“Cyberpunk 2077”: Ultracapitalism, Morals, and Johnny Silverhand
Cyberpunk 2077 is a videogame I’ve enjoyed playing lately, but I’ve also had thoughts about it: you know, the types that keep you up at night. It’s in a much better state than it was on launch day back in 2020, so I thought I could share some impressions the game made on me.
It is based on the mid-90s RPG (role-playing game, a la pen and paper) of the same name, and details a mercenary’s adventures through the perilous metropolis of Night City. The city is not really run by the government: different corporations (called corps in-game slang) have become so large that they have essentially overtaken, bought, and altogether superseded in size the local Night City government. These corporations are up to no good and everyone knows it: they strip the citizens of their power, money, and individuality, and all to further the corporation’s power.
And yet, you have to buy from them to support your family and/or yourself. In most cases, you’re just another cog in the machine of acquisition. You don’t matter. As a rebellion against this, in 2023 (the game is set in 2077), a terrorist named Johnny Silverhand set off two bombs in Arasaka’s (one of, if not the, biggest corp in Night City) headquarters in Night City. He’s a rocker boy at heart, a rebellious personality who would do anything to give power to the people and usurp those dirty, filthy Corpos. However, not only did it not have a lasting impact (Arasaka rebuilt the tower a couple of years later, which proves their immense wealth), but it also killed thousands of people who were in the area of the blast.
I’m sure that in his fiery quest for vengeance, he simply neglected to take into account the hundreds of innocent lives residing in that building. He also chose to take this power by force: an alternative could’ve been to join Arasaka and covertly climb through the ranks to dismantle it from the inside, all the while not believing any of its propaganda, although this would’ve taken awhile, and our boy Johnny is quite impatient.
While what Silverhand set out to do was very clear, his reasoning for why he did it wasn’t. Let me explain. Although equivocation is certainly not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about this, the bombing can be considered a consequence of faulty thinking, which in itself, when reasoning with oneself, is a logical fallacy. While Silverhand may have had a good cause for bombing Arasaka’s HQ, he simply didn’t consider the consequences. You can’t fault your reasoning and not call it a fallacy. Now that we have established that this is a logical fallacy, the type of fallacy can be discovered.
Equivocation is typically defined, in a nutshell, as the presence/use of ambiguity in an argument. This event can be considered the result of equivocation in this way: If he was put on trial for his actions, he would have only argued his point because he couldn’t see the other, that other point being the killing of thousands in the building. In that manner, the point is moot, and subject to debate because the intention wasn’t fully realized. It was ambiguous. In short, only half of his argument would be valid, making it an irrational point and a prime example of equivocation.
Like Weyland Yutani in the Alien film and game franchise, all corporations in Cyberpunk care about in the end is making money and their agendas, throwing aside human welfare in the process. Because of this, morals and autonomy are lost in the average Joe, who is working day and night so that he can go home and at least feed himself. In this hellish city, morals are defined by the individual, not by an agency like a typical government. Therefore, there is no limit for human beings in their propensity to make decisions based on the collective conscience. There is no line that can’t be crossed, no forbidden boundary. In fact, crime is so prevalent in Night City that it has become a way of life, so much so that the police department allows citizens to take matters into their own hands.
Medicinal and bodily modifications have prolonged life, but that does not mean people are immortal. In fact, it does quite the opposite: corpo tech is what the people want, and they’ll fight you for it. However, modifications bring about more problems for yourself: making yourself a cyborg in an attempt to cheat death only breeds more death. It’s not natural for humans to be immortal, so the Grim Reaper, a force beyond our comprehension, will tap his watch and say that it’s time. So who can you trust? Almost no one, certainly not the corporations that probably made half your body. No one could have said it better than Maine in Edgerunners: “Ain’t no one in this world you can trust more than yourself”. Regardless of how true this statement is, mercenary groups still exist because of this “rule of self-trust”.
Outlawed individuals all working toward the same goal come together to get the job done, for two reasons: they’re lonely and want to be with people, and they need money to live in that world. Again, humans are social animals, so it’s the closest thing to a family someone can have without actually having a family. At the end of the day, though, everyone goes their separate ways, eddies in the back pocket. There is a quote from a book I’ve been reading recently: God Emperor of Dune, written by Frank Herbert. I thought about that book a lot when writing this piece, specifically this quote:
“Think of it as plastic memory, this force within you which trends you and your fellows toward tribal forms. This plastic memory seeks to return to its ancient shape, the tribal society. It is all around you — the feudatory, the diocese, the corporation, the platoon, the sports club, the dance troupes, the rebel cell, the planning council, the prayer group…each with its masters and servants, its hosts and parasites. And the swarms of alienating devices (including these very words!) tend eventually to be enlisted in the argument for a return to “those better times”. I despair of teaching you other ways. You have square thoughts which resist circles.”
I take this to mean that humans have a natural tendency to form groups when ideals grow further from those guiding principles of a group. The especially relevant part of this quote is when Herbert mentions corporations as part of one of the many groups that tend to return to a tribal form. This applies to Cyberpunk in the fact that mercenary groups/corporations are also one of those “tribal forms”: they can form when people are trying to survive in a society where ideals, like a moral code, grow further from a guiding principle of a group, like a government law.
So, with these thoughts in mind, I want you to reconsider the deeper meaning of Cyberpunk 2077: while it is a video game in nature, it is also a commentary on what capitalism could look like if it keeps spiraling downward in the future. It’s a game that feels like a novel almost; a novel about a city driven by greed, seen through the eyes of our protagonist V, and the antihero Johnny Silverhand.
