The Robot is More Human than You:
Defining Humanity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
As humans, we seem to be inordinately proud of our humanity. We tout that we are the smartest animals (ignoring the fact that we are still animals). We go around boasting that nothing else has the same level of intelligence as we do, that nothing is quite as human as we are. And, as far as we know, we aren’t lying to ourselves. Yet. But what about in the future, when we create something that does contest our humanness? Philip K. Dick explores this idea in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The novel’s presentation of Mercerism, a fictional religion, and its unrealistically physical version of empathy suggests that using empathy to define …show more content…
The religion itself is much like current religions, in that followers make connections with each other and with the deity, Mercer, although, in this case, via an “empathy box” (Dick 22). Mercer himself, climbing infinitely from the pits of reality onto the mountain of transcendence, is in fact Al Jarry, a drunken old actor, pretending to climb in a crudely constructed mise-en-scène--hardly a true deity, but enough to fool the “empathetic” (Dick 209). These “empathetic” are the disciples of Mercerism, who join a unified climb of the mountain via their empathy boxes. This connection between Mercer and his followers is an unrealistic one: those physically connected feel the pains and joys of others as well as the corporeal injuries from “killers,” who throw stones at climbers. These injuries, sustained mentally through an empathetic experience, in fact persist into reality, with cuts and bruises remaining long after the empathy box has been turned off (Dick 25). While these injuries must be genuine, it is their purpose --reminding Mercerites that “killers” are not limited to the created mountain--that is fraudulent; Mercerism idealizes unity, but in effect creates a schism between followers with its primary tenet, which states, “You shall kill only the …show more content…
Empathy as the unified climb, Wheale suggests, is an “understanding [of] objects or emotions outside [one’s self]” (92). This is accurate of the climb, in that all Mercerites are separate but connected so that they can understand one another, but this definition of empathy is equally inaccurate, as those in the climb become parts of a whole that act as a whole, thus turning empathy into Wheale’s definition of affect, or the mere feeling of emotion. The problem, Wheale points out, is that “some people suffer from a ‘flattening of affect,’” in that some mental disorders cause the social responses of sufferers to be, by the standards of the Voigt-Kampff test, which is used to determine humanity, essentially android (Dick 46). The fear of androids within Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? emanates from the thought that, as Wheale says, “androids represent a potential threat to the human population; they are physically powerful but completely lacking in conscience”(Wheale 92). But while the Voigt-Kampff test’s use is to assess humanity, not all humans may necessarily pass this test, and by extension, not all androids may necessarily fail