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It's been five years since I've played NieR: Automata.
In those long five years much has happened.

I've lost a romantic partner.
I've regained my then-failing eyesight.
I've graduated from graduate school.
I've lost a close friend and mentor.
I've helped establish and maintained an online community.
I've made several new friends and helped many people.
I've lost dear friends and have harmed many people.
I've quit my job and ventured out to start a new one.
I've found a new love.
I've started my formal education again.
I've grown to accept aspects of myself.
I've purchased another home.
I've come to abhor aspects of myself.
I've lost touch w/ my online community.

While all of those of things happened, while all of those years passed, not a day has gone by that I haven't thought of that game. Truly, it holds a special and reverent place in my heart, for it's themes continue and will continue to grip me for the foreseeable future. I will never stop thinking about those red-haired twins and the concept of original sin. I will never stop thinking about an amusement park filled w/ machine lifeforms and Nietzsche's last man. I will never stop thinking about the eternal Hegelian nature that underlines the android-machine conflict. I will never stop thinking about the clash of telos versus authenticity that exists within 2B or the psychoanalytic nightmare that is 9S. These themes and ideas will always be relevant to me for all of time.

And, at this very moment, another important theme comes to mind. One that eluded me for so long until now. Namely, the theme of identity and self. "Okay, but Automata, like any work that deals w/ existentialism, is littered w/ themes of identity and self. What one do you mean in specific?". The idea that I'm referring to is the one that concerns memory and the formation of the self. Admittedly it's a common theme within sci-fi that has been done to death w/ various degrees of profundity, but it is in NieR: Automata that I found it to be somewhat lacking, even though I frustratingly felt that there was something more to it. It is only until now, w/ the aid of some timely information coming from my leisure reading, that a coherent synthesis of a new understanding has been formed on the matter.

As you may recall, the idea first presents itself not terribly far into the game. At the climax of the prologue 2B and 9S on the eve of defeat, activate a black box reaction, effectively destroying themselves and their Goliath-class adversaries in the process. There is so much emotional and sentimental build-up leading up to this moment that it seems out-of-place. I mean, death should be inconsequential to these androids, since their consciousness could readily be transferred to new bodies. Besides, didn't these two just meet moments before? Why do they care so much that the other dies? All of the dramatics only makes sense in the retrospect, after one has completed Route C/D and perhaps also after I outline my case. Anyway, soon thereafter 2B awakens in the Bunker and rendezvous w/ 9S, who has no recollection of the events that transpired in the prologue since there was not enough bandwidth for him to backup both his and 2B's memory to the Bunker. The cutscene that punctuates 2B and 9S's reunion admits 9S issuing a YoRHa salute w/ its accompanying maxim "Glory to Mankind.", w/ 2B responding in kind; the camera then cutting to her clenching fist as 9S wanders off blissfully unaware. What is the significance of this moment? Several interpretations exist, but one of them suggests that 2B is upset and angered by the fact that 9S does not remember the events of the mission that had happened mere hours prior. She is upset that 9S has lost his memories.

A second instance in which this theme manifests itself so readily and apparently is at the conclusion of Routes A and B. After Eve is slain, it is revealed that 9S became corrupted when he hacked into him during the battle; that's no good, as corrupted androids will begin to degrade until they're rendered inoperable or attack allies until they are completely and utterly destroyed. Resigning to his fate, 9S attempts to comfort a despairing 2B w/ a potential solution: "It's okay. I can always reload my backup data from the Bunker.", to which she replies "But you'll lose you. The you that exists at this very moment.". That's a bit cryptic, since the implications (memories as identity) are clear, but it isn't really elaborated on. Memories as identity...what does this even mean? Is this sentiment thrown into the dialogue to pay lip-service to that overdone sci-fi trope as an afterthought? Or is there more to the idea?

To get to the bottom of it all, we must (re)familiarize w/ the concept of Leibniz's Law. This law states, in short, that two things are identical if they share the same properties. So, for instance, if a person looks like your mother, speaks in the same manner as your mother, smells of the same perfume as your mother, occupies the same household as your mother, possesses the same employment as your mother, has you and your sibling as children just as your mother, that person is your mother. It seems like quite a trite little observation, doesn't it? It's so obvious that it hardly warrants being a distinct construct of philosophical thought. Well, let's make things more interesting then: let us apply Leibniz's Law to that of personal identity. If a person has your personal taste in music, has the same hair color, goes to the same school as you, occupies all the exact points of space as you, is comprised of all the same cells as you etc., then that person is you. However notice that all of these items are subject to change: your taste in music can change. Your hair color can change. The school you attend can change. You don't occupy all the exact points of space you did a moment ago. Every cell in your body is constantly dying and being replaced. So then, how can we say that you are really you? As you can see, if we apply Leibniz's Law to the realm of ontology, we get a conception of strict identity as well as something very reminiscent to a Ship of Theseus-type of situation arising. How is it that we can establish personal identity when the properties, both material and abstract, that ostensibly define us are ever-changing?

Enter psychological continuity. While Leibniz's Law establishes a strict criteria for identity, psychological continuity is far less exact, but is flexible enough to account for discontinuities. We can say that a person is themselves b/c they, for the most part, have the same personality, have the same style of thinking, have the same affinities, have the same memories etc. However, psychological continuity must be taken in conjunction w/ the aforementioned strict identity, since neither one is adequate in accounting for the self on its own. We only have access to psychological continuity in defining ourselves (remember, moment-by-moment it is not possible to strictly define you as your spatial/temporal position or even biology is constantly changing), but to other agents in the world you must be held accountable for yourself outside of your own head. This is where action and narrative take route.

While psychological continuity admits a sense of yourself to only yourself, it does no good in establishing towards others that you are your self, since they do not have access to that inner psychological phenomenon. Strict identity fails in conveying to others that you are your self since you cannot ever fulfill it's own strict criteria (the aforementioned spatial/temporal/biological problem). Thus, they only thing that is accessible to the outside world and other agents that inhabit it are your actions. These actions do not occur in isolation, but are part of a history that is comprised of several other actions. Now, it is tempting to say that one is able to abstract out and isolate any one action, for it is a single 'chainlink' in that history, but this is not true. An action undertaken by you only makes sense and only ever exists in the context of its history; conversely, that history only makes sense and only ever exists b/c of the actions that comprise it. You cannot have one w/o the other; there is a reciprocal kind of relationship where one defines the other.

"...where are you going w/ this 2B? I thought we were talking about Automata.". I am getting there, worry not, dear reader. There is one more point to address. Just as there exists a reciprocal relationship between action and history, there exists a similar reciprocal relationship between a person and their history. A person is not merely a single individual that can be abstracted from a history; they are the subject of a particular history that is unique to them. A person removed from the context of their history is a concept that is unintelligible, for there is always a person who have uniquely created a history for their own reasons. Similarly, a history cannot exist w/o some person creating it. This is why, several months ago, I grew frustrated in conversation with a particular someone when they asserted that they did not view themselves as the protagonist of their own life. Such an assertion is entirely nonsensical when considering the framework I have currently laid out. These three intimately related things--action, history, and personhood--form a unity: a narrative. This accounts for my original thesis mentioned in Post #20220507, that Being is necessarily dramatic in nature. Our lives follow a story-like structure, both phenomenologically and psychologically. 

If this framework is acceptable thus far, then it shouldn't be too absurd of a proposition to posit that any individual's narrative, complete w/ their own personhood, actions, and histories, are interlocked w/ those of others. Everyday, our persons encounter other persons and our histories intersect at individual actions, reciprocally adding yet another chainlink that carries w/ it some amount of significance. The people who you encounter and interact w/ then become characters within your life's narrative. Much as how actions cannot be abstracted from a history into isolation without losing intelligibility, the characters encountered only make sense when considering the context of your life; they are not merely a collection of persons encountered, but carry some significance. This being the case, then it becomes clear how a person's narrative, mediated via interpersonal interactions, can be shaped, formed, or even augmented by others. Going back to Automata, the latter is exemplified in the relationship between 2B and 9S. Yes, yes, in the case of 9S 2B lends meaning to his life, since she is the 'why' that gives him strength to bear any 'how'. It's all very romantic and something I find myself longing for on a disturbingly regular basis...though, that is a digression. That tangent aside, there is a more chilling aspect to the pair's relationship if we examine it from 2B's side.

In the later chapters of the game, it is revealed that 2B's true designation is 2E: YoRHa No. 2 Type E. She is an Execution-type, w/ the sole purpose of her creation being to execute 9S whenever he would come too close to the truth behind Project YoRHa. All overtly-romantic connotation aside, 9S's life downright GIVES meaning to 2B's. If 9S is out of the picture, what are the implications for 2B's life? It becomes meaningless. This is the basis for my assertion that 2B's circumstances are the exemplification of existential horror: fulfillment of her purpose (her telos) sees to it that that very purpose is destroyed. For all of the despair that the game means to inspire through the story of A2 and the events of the Pearl Harbor Descent (that the entire operation and subsequent sacrifice of her entire squadron was merely an attempt to collect combat data) and 9S's discovery that the entire machine-android conflict was commandeered to provide evolutionary pressure for N2, none is as awful as that inspired by 2B. It is terrifying to encounter malevolence out in the world, an external force that seeks to cause your ruin, but that is tacitly acknowledged and accepted to be part of the expected adversity that comes w/ life; it is downright horrific when it is unavoidable feature of your unique existence that you lead yourself to your own ruin--even moreso that you were expressly created JUST to end in ruin.

Now that we have established the intimacy and tethered nature of 2B and 9S's relationship, it becomes slightly clearer why 2B becomes upset at the 9S's loss of memories, or why she is seemingly so concerned at 9S's suggestion to reload his previously saved memories. To have 9S lose his memories is to lose 9S himself; there is no distinction between memories and identity, for we have established earlier that a life is a narrative that comprises integrally of personhood, actions, and history. That history, in turn, cannot be abstracted into singular actions w/o losing intelligibility. In other words, memories are not simply a recollection of events that have 'happened' to you. They are more than that, and they inform others of who you are as a person b/c of this loaded nature. If 9S were to lose his memory of, say, that time he was wandering around the shopping mall ruins and suggested buying 2B a t-shirt when the war was over, he doesn't just lose the recollection of that singular occurrence happening. He loses a part of his identity that informs others that he as a person cares enough about 2B to buy her a gift. Going further back conceptually, he loses a part of his identity that informs others that he is capable of caring, period. He loses a part of his identity that informs others that he considers other lives beyond his own as valuable. He loses a part of his identity that informs others that he thinks some things are worth valuing. This conceptual recursion can continue further, but I think you understand the point. The loss of even a single memory has further reaching consequences

Sure, you could retort that it is only one memory, that there are others that can indicate 9S is someone that cares enough about 2B to buy her a gift, is capable of caring, considers other lives valuable, etc. Plus at the very least 9S knows who he is b/c of that psychological continuity we defined earlier. But you must bear in mind that the backup data 9S was referring to was created a while back, so the amount of memories lost isn't exactly trivial. As for psychological continuity being adequate enough for at least providing the subject aspect of identity, that is no longer valid. In order to have psychological continuity, you have to be able to keep track of your psychological qualities such as personality, affinities, aversions, etc. across all of time. If 9S loses his memories, that introduces discontinuities into his subjective track of time, rendering that entire aspect of identity forfeit.

Either way you slice it, 9S losing his memories means losing 9S as a person. Perhaps what makes the situation even more desperate is the added fact that 2B's own narrative is contingent on 9S's narrative. On the modernist perspective, 2B loses meaning in life through loss of her authenticity--her self-prescribed desire to be romantically involved w/ 9S. On the other hand, on the heroic perspective, 2B loses meaning in life through loss of her telos--the purpose of her creation which is to kill 9S. Honestly...could you conceive of a more pitiable dilemma?

It's been five years since I've played NieR: Automata. In those long five years much has happened. So much of it has been difficult and awful, and much of it has been joyous and pleasant. All the same, these actions have become part of my history, and will go on to inform a narrative that will in turn form my identity both towards myself and others. In all honesty I wouldn't trade it for anything else if it were even possible. Make no mistake, that isn't to say I don't have any regrets or guilt. I do have my regrets--quite a few in fact--but there's little point in agonizing over them for long. Any agonizing that does occur, however, I consider well-deserved, earned, and fully accepted. Regret and guilt are indications of a life well-lived, where there was something substantial and important at stake, where a person was presented an opportunity to be courageous and do what they thought was right. Ultimately that person failed, by their very own determination, but I don't think anyone expected to make it out of this life always comfortable and agnostic of hardship. Not anyone who isn't absolutely idealistic or doing anything worthwhile, anyway. No, this narrative is uniquely mine; it ought to be a Sophoclean tragedy.

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