Posts tagged: raleigh beckett
“There are things you can’t fight - acts of God. You see a hurricane coming, you get out of the way. But when you’re in a Jaeger, you can finally fight the hurricane. You can win.“
Beyond connecting with the mind of another pilot, one of the most interesting aspects of piloting a Jaege, for me, was the way in which the pilots become embodied in the Jaeger as distinct consciousnesses connected in an interdependent bridge. As depicted in the film and the source material (see the quote from the novel above), the neural bridge acts to connect the two pilots together so that they function as a single individual within the Jaeger. So, to me, when Raleigh says “when you’re in a Jaeger,” I believes he literally means “in,“ as in inhabiting the Jaeger as if it was his own body. So, this is the thing that I want to explore: the two Jaeger pilots as embodied in the Jaeger itself.
So, what is embodiment? In philosophy, embodiment is the idea that the way in which we inhabit our bodies has an effect on the development of our consciousness. The differences in our bodies (the “body” in “embodiment") make a massive difference in the way in which we experience and interact with the world, hence, even Identical twins do not form identical personalities because their modes of embodiment are different. To this end, the concept of embodiment, or “cognitive embodiment,“ treats the mind and the body as interdependent upon one another: if an individual had a different body, their experience and consciousness would be accordingly different.
So, before taking the brief sketch of embodiment and applying it to the Jaeger itself, we need to talk about the neural drift. The quote above gives a first person look at what it is to be in the drift with someone else: there are two individual connected as an organic whole, distinct yet connected. When Raleigh makes a motion, Mako completes it; where he ends, she begins. To this end, Raleigh and Mako think of themselves as both subject and object: Raleigh can see the end of his connection and the beginning of hers, and Mako can see the end of her connection and the beginning of his, yet neither moves without the other. That is to say, any action taken while in the neural bridge by one pilot, is an action taken by the other pilot as well, as if there was no distinction between the two.
Now, taking the bridged individuals as the “mind,” we can look at the Jaeger itself as the body. The supplemental material discussing piloting a Jaeger describes the experience as the bridged pilots moving the Jaeger as it it were their own body. We can see a bit of this happening in the gifs above: when Raleigh and Mako take a fighting stance, Gipsy Danger mirrors the motion, as if it were their own body. Sharing the neural load, the two pilots inhabit Gipsy, not like a pilot flying an aircraft, or even a motorcyclist riding his bike, but as a mind within a body, with all of the pitfalls that apply.
Here is where the discussion gets interesting: embodied consciousness typically assumes that the consciousness grows with the body. Again, in the brief sketch offered above, our minds would not be the same minds were we embodied in a different body. For Jaegers, the connection is close, but not as individualized: the movie makes a point that the Jaegers must be calibrated for their pilots before the synchronization can take place. That is, the Jaegers must become the bodies for their pilots, they must be made individual for each of their pilots through a process of calibration so that the mind can inhabit the body as if it were born with it. On this point, I don’t see a problem for thinking about the pilots as becoming embodied within the Jaeger, but it does introduce the notion that the embodiment will be different for different pilots.
The clearest visual evidence for this is with Gipsy Danger, as presented in the gifs above. When Gipsy is calibrated for Raleigh and Yancy, the body language is almost totally different: Gipsy moves with an arrogant, aggressive swagger, she fights more like a prize fighter, and there is more “power" in her strikes. We can view this as the blending of Yancy and Raleigh’s minds (including their fighting styles) being embodied within Gipsy: one of the more interesting things is the way that Gipsy’s swagger is mirrored in the Beckett boys when the audience is introduced to them.
On the other hand, when Mako and Raleigh are embodied in Gipsy, there exists an edge of aggression in her movements, however, this appears to be tempered by Mako’s precision. Her strikes have little in the way of wasted motion, and each has a determined goal beyond smashing into the particular Kaiju.Gipsy’s walk, while it possesses a little bit of Raleigh’s swagger, it is more of a purposive, determined stride than it is a challenge issued through body language.
Further, the distinction in their embodiment (the way they inhabit their body) comes out in the stances they adopt: In the above gif, Mako/Raleigh embodied in Gipsy adopts a combat stance that is more in line with what we see out of MMA fighters: gone are the double handed overhead strikes, replaced with a more conservative defensive stance that allows for grappling and close-in fighting. On the other hand, Yancy/Raleigh seemed to prefer a more aggressive stance favored by boxers, keeping Gipsy’s hands closer to the body and utilizing more “power" shots.
We may chalk the distinction in the stances to a different composition of the bridged “mind" that inhabits the Jaeger: the Beckett brothers were more rash, more aggressive in their combat styles, as evidenced by their actions in Alaska. Against this, Raleigh and Mako exhibit an aggression tempered by Mako’s precision: they waste little time with their combat, employing quick, precise strikes designed to take down the Kaiju as quickly as possible.
To this end, no Jaeger will be the same when it embodies different pilots: as the bridged pilots literally become the Jaeger they operate, and the bridge joins the individuals, a change in any of the individuals would result in a change in the Jaeger itself. Further, it seems to be the case that one pair of pilots is attached to a single Jaeger at a time, and that Jaeger is calibrated for those pilots. To this end, the Jaeger itself will be different depending upon who is embodied within the Jaeger. Thus, I think “piloting" is a bad way to talk about what happens to individuals connected to a Jaeger: “becoming" or “embodying" the Jaeger is a more apt description.
Also, credit goes to whomever captured the gifs and the text from the novelization.
Before his final ride in Striker Eureka, Chuck Hanson asks Stacker Pentecost how the two of them, who do not share an emotional bond will be able to drift. Stacker replies, “I bring nothing to the drift, no rank, no ego,“ as though this will explain how Stacker is able to initiate a neural handshake with someone that he has not gone through compatibility training with. From the perspective of Zen Buddhist philosophy of mind, this makes perfect sense: a person who can literally leave behind their self, their ego, their rank, and and all of the nonsense that leads to harmful attachment will be more able to drift with anyone, regardless of their prior compatibility.
Normally, when we speak of no-mind, we talk about the concept of non-attachment: the stilling of the mind in such a way that thoughts arise without the mind clinging to them. For the Japanese Buddhists, clinging to attachments (thoughts included) is the source of delusion: when we hold onto our thoughts, we attempt to make them permanent. This is contrary to the nature of a world predicated upon impermanence, and ultimately leads to suffering. The state of “abiding without mind,” or “mushin" is taken to be one of the necessary conditions for perceiving the conditioned nature of the phenomenal world and thus releasing one’s attachment to it.
One way of achieving this “no-mind" state is through shikantaza, the “just sitting" meditation conceived by Dogen Kigen. In shikantaza, the goal is to meditate without attaching a particular goal to that mediation: to impart a goal would be to become attached to the goal and sort-circuit the attempt to release one’s attachments. Further, one of the goalless goals of shikantaza is to become aware of the way in which our attachment to things that condition our “selves" provides the source of delusion. Once this realization is made manifest, then shinjindatsuraku (body/mind dropping away) occurs where the individual realizes their conditioned nature, their “non-self.“
Dogen Kigen, in his Shobogenzo, presented a conception of shikantaza that included all activities if these activities are performed to bring an awareness of the interdependent nature of the world. Earlier I made the observation that the physical compatibility testing was intended to generate an awareness of the bodies of two pilots and prefigure the degree to which their minds could interface by demonstrating how quickly they could adapt to one another. In this mode, the martial arts can serve the purpose of shikantaza by cultivating an awareness of an entire individual as a collection of interdependent relations within an overall network of relations: getting stuck on a single arising moment leads to death in the martial arts.
Takuan Soho fully explains this concept in his text on Zen Buddhism and martial arts, The Unfettered Mind. In it, he paints a picture of the nest martial artist as one whose mind does not abide in his opponent, or his sword, or his technique, or his understanding of himself as “the best.” Rather, the mind does not abide anywhere: it moves through the fight allowing the martial artist (a swordsman, in this case) to respond appropriately. No-mind, or non-attachment, becomes fundamental to the cultivation of the supremely skilled warrior, particularly in his ability to read and respond to an opponent without becoming “stuck.“
To this end, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in serves a double purpose: it allows them to read their partners, AND it cultivates in them a mind that does not attach itself. That is, the martial arts training that the Jaeger pilots engage in introduces them to the state of no-mind, of non-abiding, that is necessary for the initiation of the neural handshake. Put another way, in order to engage in the neural handshake, one must be willing and able to release one’s attachment to an egoistic self.
Now, why is releasing our attachments to things, like rank and ego, which constitute the illusion of the “self,” important for the Drift? Well, if we think about this in terms of the neural handshake, clinging onto one’s ego and one’s rank while attempting to initiate a mental connection prefigures an unwillingness to enter into a cooperative, interdependent relationship with another mind. In short, the mind that clings to ego would be “stuck" on their own ego and would resist the union necessary to pilot the Jaeger. To this end, the extremely egotistical person would be unable to initiate the drift because they would be too attached to their subjective self.
Further, it is not merely rank and ego that would deny one the ability to enter into the neural handshake: extreme emotion would also damage the ability to join minds. Here, we can look at Stacker’s statement to Mako Mori, “You cannot carry that level of emotion into the drift.“ An easy assumption would be to presume that Mako’s emotion introduces an instability that prevents two minds from blending as it keeps one pilot from being calm. I, however, disagree: I believe that what Stacker is pointing to is the fact that Mako’s mind still abides at the moment when the Kaiju killed her parents.
To this end, Mako’s emotion is a result of her attachment to the loss of her parents: she has accepted their loss and Stacker as her father/sensei/commander, however, she is still attached to the fact that the Kaiju took her parents, and the life she could have had, from her. This attachment conditions the arising of the extreme emotion that Stacker cautions her against and, further, intensifies the RABIT (the memory) that caused her to destabilize her link with Raleigh and Gipsy Danger. In contrast, shikantaza and, more specifically shinjindatsuraku are places where we are aware of the conditions that cause the arising of ego and emotion, the attachments that cause suffering, and we allow them to pass.
Even Raleigh has an understanding of the concept of releasing one’s attachment so that emotions cannot arise and color the drift. When he gives advice to Mako during their neural compatibility test, he says “the drift is Silence.” Silence is a good metaphor for the mental state of no-mind, but stillness is actually the terminology used by Dogen Kigen and other schools of Japanese Buddhism that forefront meditation. Silence/Stillness does not imply that there are no thoughts within the mind, merely that the mind does not attach to them: the arising thoughts are tuned into background noise by not attaching to them, thus allowing the mind to become still or silent.
Returning to Stacker, because he brings nothing to the drift, i.e. he has released his attachment to his rank and his ego (probably due to an implicit understanding of the impermanence of these things and his impending end), he can engage in a neural handshake with anyone. For Stacker, there is nothing in the drift, no place for his mind to abide in: his drift is literally silence. More specifically, I would hazard that Stacker’s mind fully abides in the interdependent relation of the drift: more than any other of the Jaeger pilots, Stacker likely allows his “self" to completely fall away when he engages in the neural handshake.