart of most major religions, for centuries. Only in the digital age can this neo-Platonic era desire finally inch closer to becoming a reality.

Regardless, Altered Carbon hypothesizes that immortality can be found in something medicine definitely cannot do yet: transplanting the brain from body to body, like a liver, a kidney or a heart.

The brain, in addition to the usually problems of genetic distance and immune rejection, has its own special considerations with the blood brain barrier and other central nervous tissues, such as the retina, the spinal cord and the cranial nerves, traveling the length of the body, and being decentralized throughout the body, not just confined to the head.

The brain in the vat experiment remains a figment of philosophy (Rene Descartes) – but since Source Code, and James Cameron’s Avatar, there hasn’t been a major fictional example of this thought experiment, until Altered Carbon: Resleeved.

If all of your consciousness gets uploaded to the cloud, why does destroying or damaging the stack equal “true death”? Memories must be the only thing in the cloud then, and the key essence of the person, his or her animating principle (soul) must only be able to be housed on the stack, not in the cloud or elsewhere.

Where Ghost in the Shell succeeds is that it deals with the philosophical, and digital problems of a cybernetic life – false memories, people with two ghosts, one ghost with multiple bodies, ghost or cyberbrain hacking, hive minds over the Internet, viruses and worms (like Stuxnet) and military networks. Altered Carbon’s plot seems to only deal with the usual quandaries of organized crime and powerful conglomerates.

If your only choice was to die forever or be uploaded to the cloud and have a chance at being plugged into a new body, even a cyborg body, of course one would choose reanimation. However, living completely on the cloud (San Junipero), existing as a hologram or in a video game, without a body – as a young, healthy person – is definitely not the first choice or ideal.

Look at Al, in Fullmetal Alchemist: he is stuck in the spirit world, beside the Gate, and he is like the steampunk version of having your soul stuck in the cloud. Yes, Al’s consciousness, in the physical world, is bonded to a suit of armor – a cyborg – but he desperately wants to get back to his real body. Such natural concerns cannot be so easily overcome.

Gravity’s Rainbow called organized religion the process of getting other people to die for you. Q: What would make a bunch of soldiers willing to die? A: The promise of being re-sleeved, of getting new bodies, from the spirit world or “heaven” – the cloud. Neoplatonic ideas, from the tail end of the Roman Empire and right after its demise, get a new life in cyberpunk probable future realities.

Usually these promises, of returning back from the dead, end with people coming back wrong – see, for example, the marionette army, animated by damaged souls, reaped by dark alchemy, in Fullmetal Alchemist – or the usual myths of vampires and zombies. The immortality potion, which creates zombies, in Kingdom, is another example. The myth of the undead super-soldier is not without major flaws.

Hay’s youth is showing. She’s very smart, but only 21 and impressionable. She’s mature, an ‘old soul,’ for her age but her adult life has only just begun.

Hay is completely on the outs and it’s really sad. However, especially since production is giving her a bulletproof edit, because she is so young, CBS might think they have a winner – a new, young star, who can come back in future BB seasons and play better – like Boston Rob when he first started out.

Then we can see the evolution of Hay, throughout the seasons of the show, like the aforementioned Rob. That might be a better future for Hay, after striking out, this season.

JC has been getting into real hot water, with Tyler, but if he can cease and desist, I will continue to support him. What’s going for JC, strategically, is that Tyler needs him. JC isn’t going anywhere.

On the personal side, JC should dump his romantic feelings for Tyler, like he did for Fessy. Only talk to Tyler on a game level, because right now, JC is coming on too strong, and I don’t want JC to take himself out of the game.

My strategy for JC (and Kaycee) was to avoid being HOH, since that puts you on the spot and forces you to show your cards. However, if you are going to remain in the shadows, you also have to be ready to go up on the block, as a pawn.

The division of labor that has worked for Level 6, is that people like Tyler and Angela, take the heat, as HOH, and the ninjas, the shadow masters and the moles, like Brett and Kaycee, take a different sort of heat, going up on the block, next to the target.

JC hasn’t touched the block, which is great. But he hasn’t taken the other role, as the ‘face’ of the organization: the HOH. I don’t want him to touch the block, so it may be time for JC to win a HOH and put some muscle behind his punch.

JC really wanted to win the last HOH, with the spinning and the pie of doom, but he was first out, as usual. Still, for this week, at least, JC will get what he wants: Kaycee won her second veto; Scottie will go home (again).

JC has also calmed down, to Tyler, at minimum, on his real plans to evict Angela and Kaycee. However, next HOH comp, JC needs to push his crushes, on Tyler and Brett, to the side and put the pedal to the floor. This is JC’s time.

This battle-back is just a setback (Rewind. Groundhog Day, Doctor Who). Get rid of Scottie. He was already voted out and has outlived his usefulness.

Scottie doesn’t know when to stop talking. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze or having Sam (!) as a swing vote. Hay just needs a light touch, and she will get rid of Sam, and then be evicted, the week after.

A bitter jury is a lame tactic, but it’s still a tactic. This is why I have been pushing for the Level 6 civil war to happen sooner, rather than later – so that there will be, at least, someone from Lvl. 6, in the jury, with enough BB mist, to sway the vote. It’s a counter-intuitive strategy, but going forward, it seems jury management will include more than just GBMs.

August 24: “This doesn’t make sense.” RIP Scottie

“Yes, Level 6 doesn’t care about Bay and Rockstar’s jury votes, but as more Foutte members join the jury, they will form a voting bloc, with their own definition of reality and their own demands for justice. By the time the Level 6 people hit the jury, the narrative, for the finale, will be set, and it will be too late.”

I am glad #Tangela will be cancelled, even post-BB20. I never saw the attraction. Their personalities just don’t click. Angela, the Queen, deserves someone better than the villain, ‘Interview with the Vampire,’ Tyler.