The Books: “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” (Philip K. Dick)

Daily Book Excerpt: Adult fiction

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – by Philip K. Dick

I came to this wonderful book late. I read it this year. The prose is reminiscent of Dashiell Hammett, spare, to the point, yet fantastically deep.

I write a lot about identity, and personality. What makes us US? What makes me ME? Is identity flexible? Or is it static? Are we born with it? Where does nature end and nurture begin? This is one of the reasons why cults hold such a fascination for me. It’s way too easy to point at those trapped in cults and assume that there is something LACKING in them that they would submit to mind control. People who scoff at “those people” are afraid of looking at themselves, are afraid of the implications. They want to say, vehemently, “I would NEVER get caught in a cult!” I am so glad that those people are so certain. I, however, am not. I am certain, about a couple of things, and I am certain that mind control is something that does not just affect the weak, or the ones who LACK things. The mind is a delicate thing. It’s strong, too, but people can have experiences in life that impact, forever, how they react to certain things. I have had experiences in my life – from years and years ago – that have forever marked me. I am not the same person I was as when I was an infant. Life has marked me. Life has marked us all. There are things that have affected me adversely that I WISH did not. Even though my BRAIN and my DESIRE say, “Dammit … don’t let this affect who you are …” … it doesn’t matter. Life happens. And grooves start to form, like a trickling stream across the desert that eventually, one day, becomes the Grand Canyon. The grooves that are formed make it easier to go “that way” the NEXT time you are in such a situation, even if the groove itself is dysfunctional. The question of identity, and who we are, should interest all of us. Many don’t want to look at it, or they come back too quickly with easy facile answers. I recognize those types, having had to deal with them on my site from time to time.

I guess what I’m getting at here is what Rilke meant when he said, “Live the questions.” That’s what I prefer to do. It’s where I write from, it’s where my curiosity is engaged, it’s what feels most RIGHT to me. I am uninterested in hanging around people who cannot “live the questions”, who always must have the answers, and who get angry when you try to engage them on a deeper more nuanced level. Or, they don’t get angry so much as they get contemptuous. To me, life is about “living the questions”. Not to say I don’t have opinions, and I don’t have an idea about right and wrong. I’m talking about how I write, and how I like to engage with other people.

The questions and ideas that Philip Dick writes about in this book are ones that are difficult to ponder and sometimes confronting. We want to believe that we are something PERMANENT. As in: My “Sheila”-ness is PERMANENT. Nobody could touch my ESSENCE. No no no no!”

I know I have a lot of Philip Dick fans who read me, and this is the only book of his I have read, so I would love to hear all of your thoughts about him as a thinker, a writer, etc. I feel like I would have liked the guy. He ponders the questions of identity. He is unafraid to look at what might NOT be permanent.

And the whole question of “what is empathy?” that he deals with so extensively in this book was riveting, and a deep examination of what it means to be human. Empathy can be mis-used, or exploited (cults are masters at that). Our capability for empathy is one of the things that separates us from the beasts. I personally believe that it comes from a God – or, to put it more accurately, it is the Divine that is always in us, and that is our ability to empathize with our fellow human beings.

Look how the world Dick describes twists that, USES it in the most cynical way possible, with the empathy box. People can get lost in a trance of empathy, be aware of how deeply they are feeling for other human beings … “LOOK HOW EMPATHETIC I AM …:” …. and be missing their whole lives.

And lastly: the human race has turned “demonization of certain undesirable groups of people” into an artform. A science. Millions of people have died because of our ability to make them into non-persons. No big deal to kill them, shun them … because they are not, actually, PEOPLE.

Philip Dick, with this book about androids – who are, in actuality, NOT PEOPLE … looks at this. Looks at it HARD. (The excerpt below deals with this issue). If you, a human being, have an “empathic” response to an android, something that is NOT human, then what does that mean? What does that mean about our NEED to kill them all? I was going to say “dehumanize” them, but that’s the brilliance of this book. Androids already are NOT human, and yet can we say they do not live? Can Deckard say, with any certainty, that they do not LIVE? And isn’t all of that a moot point if he, as a man, has a soft or sensitive or human response to one of them?

Where does our humanity lie? In our OWN hearts?

Is this like the Velveteen Rabbit? That only when an object is loved does it become real? If Deckard LOVES an android, does that mean she ceases to be a machine?

Again: there are those who think they have the answers to all of this. Questions bother them.

I am not interested in having conversastions with those people, because it seems to me that they are more interested in having the conversation END. You know? I prefer to live the questions, and Philip Dick’s book certainly helped me do that.

Here’s an excerpt.

EXCERPT FROM Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – by Philip K. Dick

“Do you have your ideology framed?” Phil Resch asked. “That would explain me as part of the human race?”

Rick said, “There is a defect in your empathic, role-taking ability. One which we don’t test for. Your feelings towards androids.”

“Of course we don’t test for that.”

“Maybe we should.” He had never thought of it before, had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed. Always he had assumed that throughout his psyche he experienced the android as a clever machine – as in his conscious view. And yet, in contrast to Phil Resch, a difference had manifested itself. And he felt instinctively that he was right. Empathy toward an artificial construct? he asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive? But Luba Luft had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of a simulation.

“You realize,” Phil Resch said quietly, “what this would do. If we included androids in our range of empathic identification, as we do animals.”

“We couldn’t protect ourselves.”

“Absolutely. These Nexus-6 types … they’d roll all over us and mash us flat. You and I, all the bounty hunters – we stand between the Nexus-6 and mankind, a barrier which keeps the two distinct. Furthermore –” He ceased, noticing that Rick was once again hauling out his test gear. “I thought the test was over.”

“I want to ask myself a question,” Rick said. “And I want you to tell me what the needles register. Just give me the calibration; I can compute it.” He plastered the adhesive disk against his cheek, arranged the beam of light until it fed directly into his eye. “Are you ready? Watch the dials. We’ll exclude time lapse in this; I just want magnitude.”

“Sure, Rick,” Phil Resch said obligingly.

Aloud, Rick said, “I’m going down by elevator with an android I’ve captured. And suddenly someone kills it, without warning.”

“No particular response,” Phi Resch said.

“What’d the needles hit?”

“The left one 2.8. The right one 3.3.”

Rick said, “A female android.”

“Now they’re up to 4.0 and 6, respectively.”

“That’s high enough,” Rick said; he removed the wired adhesive disk from his cheek and shut off the beam of light. “That’s an emphatically empathic response,” he said. “About what a human subject shows for most questions. Except for the extreme ones, such as those dealing with human pelts used decoratively … the truly pathological ones.”

“Meaning?”

Rick said, “I’m capable of feeling empathy for at least specific, certain androids. Not for all of them but – one or two.” For Luba Luft, as an example, he said to himself. So I was wrong. There’s nothing unnatural or unhuman about Phil Resch’s reactions; it’s me.

I wonder, he wondered, if any human has ever felt this way before about an android.

Of course, he reflected, this may never come up again in my work; it could be an anomaly, something for instance to do with my feelings for The Magic Flute. And for Luba’s voice, in fact her career as a whole. Certainly this had never come up before; or at least not that he had been aware of. Not, for example, with Polokov. Nor with Garland. And, he realized, if Phil Resch had proved out android, I could have killed him without feeling anything, anyhow after Luba’s death.

So much for the distinction between authentic living humans and humanoid constructs. In that elevator at the museum, he said to himself, I rode down with two creatures, one human, the other android … and my feelings were the reverse of those intended. Of those I’m accustomed to feel – am required to feel.

“You’re in a spot, Deckard,” Phil Resch said; it seemed to amuse him.

Rick said, “What – should I do?”

“It’s sex,” Phil Resch said.

“Sex?”

“Because she – it – was physically attractive. Hasn’t that ever happened to you before?” Phi Resch laughed. “We were taught that it constitutes a prime problem in bounty hunting. Don’t you know, Deckard, that in the colonies they have android mistresses?”

“It’s illegal,” Rick said, knowing the law about that.

“Sure it’s illegal. But most variations in sex are illegal. But people do it anyhow.”

“What about – not sex – but love?”

“Love is another name for sex.”

“Like love of country,” Rick said. “Love of music.”

“If it’s love toward a woman or an android imitation, it’s sex. Wake up and face yourself, Deckard. You wanted to go to bed with a female type of android – nothing more, nothing less. I felt that way, on one occasion. When I had just started bounty hunting. Don’t let it get you down; you’ll heal. What’s happened is that you’ve got your order reversed. Don’t kill her – or be present when she’s killed – and then feel physically attracted. Do it the other way.”

Rick stared at him. “Go to bed with her first –”

“– and then kill her,” Phil Resch said succinctly. His grainy, hardened smile remained.

You’re a good bounty hunter, Rick realized. Your attitude proves it. But am I?

Suddenly, for the first time in his life, he had begun to wonder.