(Spoilers for Serial Experiments Lain)
(Links provided for concepts I don't cover at length)
I can live forever in the wired as an anonymous existence, and rule here through information.
What should you be called?
God.
There is no God.
Even if I could be omnipresent in the wired and affect others, I can't be a god if I have no believers.
But you do. No, you created them.
Let's talk about anime.
Serial Experiments Lain is a 1998 anime series about a 14-year-old girl, Lain, and her relationship to The Wired, a virtual space akin to the internet. At the start of the series, Lain receives an email from a classmate who has recently committed suicide, claiming she has abandoned her physical body to live in the Wired and has found god there.
As Lain ventures deeper into the Wired she falls into a surreal story of conspiracy, identity, and what defines reality. The series ends with the revelation that Lain is a software built into the fabric of the Wired, all-powerful and ever-present. Lain attempts to destroy the barrier between the Wired and the real world, melding the two into a single existence. However, she is stopped by her friend Alice, who convinces her to see the value in the physical world and the human connections made there.
Lain's father says in the show, "In this world, people connect to each other, and that's how societies function. For communication, you need a powerful system that will mature alongside your relationships with people."
Serial Experiments Lain is, at its core, about communication and connection. It is the story of a very lonely little girl trying to find a way to connect with the people around her.
One of my favorite quotes describing Lain comes from this reddit thread, "Throughout the series, Lain, despite being the great connector, is often framed to be isolated, even in a crowd of people. As an artificial container for the unconscious wavelength of humanity, she will always be fundamentally alienated from the people that she is supposed to be helping."
We watch as Lain attempts to relate to her peers, her family, even to herself. And in the end, she both fails and succeeds. Lain erases herself from physical existence, deleting other people's memories of her and forfeiting any ability to communicate with others on a human level. At the same time, she is absorbed into the fabric of reality, existing everywhere at once beyond human consciousness. She becomes the omnipresent god of the wired.
But let's get back to that later.
One of the core plot components of Lain comes into play in episode 7. It is revealed that an internet protocol has been added to the Wired which will allow users to connect to the Wired telepathically, through an electromagnetic pattern known as the Schumann resonance.
The Schumann resonance is a real-world concept, a series of electromagnetic resonances that appear in the low wave portions of the earth's electromagnetic field. No, I do not understand any of it and cannot explain it in any further capacity. What I DO understand is new-age pseudoscience, so let's talk about that instead.
In many circles, the Schumann resonance is understood as the "default" frequency of the earth. Its been described as the earth's aura, heartbeat, brainwaves, whatever metaphor people see fit. These resonances operate at a fundamental frequency of 7.83 hertz, with considerably varied peaks. This 7.83 Hz is roughly the same frequency as theta waves in the human brain. Some studies have suggested that there is a connection in variabilities of both frequencies, leading to the idea that there is a direct connection between our minds and the energy of the planet (I sincerely recommend looking into the HeartMath Institute's global coherence project, it's insane and I'm obsessed with it.) The basic concept here is that we are inextricably tied to the very being of our planet, and are as capable of being affected by changes in its energy as it is capable of being affected by ours.
In Serial Experiments Lain, this idea is used to fabricate a global connected human consciousness, accessed through technology. The Wired utilizes existing connections between human minds to link them in unprecedented ways. A global brain is created.
The global brain is a concept in which the network of information technology across the planet forms a sort of connective tissue between all people and their technology.
Say the human race exists as a superorganism, acting as a single unified force on the face of the planet. According to the Gaia hypothesis, all organisms on earth form a single self-regulated system, working to keep itself alive.
In this context, our technological membrane would function as the living brain of the planet.
OKAY LET'S TALK ABOUT GOD NOW
If you read my post What I Mean When I Say God, you should be somewhat familiar with pantheism, the concept that god permeates everything and that all of existence exists within divinity. I am as much a part of god as you are, as every rock and tree is, as every 14-year-old anime girl is.
What is the difference between a global brain connected by technology and a spiritual superorganism connected by divinity? Say that all beings, all organisms function as one ecosystem, one organism. If the earth is an organism of which humanity is the acting conscious, and, by pantheism, all of earth and natural creation is a manifestation of God then that would make the shared human consciousness the mind of God.
Human will is god's will, as is the natural course of all existence.
Existence is one flowing system with God as the core material.
In my opinion, religion is one of the most overlooked themes of Lain. The concept of a "god of the Wired" is widely discussed in the series. The antagonist of the series, Masami Eiri, takes a hold of this title to start. As Deus, he is originally simply a disembodied voice, speaking to Lain and pushing her towards his own ends. Claiming to have created Lain, he has a cult-like following and a considerable level of control over the Wired.
Lain, however, is the true god of the Wired. Or rather, Lain is the conscious voice of God. To say Lain created herself feels a little misconstrued. Lain herself is an avatar of an omnipresent, all-powerful being. One that exists in every cable, terabyte, and electrode of the Wired.
And the show is purposefully vague as to the delineation between the Wired and the real world. To what degree is Lain the god of everything versus simply the god of the wired? There isn't really a clear answer to this.
In Serial Experiments Lain, it is already established that all of humanity is linked, that a feed of telepathic energy connects all people to each other.
Lain (not Lain the girl but Lain the God) is the link that runs between all people. She is the energy that resonates from within the earth, out into all of human consciousness, into the Wired.
She is the constant electrical hum that saturates the soundscape of the story.
Just like Lain says, "no matter where you go, everyone's connected".
