Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex

From the final dialogue, one can see, when squinting, a connection between this and Kojima's meme theory as explored in MGS2. I bring up this link for a specific reason. While Kojima takes a linear approach to his themes (scene, meme, gene), in that he'll set up within the diegetic world, explicate formally, and then just sort of leave them hanging, presented by never pursued, Stand Alone Complex has a more complex take on the same issue. Meme can be read as an antecedent in thought the concept of a Stand Alone Complex, as the additional layer of proper systems theory is added into the concept of a Stand Alone Complex. A meme, as explicated in the final dialogue, moves through humanity and its this movement that is the concern of the previous twenty five episodes. The tachikomas make for the most important demonstration, where their completely machinic existence is able to generate, via transmission of memes throughout systems, a system of transmission with enough complex and looping feedback to generate the so-important "ghost", or consciousness. It's this which gives us our mascot, the Major, as the emblematic figure of the Stand Alone Complex, the ghost, from and within, a machine.