Ergo Proxy explained
Ergo Proxy — the anime in which everybody is lost, sad and sulking. The brightest color in it is pale red which perfectly reflects the sort of world characters are perceiving — a dull place. The feeling of being sad, lost and confused is perfectly transmitted trough out the series and there are key reasons for that. First of all there are 2 main characters — Re-L and Vincent, which makes it more difficult to follow the story. What complicates it further still is the fact that there isn’t a central mystery. There’s a plethora of them, the mystery of Cogito virus, domed cities, pulse of the awakening, the goals of 4 rocks and Donov Mayer, what is it exactly that proxies are trying to in their cities and of course, what are proxies?
The answers you get in anime itself tend to be vague and often times contradictory which only perpetuates confusion. The main mystery is that of the proxies and there’s also an underlying theme which is the dichotomy between the individual and society — these are the ones I am going to try to unwind and explore further still.
Backstory to Ergo Proxy
Our journey begins with drawing out the context by going trough the story. It seams that around a century ago human race became energy dependent on a new source of energy — methane hydrate. An accident happened where wast amounts of methane hydrate exploded in a chain reaction leading to pouted air, world wide “clouds” which covered the sun, frozen oceans and 85% of human population died. Fun fact, in 1940’s when leading scientists in the Manhattan project where predicting on what will happen when the first ever nuke will be detonated, some predicted that during the explosion the atmosphere would catch fire which would lead to a world wide “boom” leading to something similar to what we have in Ergo Proxy. Anyways, as a solution humans did two things, first of all they made a space ship on which they escaped Earth, the second, they made the proxy project which was aimed at restoring the human race on Earth.
Humans enacted both plans, the interesting of which was the proxy project. Humans created 300 proxies which were supposed to create cities separated from the none-inhabitable external world. The point of domed cities was to wait until the external world had become habitable again and eventually restore the human population on Earth. Once that was done proxies had to enact the final step — the pulse of the awaking — proxies had to die.
Society vs the individual
The main society we’re presented with is Romdo, Re-L explains it in two words: “A boring paradise”. It is a utopian society, if you think about it all attempts at utopian societies are sort of paradises when looked through a distorted lens. The sort of pathology you need to see Romdo as paradise is extreme orderliness. Everything in Romdo is controlled, at least attempted to be controlled.
At the center of the control apparatus is the Womb-Sys which would be the wet dream of any dictator. Imagine if you had the ability to control the amount of people that are born and more importantly — the characteristics of any individual. Just imagine the possibilities! You could make specialized people for roles in a society and you could make nation of docile sheep which wouldn’t have the ability to object, you could rule in any way you wanted. Which is sort of what you have in Romdo, people are made with a raison d’être i.e. reason for existence. The reason for existence of an individual in Romdo is his/her role in society. The word “individual” isn’t quite right for people in Romdo, there are only 7 individuals in Romdo, it would be better to refer to the rest as cogs in a machine.
Another layer of orderly control for the sake of Romdo are the Autoreivs also called entourages. These are essentially general intelligence robots and their purpose, as the leadership of Romdo would say, is to assist people in their life. In reality it’s a mix between the state having the ability to observe every action an individual makes and to make sure that individuals remain within the borders of their reason for existence.
Given these tools alone it’s easy to see that the leadership of Romdo has the ability to make any state they want. What they chose is to make a city where “nothing ever changes” — Re-L. They have made a society in which all sticks and carrots are aimed at creating docile, conforming, clogs in a machine. Romdo isn’t a society of individuals it’s a society of parts for a machine to work - it’s an extreme win for the collective.
Society is always at odds with the individual. Societies consist of lots of individuals, individuals are different, sometimes very different. Different people have to live together, how do people coexist without killing each other? Well, we all agree or are forced to repress parts of ourselves in a way in which we are able to coexist. Society can go too far as it did in Romdo and start to try to suppress individuals to such a degree that there isn’t much of an individual left. As Vincent said: “In my desperate attempts to become fellow citizen, I’ve constantly suppressed myself and tried to be the person I thought they wanted, constantly, everywhere. And look what’s happened to me, I am a failure.”
There’s always a tension between the individual and the society. More freedom to the individual leads to larger differences between individuals and hence more conflicts and a less stable society and yet these are developed individuals and as a whole are more able to solve problems. The more suppressed the individual the more impotent the whole society is but it’s a stable society. This is a low-resolution representation of reality. There are more nuances such as the fact that people don’t like to be repressed which means that a society with many repressed people might not be stable at all, or the fact that some people given freedom might chose to conform themselves to fit in a society and by doing so create a more cohesive and stable society.
The reason that the domed city of Romdo is a doomed city is due to it’s approach to the individual. A society with week, undeveloped, docile, submissive, purpose made individuals might work in short time frame, in a changeless environment but the environment is anything but changeless. Given changes and new challenges, who’s going to overcome them, the docile, submissive and week individuals?
What are proxies?
This is the question which is most frustrating to find an answer to. We never get to a proper explanation of proxies. We get a lot of pointing towards what they are and an oversimplified statements which state directly what proxies are but these statements don’t really have unambiguous meaning behind them. Let’s start with going trough the episode 11 where we are in “the theater of Vincent’s mind“. Here we’re presented with 2 figures — the old man i.e. the gate keeper of memory part of the core self and Ergo Proxy. The point of Vincent’s encounter with his own psyche is to accept Ergo Proxy as part of himself but what exactly is Ergo Proxy and more general what are proxies? Here are the sort of statements which point to the answer:
“I am nobody, even if I was somebody, I am beyond your comprehensions and even if you could you wouldn’t have tools to express that knowledge. “
“From the perspective of others I am part of the world but when I observe the world from my perspective, I am nowhere to be found.”
“I do not belong to the world, that is the limit, the boundary between all and self.”
“Incorrect! It is not I think therefor I am. Correct! The answer is I think therefor you are.”
“In truth proxies are you.”
“It’s all about you.”
“It’s what you are.”
“It’s time to remember.”
“Try and tell me who you really are!”
It’s unmistakable, these statements, and there are many more, point to the same place — to the unconscious. The whole conversation about unconscious hinges around ones level of awareness of his own psyche. If you think that you think your own thoughts then you most probably have an inflated sense of your conscious side of self and therefore much of the following will make little sense. The source of your thoughts is the unconscious, that’s why Ergo Proxy said: ”It is I (the unconscious) think therefor you are.” We can clearly see that whenever we’re in the realm of the psyche may it be a dream, fantasy or any other state where we’re the lines between consciousness and the unconscious are blurred, proxies represent the unconscious but that’s not all.
In the 15th episode a psychologist Carl Gustav Jung was briefly mentioned and he was refereed to as the king of the unconscious. To shed some light to what I mean by the unconscious, I will refer to the “king” himself, in Memories, Dreams, Reflections Jung writes:
“Hence I prefer the term “the unconscious“ knowing that I might as equally well speak of “God“ or “daimon“ if I wished to express myself in mythic language. When I do use such mythical language, I am aware that “mana,“ “daimon,“ and “God“ are synonyms for the unconscious. The great advantage of concepts “daimon“ and “God“ lies in making possible a much better objectification of the vis-a-vis, namely, a personification of it.”
That’s the answer, proxies are personifications of the unconscious or God if you prefer more dramatic language.
Which is further backed up by a conversation between Vincent and Proxy One at the final episode where we can see Vincent asking the question we really wanted to hear an answer to:
Vincent: “Tell me! What are proxies?”
Proxy One: “The answer is in the word itself — we are the agents of the creator.”
I think that creators aren’t meant to refer to human beings but rather gods. Proxy one might as well have said: “We are the personification of the unconscious,” but that just something too banal to be said by a god. I would like to delve deeper into the topic of the unconscious but I am afraid that if I did that then I would make an essay within an essay so instead I will try to solve the final problem.
The last problem is that proxies also play a role of a physical. In order to see how it makes sense to project the title of God to a living being we can look at history. There is, so to speak, a historic president for real things being dubbed gods. Jesus Christ might be the most widely known person to be believed to be God. But I think that there’s an even a better example — ancient Babylon. The main deity in Babylon was Marduk, there was also a statue of Marduk made out of gold. Babylonians believed that the god Marduk literally resided in the statue. Knowing this enemy states of Babylon liked to steal the statue and by doing so steal the divine power and protection from Babylon. Babylonians themselves expected hardships and disaster during the disappearance of the statue. Dramatize the Babylonian relationship with god and you get proxies relationship with domed cities. When proxies leave Romdo people there become all doom and gloom.
From gods being very much real, physically real, in the ancient world to pre-modern times when gods become more abstract but very much at the center of peoples lives to modern times where gods are seen as harmful relics of ancient times. Showcasing the evolution of human relationship to god is the underlying plot in Ergo Proxy. As Proxy One puts it:
“It’s an elegant system, the irony is, even though the proxy is the creators servant, once he has carried out his mission, he is no longer necessary to the world he has helped to bring about. In fact he’s left to be some sort of monster- a old world daemon of a new age.”
