May 13, 2025 • 7 mins
In a world of silence and screens, where the body hides and the voice is masked, what is our political power?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
The Ghost in the Shell having voice in the Age of Silence by
Cody Allingham. Where does the newborn go from
here? The net is vast and infinite.
I recently visited an exhibitionin West Tokyo about the works of
Shiro Masamune. Masamune is best known for his
(00:21):
manga series Ghost in the Shell,about a special police unit of
cyborgs set in a distant and dystopic future.
The series features Nietzschean philosophy and monologues on
being truth and humanity, pairedwith raunches, computer hacking,
cyberpunk aesthetics, and plentyof gunfights.
The series originally came out in the early 90s during the
(00:44):
interregnum after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Japan's own
economic decline, the Yugoslav and Iraq wars, and the end of
history. Ghost in the Shell had a
profound impact on my outlook and aesthetic sense as a young
person. It has also been inspiration for
classics such as The Matrix, with its questions about the
(01:07):
nature of reality and being in the face of new technology.
A deep theme in the work is the way the circuitry of the
physical world and the Internet come together.
Which one is more real? These two worlds of the physical
and the virtual overlap, and interesting things can happen.
(01:27):
We still occupy physical space and have bodies, but we can also
hideaway and go into our shells and become anonymous avatars.
There is a sense of freedom in being untethered to a face or a
name or a physical location, butwe can never quite get rid of
those things completely. My own creative practice,
(01:48):
wandering the world's cities by night, came in part from this
sense of the liminal, of being abody and an ocean of strangers.
The final scene of the 1995 animated adaption of Ghost in
the Shell looks out over the futuristic Newport city from a
high place, asking that question, Where does the newborn
(02:10):
go from here? The net is fast and infinite.
I followed after that question, standing on the rooftop of an
abandoned colonial villa somewhere in the nocturnal
jungle of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, gazing in awe at the
vastness of the City of Light that emerged from the dark ocean
below. What could it all mean?
(02:31):
The city looked like I imagined the Internet looked Circuitry,
light networks, these pillars ofconcrete and glass built to
reach the sky were like racks ofservers.
The people and energy and money that flowed through the city was
such a profound idea for me. I imagined I could be a pinpoint
of light in one of those massivetowers where I knew no one and
(02:54):
no one knew me. I could be untouchable, and
there was a sense that I could hideaway from the world, that I
could retreat into my shell in some stoic sense, somewhere in
the liminality of seeing but notbeing seen in my novelty.
I could think of nothing more incredible than being on my own
in that fantastic world, to be left in that construct of
(03:16):
dreams. I could gaze out from the 50th
floor window, nameless and faceless, from my own standing
place in the orchards and farm lands of rural New Zealand where
everything was muddy. Base layer reality, ghost in the
shells, futuristic visions were an escape into a more abstract
and alluring world. But over the years, the way I
(03:38):
think about this has all changed.
This kind of escape has become common.
Masked up, headphones and eyes trapped inside the screen,
actively avoiding engaging with anybody and anything.
We are atoms alone in the great digital vacuum.
It is a clause of the social contract that means order and
(03:59):
safety have been assumed by the state.
We need not defend ourselves or take responsibility in this
place of the real. The ghost in the shell and its
cities of strangers is a world that ultimately grants us no
political power. In that world you are permitted
to live, but you must remain silent.
To actually speak is to challenge the state, and we
(04:22):
cannot hope to fight it man to man, for it is no man but
Leviathan. The state has an almost
unlimited ability to visit violence upon whomever it seeks,
and in the sense I think the Cyborg and transhumanist themes
of Ghost in the show are very relevant.
Instead, for us to match up, we must speak, we must ask
(04:43):
questions, we must be seen. Why are things the way they are?
What do we get from complying and what do we get from
resisting? What makes the law of the state
So what gives that law authority?
I have drifted away from seekingto be faceless and from hiding
(05:04):
in the crowd like a pack animal to instead put myself out there.
I have a humble podcast and I write things.
I speak, sometimes people listen.
The word is the only tool I have, but the word must come
from the face. To hide away in the city behind
a screen, to be nameless and faceless is to silence
(05:24):
ourselves. My role model is no longer the
wanderer in the world untethered, but I still have an
affinity for that. But instead I look to the
journalist, the writer, the speaker, the confessor.
Not the mainstream media of course, but the muckraker
working his art, the whistleblower, the gadfly.
(05:45):
These are the kind of charactersthat cause a problem in the
world of Ghost in the Shell by exposing the state and the
police and ultimately asking theforbidden questions.
In our hyper connected world, ifwe seek to be comfortable and
hidden away, we must not provokenor resist the state, but by
complying we delegate our moral agency to it.
(06:07):
Sometimes the right thing to do is not permitted and then we
must speak up. My own political awareness has
been born from this Gray space between the right and the law.
It took me a long time to understand this distinction.
The shell within which the ghostresides is, of course our bodily
form, our biopolitical entity. That is the most clear sight of
(06:31):
our control. If you mask the mouth, no words
may come forth. I have begun a journey into
learning about self sovereignty,Bitcoin freedom, tinodanga,
tiratanga and the hegemony of the state.
I have begun to speak. I have begun to listen.
There is of course nuance and detail.
(06:52):
I am sometimes not even sure what it is I have got myself
into. Others smarter than me have gone
radio silent for good reason. There was something critical
missing from that youthful vision I had to speak.
One's ghost must first come out of the shell.
Thank you for listening. I am Cody Allingham and this is
(07:12):
the transformation of value.
The Ghost in the Shell having voice in the Age of Silence by
Cody Allingham. Where does the newborn go from
here? The net is vast and infinite.
I recently visited an exhibitionin West Tokyo about the works of
Shiro Masamune. Masamune is best known for his
(00:21):
manga series Ghost in the Shell,about a special police unit of
cyborgs set in a distant and dystopic future.
The series features Nietzschean philosophy and monologues on
being truth and humanity, pairedwith raunches, computer hacking,
cyberpunk aesthetics, and plentyof gunfights.
The series originally came out in the early 90s during the
(00:44):
interregnum after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Japan's own
economic decline, the Yugoslav and Iraq wars, and the end of
history. Ghost in the Shell had a
profound impact on my outlook and aesthetic sense as a young
person. It has also been inspiration for
classics such as The Matrix, with its questions about the
(01:07):
nature of reality and being in the face of new technology.
A deep theme in the work is the way the circuitry of the
physical world and the Internet come together.
Which one is more real? These two worlds of the physical
and the virtual overlap, and interesting things can happen.
(01:27):
We still occupy physical space and have bodies, but we can also
hideaway and go into our shells and become anonymous avatars.
There is a sense of freedom in being untethered to a face or a
name or a physical location, butwe can never quite get rid of
those things completely. My own creative practice,
(01:48):
wandering the world's cities by night, came in part from this
sense of the liminal, of being abody and an ocean of strangers.
The final scene of the 1995 animated adaption of Ghost in
the Shell looks out over the futuristic Newport city from a
high place, asking that question, Where does the newborn
(02:10):
go from here? The net is fast and infinite.
I followed after that question, standing on the rooftop of an
abandoned colonial villa somewhere in the nocturnal
jungle of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, gazing in awe at the
vastness of the City of Light that emerged from the dark ocean
below. What could it all mean?
(02:31):
The city looked like I imagined the Internet looked Circuitry,
light networks, these pillars ofconcrete and glass built to
reach the sky were like racks ofservers.
The people and energy and money that flowed through the city was
such a profound idea for me. I imagined I could be a pinpoint
of light in one of those massivetowers where I knew no one and
(02:54):
no one knew me. I could be untouchable, and
there was a sense that I could hideaway from the world, that I
could retreat into my shell in some stoic sense, somewhere in
the liminality of seeing but notbeing seen in my novelty.
I could think of nothing more incredible than being on my own
in that fantastic world, to be left in that construct of
(03:16):
dreams. I could gaze out from the 50th
floor window, nameless and faceless, from my own standing
place in the orchards and farm lands of rural New Zealand where
everything was muddy. Base layer reality, ghost in the
shells, futuristic visions were an escape into a more abstract
and alluring world. But over the years, the way I
(03:38):
think about this has all changed.
This kind of escape has become common.
Masked up, headphones and eyes trapped inside the screen,
actively avoiding engaging with anybody and anything.
We are atoms alone in the great digital vacuum.
It is a clause of the social contract that means order and
(03:59):
safety have been assumed by the state.
We need not defend ourselves or take responsibility in this
place of the real. The ghost in the shell and its
cities of strangers is a world that ultimately grants us no
political power. In that world you are permitted
to live, but you must remain silent.
To actually speak is to challenge the state, and we
(04:22):
cannot hope to fight it man to man, for it is no man but
Leviathan. The state has an almost
unlimited ability to visit violence upon whomever it seeks,
and in the sense I think the Cyborg and transhumanist themes
of Ghost in the show are very relevant.
Instead, for us to match up, we must speak, we must ask
(04:43):
questions, we must be seen. Why are things the way they are?
What do we get from complying and what do we get from
resisting? What makes the law of the state
So what gives that law authority?
I have drifted away from seekingto be faceless and from hiding
(05:04):
in the crowd like a pack animal to instead put myself out there.
I have a humble podcast and I write things.
I speak, sometimes people listen.
The word is the only tool I have, but the word must come
from the face. To hide away in the city behind
a screen, to be nameless and faceless is to silence
(05:24):
ourselves. My role model is no longer the
wanderer in the world untethered, but I still have an
affinity for that. But instead I look to the
journalist, the writer, the speaker, the confessor.
Not the mainstream media of course, but the muckraker
working his art, the whistleblower, the gadfly.
(05:45):
These are the kind of charactersthat cause a problem in the
world of Ghost in the Shell by exposing the state and the
police and ultimately asking theforbidden questions.
In our hyper connected world, ifwe seek to be comfortable and
hidden away, we must not provokenor resist the state, but by
complying we delegate our moral agency to it.
(06:07):
Sometimes the right thing to do is not permitted and then we
must speak up. My own political awareness has
been born from this Gray space between the right and the law.
It took me a long time to understand this distinction.
The shell within which the ghostresides is, of course our bodily
form, our biopolitical entity. That is the most clear sight of
(06:31):
our control. If you mask the mouth, no words
may come forth. I have begun a journey into
learning about self sovereignty,Bitcoin freedom, tinodanga,
tiratanga and the hegemony of the state.
I have begun to speak. I have begun to listen.
There is of course nuance and detail.
(06:52):
I am sometimes not even sure what it is I have got myself
into. Others smarter than me have gone
radio silent for good reason. There was something critical
missing from that youthful vision I had to speak.
One's ghost must first come out of the shell.
Thank you for listening. I am Cody Allingham and this is
(07:12):
the transformation of value.
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