Organ Abuse is the debut of Japanese SF writer Project Ito (1974-2009), the final candidate for the 7th Komatsu Sakyo Prize in 2006, published in 2007, released by Hayakawa Bunko in 2010, and adapted into an anime theatrical version in 2017. The version of the novel referenced in this article is a 2015 translation published by Taiwan's Dong Pong, and the theatrical version of the animation refers to the version of the Cheng Kong HuaMeng Subtitle Group. For the Ito project, you can refer to the website "Project Itoh" 2015 Theater アニメ化公式サイト
When I was silent and refused to confess my sins, I was physically and mentally exhausted by the whole day of lamentation. You discipline me day and night, and my energy is exhausted, like water drying up in the middle of summer. I confess my sins to you and no longer conceal my evil. I said, "I will confess my sins to the Lord." "You have forgiven me. - Psalm 32:3-5 CCB
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > primer</h1>
I didn't particularly want to arrest or kill John Paul. But I know that where there is John Paul, there should be Lucia HughRop. The only thing I care about is Lucia HughCrop.
I want to meet Lucia again.
I want to hear Lucia say forgive me.
God is dead. God is dead. I don't care at all.
As long as Lucia can forgive me, that's enough.
After Prague's mission ends in failure, the novel depicts the protagonist's inner monologue, which may explain the abruptness of the final part of the film: the protagonist is obsessed with Lucia, even attacking his comrades-in-arms, because the protagonist believes that he must ask Lucia for forgiveness because he believes that he who is deeply guilty must ask Lucia for forgiveness.
But why does the protagonist, who has always worked on killing, feel guilty? And, why Lucia? These questions are the theme of the "sin" of Organ Abuse.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > look for sin</h1>
"In fact, when the doctor asked you, it was you who decided with your own free will to interrupt my treatment, so you had to take on that responsibility. You've killed so many people on missions in the past, it wasn't a decision by the Department of Defense and Special Operations Command, and you had to take responsibility for killing those people."
My mother held me accountable without mercy. Although I closed my ears, those cruel words were like a rushing stream, and I couldn't stop.
……
"Holding your head won't help."
A young voice came straight into my ears. I looked up and saw Alex smiling at me. He, who had become a dead man, pointed to his head and said, "Because hell is here."
"Stop talking!"
"Man is just brain cells, just water, just carbon compounds. Humans are nothing more than tiny clumps of DNA. Humans are born with nothing more than matter. It's no different than artificial muscles. To find the soul in this piece of matter, and to think that the soul will derive ethical and noble ideas, is fundamentally self-deception. Sin and hell are in the head."
These parts of the dream that do not appear in the film can be said to be the key to understanding the work. The protagonist constantly dreams of his dead mother, and the beginning of the novel reads: "The person who killed my mother is me", this is because the protagonist agrees to lift the life maintenance of the mother who has no possibility of awakening, it can be said that it is from this moment that the protagonist begins to gradually reflect on the meaning of his numbly repeated "killing" behavior, which is also the beginning of the story of the novel. (In contrast, the film adaptation begins with the nuclear explosion in Sarajevo and is meant to represent a different narrative.)
Signing the consent form handed to the doctor and stopping the mother's life support is the most unrealistic "killing" that the protagonist has ever experienced. What makes the protagonist anxious is this lack of realism, or this lack of realism is the same as that felt when killing people with guns. Under the influence of psychological adjustment, the protagonist can kill any target without any inner fluctuations - not "having to kill" with compassion or guilt, but simply completing the work with the same precision as the workers on the assembly line.
The protagonist is terrified of his own indifference, why can't he feel guilty? As a well-educated American citizen, the protagonist has a whole set of moral discourse in his mind about his act of killing; killing is of course guilty, but this crime can be forgiven by the so-called fatherland, freedom, human rights, and so on. But for the protagonist, don't mention the forgiveness of sins, and don't even feel the sins that should have been there. Where is the "sin"?
In order to grasp the slight sense of guilt, the protagonist insists at the beginning of the novel, "I killed my mother", to fill this inexplicable emptiness. However, the protagonist finds that even if there is no doubt about the fact that he killed people, it is difficult to produce a sense of reality, just like the schizophrenic patient who confessed to the crime in the courtroom but indifferently ignored it.
Therefore, the protagonist embarks on a journey to find his own sins, and the Lucia he encounters on the way awakens him:
"Although human beings are affected by the past, genetics and other factors, they can still choose what to do and what not to do. Man is free because he can choose to give up his freedom. Because people can choose what not to do and what they have to do for themselves and for the sake of others."
I looked at Lucia's face. I don't know why, I feel redeemed. But it's not because I've been affirmed for what I did, nor because the sins I committed have disappeared.
It was because Lucia told me that it was I who chose to bear my own sins and did not push them on others.
If all culture, morality, thinking, and even the self can be reduced to genes, historical constructions, organ functions, then what is the meaning of freedom? At the end of the day, humans are just machines powered by the devices described above. But Lucia says to the protagonist: Even so, we are free; even if any of our choices are reduced to some kind of cause and effect, the subject who makes the choice must exist. Like Augustine, who wrote "I doubt, so I exist" and "I think, therefore I am," and Descartes, the version here is "I act, so I am guilty."
This is the logic of fetish: the so-called "I" in the three phrases above marks only the absent symbol of the real "I", and it is precisely because the real me cannot be found that such a sign is replaced; in order not to expose this emptiness, it is necessary to believe in it and to confirm it. That is to say, only transactions can prove that money has value, only confession can be guilty, and only martyrdom can prove the existence of the Tao. This seemingly insane inversion of cause and effect is not "knowledge" but "ethics", what Delturian calls "because of its absurdity, I believe". Only then can the charges be convicted.
So, despite the lack of any explanatory power of Lucia's words, the protagonist feels redeemed: Lucia presents the protagonist not with the truth of sin, but with the ethics of sin, and in order to be guilty, the protagonist must first repent and atone for his sins.
Here we see a flipped version of Crime and Punishment: Rasconnikov, based on his own great-man morality, believes that it is never a sin to kill a loan shark landlord's wife, but the traumatic experience of actually killing people crushes him. Sin does not capture him through moral discourse, but through skin-to-skin experience, allowing him to finally choose to convert to repentance in the torment of guilt. If the "moral teaching" of "Crime and Punishment" is that those who lack faith are bound to be punished for their evil deeds, then "Organ Abuse" is a paradoxical counter-theme: those who commit evil deeds must regain their faith in order to seek punishment. The former is to recognize their own smallness and fear the gods, while the latter feel hollow because they are no longer small, and try to turn to the dead gods to find themselves. The former is a traditional proposition, while the latter is already a modern and even postmodern proposition — "I am not trying to escape guilt." I was afraid of the opposite, I was afraid that I might not be qualified to take responsibility. My sins don't exist and are the worst truth for me. ”
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > the hollow "I"</h1>
So why does the protagonist want to be punished? Clearly, his motive for trying to take responsibility was not merely the moral imperative of "no killing." The protagonist's anxiety does not come purely from moral vertigo, but from the emptiness of "me", from the "abyss" of infinity and emptiness described by Pascal – the abyss of uncertainty, the abyss of nothingness that even the self-evidentness of "I exist" devours. If we go out of the everyday life protected by the illusion of consumerism and try to peek into this abyss, we will have to face an existential crisis.
In the film, the protagonist and Williams are watching a television rugby game at home, and one of the players is painfully injured by a foul move. In this regard, the protagonist said: "Overprotected". Not only for the players protected by the rules, the citizens protected by identity authentication, but also for the protagonists and special soldiers protected by cutting-edge technology. He went on to say: "Although we are overprotected and some things can no longer be felt, they are still preserved in our brains. This "something" is actually what Alex calls sin and hell, an "abyss" that endangers one's own existence.
For Pascal, the feeling of the abyss comes from a personal experience of the flow of time, or an original experience of "uncertainty", and in the world of Organ Abuse, it can be said that this original experience has been completely obscured, and only a watch can help you find a "normal" sense of time, everything is under control. The same is true of other original experiences, such as the original violence being blocked by cultural censorship, the loneliness dispelled by the Internet media, and the fear of facing the unknown is not a problem for people protected by technology and information. Obviously, the protagonist is not experiencing some kind of traumatic primordial experience, so what exactly is the glimpse he throws into the abyss?
"Conscience is an entity in the brain, scattered on specific coordinates of the eye socket frontal cortex, the superior temporal groove, and the amygdala."
"As long as the different modules in the human brain are covered, not only can the pain be suppressed, but also the performer can be given different personalities according to the purpose of the task."
"I" and "consciousness" are just questions of definition. That is to say, so far human society has not yet decided how many modules or "I" and how many modules are jointly operated to be "consciousness". ”
In the psychological consultation, the doctor introduces the protagonist to what can be described as the cutting-edge results of brain science, which tell us that "I" is nothing more than the compound effect of a modd produced by a bunch of brain tissue. Saying "I exist" is just describing the good operation of these modules. What we see here is science's most radical denial of transcendental subjectivity: when any directly acquired sensation is reduced in the language of science to the effect of neural signals; when any action is interpreted as the synergy of different bodily tissues, is there still a sense of reality?
Therefore, the protagonist feels extremely empty, "Only when living next to death can you really feel that you are still alive... This real feeling of being alive is the main reason why I continue to go to the battlefield to this day. But even this strong sense of survival adjacent to death is incomparably weak under the protection of technology, and when the protagonist sees that Only half of his body is left, and Lilan, who has his intestines flowing to the ground, is still shooting without any abnormality, the image of "human" has collapsed. To avoid this trauma, he chose to respond with humor: "Can you make it up with this foot?" But a broken leg apparently couldn't stitch up the fragmented "me." The trauma here is not the original violence, but the absence of the original violence, this extremely absurd, extremely ironic scene. The protagonist's "vertigo" does not come from the invasion of the real world, but precisely from the fact that the real world cannot invade," in which the protagonist finds himself unable to escape from the "protection"; or that there is no "self" under protection, and in the face of such a scene, he does not even feel disgusted, because this obstructive function has been properly removed from the machine called "Kravis Shepard".
Therefore, in order to regain his sense of authenticity, he believes that he must bear his sins:
In order to get the true feeling of being alive, I accepted my sins, but in case any of the sins were not born out of the ego – then the "feeling of being alive" is an outright lie.
This means that not only the iniquity must be accepted, but a true and credible subject must be found who can bear it, and the problem lies first and foremost with the latter.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > me to act, so I am guilty</h1>
As mentioned earlier, under the disassembly of science, any "self" can be reduced to a module, then it is even more impossible to have an "actor" who can be responsible for behavior, because any action theory can be captured by physics and explained by biology. How can we re-establish real behavior to bear its consequences?
Merleau-Ponty writes in The Structure of Behavior: "From the inside, my actions are presented as directional, with some intention and some meaning. Science seems to demand that we discard these features as phenomena, and that another type of reality be found under them. [1] Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology holds that the core of "behavior" is its intentionality, and tries to affirm this intentional behavior in order to oppose the reduction of human behavior by science, that is, we need to affirm what is "directly" (from within) from the ethical standpoint of this phenomenology: to oppose the decomposition of science of the "phenomenon" of behavior by affirming the "intentionality" of behavior. That is, the intention, meaning, and ethics of an action take precedence (and are independent) of the motivation and effect of the act. Therefore, the psychiatrist repeatedly says to the protagonist, "Of course, that is your own will." There is no need to doubt"; thus, Lucia tells the protagonist that man is free, for man can choose what he can do and what he cannot do.
Thus, no matter how unreal one's actions are, how the body is like an automatic machine, the action, only pure action, is credible, and the fact that only the trigger is pulled, the bullet is fired, and the enemy is killed. And every time such a fact occurs, it adds to my own crime, because the act proves my intention, and the act guarantees the meaning (knowability) of the existence of "me". The protagonist believes so.
"The relation between the existent and this existent fact, between the consciousness of content and the consciousness of activity that ingrains these contents in existence, must remain external. Ultimately, consciousness is defined by having an object of thought or by being transparent to itself, while activity is defined by a series of external events. [2] In his discussion of the order of life and the order of man, Merleau-Ponty writes that intentions must have objects, and that consciousness must be defined (externally) in a structure. It is meaningless to discuss the "primordial" form of consciousness, which emerges as a structural consciousness in the first place. Such an explanation is tantamount to proposing a sequence of "socio-subjective intentions" to be juxtaposed with the sequence of "scientific-objective analysis", so that "meaning" is not dissolved by "truth". The point here is that consciousness is guaranteed by the "outside," which has an inexhaustible meaning, the so-called "supposedly all-knowing other."
The other vouches for the meaning of the subject and free will, telling the subject, "This is your will, and this is exactly what you want," just as Augustine was convinced of man's free will: "There must be a will, for it is foretold by Him." And it is a will only under our power, so He foresees this power, and His foreknowledge does not cancel my power. (On Free Will, 3.3.8) God's foreknowledge does not conflict with man's free will, but rather the former guarantees the latter. That is to say, there is an observer who "sees" all the actions of the protagonist, and because of his omniscience and goodness, he is always able to accept and understand the protagonist in some way — otherwise, even if the behavior determines the protagonist's crime, there will be no subject of "punishment"; without the subject of "punishment", the crime will lose its meaning. That is to say, it is not enough to find the subject who bears the sin, there must be an other who carries out the punishment. When sin and punishment are established, "I" can exist:
I don't need consulting.
What I need is punishment.
I need someone to punish me.
I hope to be punished for all the crimes I have committed so far.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > I am punished, so I exist</h1>
Where can one find such an other? In the modern world, in most cases, the punisher is a "society", which can choose the appropriate crime for people in the code and accept people in the form of punishment, condemnation, etc. But society is not sufficient to be the punisher of the protagonist, and strictly speaking, society cannot be the ultimate "supposedly all-knowing other." The "supposedly all-knowing other" occupies a special place: it distances itself from the "I" and looks at me; it is inclusive, it "knows myself better than I do." Only such a subject can bear the image of the punisher. It is important to note that the so-called "supposed omniscience" does not mean that this subject is really omniscient, but that for "me" it can understand everything about me, as if it were watching over me all the time. But this is only an "assumption" in the end, so when the image of this subject falls on a specific person, once he/she speaks, there is a risk of destroying this image, and it is not difficult to imagine how absurd it would be if I suddenly showed my most obscure side to him/her and found that the other party did not understand. So "keeping your distance from me" actually means that it can't communicate with me at all, or that it knows me only because I believe it, and may even be completely fantasistic, like the delusional black woman who accompanies the protagonist in the movie Joker.
The protagonist decides that his punisher can only be Lucia, only Lucia knows him best, and seeking punishment and forgiveness from Lucia is the only way for the protagonist to return to "normal". Why Lucia? The protagonist believes that he has committed a sin against the people he killed with his own hands, and he obviously cannot seek forgiveness from these people, because anyone dies and is completely alien to the living, and it is only the wishful thinking of the living to hang the dead to seek forgiveness. So the protagonist says, "At the same time as God dies, sin becomes a human thing." It is still man who has sinned, but it is not God who can forgive sinners, but those who are physically dead. ”
And Lucia is at least a living person, a person who can listen and enlighten the protagonist. In the protagonist's view, Lucia is an innocent and sinless person with a simple moral conscience, but he has been cheating, using her, and committing sins against her; at the same time, Lucia, as Paul's mistress, has also committed sins against Paul's wife that no one can forgive, so:
I was attracted to Lucia. We are all sinners who cannot be forgiven. We are all people who harbor guilt towards the dead.
So, I decided to tell her of my sins.
Thinking about it now, this is equivalent to conveying the love for her in the most subtle way, and it is also the minimum confession.
Because they are fellow sinners, Christians form fellowships and are associated with Christ Jesus through fellowship to share the forgiveness of sins that Jesus' sacrifice has brought. The bond of this fellowship is love: "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him. This shows God's love for us. It is not that we love God, but that God loves us and sends His Son to make a sacrifice for our sins, and that is love. (1 John 4:8-10 CCB)"
When jesus and God both forsake us, the sinners who remain in this last age cannot be forgiven, but the fellowship of love remains. This fellowship of sinners is the "other" of the protagonist, and by seeking forgiveness and punishment from Lucia, the two sinners can support each other and continue their normal lives. If you can't get liberation, you can at least get a little peace by telling each other about your sins. If we can't be associated with God and seek ultimate peace, at least sin can connect us with other sinners, with Adam, the father of sin and the father of man:
I am neither entirely willing nor utterly unwilling. My struggle with myself has created an internal split, and this split has been formed, which I do not wish; this does not prove the existence of another soul, but only the punishment I have been punished. It was not myself who caused this punishment, but "the sin that permeated me" (Romans 7:17), in order to punish the sins I had consciously committed voluntarily, for I was a descendant of Adam. (Confessions 8.10.22)
Whether I am guilty or not, whether I can be forgiven or not, no longer matters in this last days, and the real fear lies in the division of "me" - I am afraid that my existence will become a pile of fragments. Since the pure soul has nothing to desire, please give me a soul that is deeply polluted by sin and let me be punished. Through the pain of punishment, I can join the fellowship of sinners; through the pain of punishment, I can deeply appreciate the existence of the soul. This is true for the protagonist, and as Alex said, hell exists in the brain, so isn't that true for anyone?
If modern man killed God, then modern man did not abandon "sin" or destroy hell, but simply forgot about them and threw them into the deepest part of the brain. Once we are overprotected and recall our sins one day, hell, hidden deep in the folds of our brains, opens its doors; once we stray into the "clearings of the woods" that reveal the problems of existence in the sinking of our daily lives, sin drags us into hell.
< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > epilogue</h1>
The protagonist does not ultimately get forgiveness from Lucia's mouth, and she is like any Indian rebel or African child soldier who is unguarded by a bullet in the head.
Lucia was dead. No one can punish me or forgive me anymore.
At this moment, this is hell. I imprisoned myself in hell. Hell is here, I remembered what Alex had said. Yes, I have fallen into the worst of hell. I came to the interior of Africa to be punished and forgiven. However, upon arrival, my punishment and forgiveness were destroyed and disappeared.
Is this my punishment? I must wander helplessly with my sins until I die.
The forgiveness that the protagonist had been struggling for disappeared— not because he couldn't get forgiveness, but because he suddenly discovered that forgiveness didn't exist in the first place. Lucia does not intend to condemn the protagonist's sin of murder and deception, but insists on revealing the truth to the world—the fact that the world was built on a pile of corpses. Perhaps Lucia demanded this only out of compassion for the humanitarian sentiments of innocent lives affected by the Holocaust, but this requirement goes beyond the boundaries of "morality" in the execution of John Paul and the protagonist, because a civilized world must exclude the remains — through funerals, public sacrifices, mourning, and so on. John Paul says:
"I was going to carry everything alone. But since Lucia wants the world to know all this, I want you to let everyone know that the world without terrorist attacks is actually built on corpses. The world will be forced to make a choice about the right and wrong of this matter."
The protagonist also believes that:
The world is not moral enough. The world is not yet fully filled with conscience. We are nowhere near, and there are many things we turn a blind eye to.
It is not the wicked who have no conscience who subvert morality, but the extremely beautiful soul that pushes the boundaries of morality and leads mankind into an intolerable situation. The protagonist knows that it is not enough to announce the truth to the world in the media, as in the teachings of Mobile Cop 2: Peace Guard, civilized societies are too small to tolerate real wars. Even if there is a war somewhere in a certain country, or even a war on your side, it is nothing more than a false war on the screen that has nothing to do with you. To proclaim the truth, "informing" is not enough, humanity must be trapped in the "truth". The protagonist no longer sees only his own sins, but the deepest sins of the vast Babylonian city of the everyday world (the United States).
I tell my story in a chant-like way. In my recounting, I pay special attention to tone, rhythm, and expect those who hear to kill each other, people all over America to slaughter each other. I hope someone notices that it's a prayer and it's a song.
The protagonist decides to call out to the Messiah, bringing about the last judgment with the prayer of the grammar of killing, so that punishment will befall the land of America. It is at this moment that the protagonist's personal journey of atonement, outlined throughout this article, is joined with the Messiah of the world. The two narratives of Organ Abuse converge here, while the narrative about another, the one mentioned at the beginning of this article, from the Sarajevo nuclear bombing, is left for later discussion.
"My people, leave the city, lest you be tainted with her sins and from the plagues she suffers. Because she had sinned heinously, God had not forgotten all her unrighteousness.
Treat her as she pleases, and repay her doubly as she has done, and redouble her drinking from her bartending cup. How she used to flaunt herself and exude and fornicate herself, now she has to make her miserable and sad. Because she said in her heart, 'I am a queen, not a widow, and I will never experience sorrow.' ’
So in one day, her calamity, death, sorrow and famine, will come upon her at the same time. She will be burned to the brim because the Lord Who judged her is mighty. —New Testament: Revelation 18:4-8 CCB
[f] Merlot-Ponty. Structure of behavior[M]. Yang Dachun Zhang Yaojun trans. Beijing: The Commercial Press. 2005: 19. ↑
Ibid., P245-246 ↑