I have noticed how much Gnosticism has been used in the Cyberpunk environment, whether in anime, movies, series or games, there is Gnosticism in a technological world, and this is really interesting. Examples below:
“Mostly, our cyberpunk is unique in its meticulous castigation of the world it’s set in, and related discussions of moral and social issues. One example grew out of the following logic: since cyberpunk (I believe) is a variation on the theme of the Gnostic myth, observations or conclusions can be made that the genre’s classic authors usually ignore, thus enhancing the game. That resulted in some interesting elements and themes I can’t reveal just yet.”([https://culture.pl/en/article/cd-projekt-reds-marcin-blacha-on-the-living-city-of-cyberpunk-2077](https://culture.pl/en/article/cd-projekt-reds-marcin-blacha-on-the-living-city-of-cyberpunk-2077)) Words by Marcin Blacha, Writer of Cyberpunk 2077.
Animes: Ghost in the Shell( Cyberpunk), Evangelion, Ergo Proxy( Cyberpunk), Eden: It’s an Endless World!( mangá), Time of Eve, Serial Experiments Lain( Cyberpunk), Revolutionary Girl Utena, Fullmetal Alchemist( With other traditions such as Kabbalism and esotericism in general), Last Exile, Angel’s Egg( Questionable as it can be interpreted in several ways) you can also give an example.
Games: FF7,FFX, Cyberpunk 2077( as Marcin Blacha himself said), Shin Megami Tensei, Xenoblade Chronicles, Xenosaga, Genshin Impact, Kult, can you give examples too.
Films: Blade Runner( Cyberpunk), Vanilla Sky, The Truman Show, Matrix( Cyberpunk), Dark City, can you give examples too.
What do you think of this? Is Marcin Blacha’s statement correct? It is an undeniable fact that many Gnostic themes are present in cyberpunk movies, series, animes and games, cyberpunk culture is full of it.
Philip K. Dick and Michael Moorcock may be primarily responsible for this Gnostic influence on Cyberpunk culture, as they was a noted modern Gnostic. Dick is the first postmodern Gnostic
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That Blancha quote isn’t wildly revealing (“cyberpunk is Gnostic even though most cyberpunk creators don’t think so, but *I’ve* done gnostic stuff… but I can’t tell you how”).
Setting that aside…
Cyberpunk, for a genre that is about our relationship with tech, is super-duper mined with themes of spirituality (and outright occultism).- from the very start. There’s a lot of thinking around this, but I think the simplest answer is that it all comes from the same place: a belief that material solutions are increasingly bollocks and that all formal systems are exploitable.
But that’s neither here nor there. Despite Blancha’s enigmatic quote, the spiritual dimension of cyberpunk has been apparent and overt in the genre from the starr. Neuromancer, for example, has long discussions about faith, and Case is forced to come to terms with the spiritual dimension of the universe as part of his journey (which, I suppose, is part of the classic Gnostic novel tradition).
Others, like Robert Anton Wilson, were even more obvious in cyberpunk-ing religion as much as technology, and seeing them as the same sort of hackable system. Discordianism, like cyberpunk, is a way of trying to make sense of the chaos of the time – by leaning into it. Going back to the early Mondo 2000 days – you’ll find as much about spirituality, perception, faith (and drugs) as you will about tech. Cyberpunk, from its start, was a shitload more influenced by Timothy Leary than neon and rain. Books like Cyclopedia, or the work of Mark Fisher and the CCRU, have continued that tradition to this very day.
So the answer is… Yes. There’s a fuckton of Gnosticism (and, more broadly, spiritual and occult exploration) in cyberpunk. You don’t have to look for it very hard, and in many cases, it is right there.
(Unrelated, but it is why I get fussy when people try to gatekeep Shadowrun and its ilk out of cyberpunk. A lot of it isn’t very *good*, but to say ‘magic isn’t cyberpunk’ just conveys ignorance of what cyberpunk is – and always has been.)