midterm

What makes us human?

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Photo by mohamed hassan from Pxhere

I’m sitting in my room. I’m not sure what everyone else is doing so I get up and check with my roommates. Generally, there are three outcomes: someone is watching TV and the others are on their phones, everyone is on their phones, or everyone is in their room and either on their laptop or their phones. With these outcomes as a result, it gets me to wonder how people spent time with one another in the previous decades. Technology and social media seem to have changed the way that humans interact. Does the way we interact with technology make us less human than we once were? Are we more human than before? What defines us as human?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick suggests that empathy is what makes us human. Empathy is thought to be what makes us human because it is our ability to care for other living things by seeing life in their shoes. This is seen in caring for people with the empathy box as well as the pets that they own. People can care for a pet in a very similar way they can care for a child. Philip K. Dick has animals play a very important role in his book. Animals are rare in the book because they are becoming extinct from the radioactive fallout that has overtaken the rest of earth from World War Terminus. In this world, animals have not only become a status symbol, but a source of empathy.

This becomes the basis for the Voight Kampff test. This test is used by Rick Deckard to tell Humans apart from Androids. What this test focuses on is empathy and has a tighter focus on how humans feel about animals. The idea behind this is that androids don’t feel emotions but are instead programmed to act like they do in order to make them human-like. Eventually androids become very similar to humans and the test starts to have trouble being able to distinguish the two. The one question that still gets the androids isn’t about animals, but about other humans. While this does work for the test it might not work in today’s world.

Humans don’t always have empathy for each other like we do with pets or animals. This can also be seen through social media today. While we learn about a lot more tragedy and good news about other people we have become numb to the bad news. We would probably feel worse today if a panda had died over a group of students that were killed in a mass shooting.

An example of this is Harambe the gorilla. He was killed after a child fell into his cage and he started dragging the child. While the zookeepers were concerned for the child’s safety, most of the vocalizations were from people against his death over using a tranquilizer dart or blaming the mother for being irresponsible and letting her child get into the enclosure. This event dragged on through the internet for many months where mass shootings like the Vegas shooting were covered for maybe a week. Months later however, Harambe was still important to some people and a joke to others. The way that this incident spread throughout the internet was way more talked about and seen on the internet more than the mass shootings around those months.

With school shootings this is a different story. We learn of these shootings when they happen and while these events are very sad and tragic we hear about them so much that it can be hard to empathize with each event like we did the first time we heard of a mass shooting. I don’t think that this takes away our humanity though. Maybe we just don’t have enough sorrow to give anymore. Maybe we spread it out to so many different events that it just doesn’t show anymore. Empathy is seen as this great source of humanity, but I don’t think everyone sees empathy in the same way.

Empathizing 101 by Allie Grasgreen talks about a study that is being done to test if empathy can be taught among college students. It also defines empathy as a helpful tool in achieving critical thinking skills. Empathy in this article is more focused on seeing another person’s opposing viewpoint to your own. This is a helpful skill that should be taught among people, but do others think of empathy this way? It also asks other questions that we would think of as a more traditional view of empathy such as feeling protective of others being taken advantage of or feeling moved by other people’s lives in a positive or negative way. From an academic standpoint all of these things are important to learn. Empathy shouldn’t need to be taught because it should already exist within ourselves. What we would learn is to actually use it or to understand people’s points of view when making decisions or helping them. Without this understanding of empathy, we would still be human, even if it didn’t seem like it.

Our world is becoming smaller and smaller with social media. This lets everyone express their opinions, but it also lets everyone else destroy/ negate their opinion as well. This can be seen a lot with the political division of the United States. So many people today are less likely to even consider the other sides point of view anymore that empathy is drowned out. The internet can be bad for empathy because we can find a group of people that agree with our opinions and disagree with the same people we do. This can give us a sense of not needing to get along with everyone because we have other people we get along with. Even with this type of behavior in the real world, does this make us less human?

Reading books and watching films makes you kinder in real life By Léa Surugue can show where this still applies. A study was done to show that people who read fiction were generally more empathetic than people who did not read fiction. This could mean that in fiction it might be easier to understand empathy because we don’t really have a choice other than to relate to the character. If we read more fiction we would start to find things that we relate to with these fictional characters. What we can probably be taught from this is that maybe it isn’t a matter of not having empathy, but instead not trying to feel empathy towards certain people.

I think that empathy is part of what makes us human, but it also isn’t the only thing that makes us human. People might be a little less socially affected but tragedies in today’s world, but I don’t think they are any less empathetic. With events like Harambe’s death we can see the outcry of people towards animals that shows we can still be empathetic. We are all still human because empathy isn’t the only factor to look at. With other emotions and consciousness, you can combine this with empathy to make humanity. I think people haven’t lost their sense of humanity because empathy alone doesn’t define it. People might just need to listen to others outside of their groups in order to empathize with them. If we never listen, we can’t empathize and if we can’t empathize, we can’t understand each other. We need to have this type of empathy in order to be human, but it isn’t what makes us human.

Philip K. Dick’s character Rachel is an android, but by the end of the book she reacts to something in a very human way. After spending time with Deckard, she decides that since he is going to kill other androids that she didn’t want him to kill that she should go to his house and murder his goat. This type of reaction wouldn’t be a logical one because he was going to do this regardless if she killed the goat or not. This gives Rachel human-like qualities that we should acknowledge. It also leads to prove a big point that androids and humans aren’t that different. The only thing that was different between androids and humans was empathy. The androids put so much effort in the book to figure out why empathy was something that people held on too and it was inevitably pointless. If humans lacked empathy would they not be human though? I think humans would still be humans. All of the non-human-like things that the androids do are still things humans do. Humans kill animals all the time, humans kill other humans all the time, they even experiment on animals to see how they might react with certain diseases or other things wrong with them. While these things are considered bad we still do them as humans because in our minds they are for a greater good. We kill animals for food, we kill people in war to protect our country, we experiment on animals to make sure that the drug we are testing is safe for humans, but does that lack empathy?

Humans can have empathy but that doesn’t mean that they have to use it for everything that they do. If we used empathy for everything that we did our society would have to be structured completely different because typical human behavior would have some problems in this scenario. Many people have had to deal with this from war. In war you are surrounded by humans that are literally taking the lives of other humans. Those humans could have had a spouse and kids that will never see them again, but we kill them for the greater good for ourselves. Maybe we want more land, maybe we want more resources, but why take the lives of others for it? When you think about war like that it really points out how cruel it can be. In our world we make it prideful to serve our country. This seems like a normal thing but the root behind it is to possibly take the lives of others in a time of conflict and everyone is encouraged to do this. Does this make people in the military not human? Of course not. It is something that we have grown to accept because countries don’t get along and we need to keep up our countries defenses to protect and defend ourselves. Sometimes countries even feel the need to attack in order to get something that they feel they need or want. This doesn’t make them not humans though.

Humans are way more complex than just a biological being with empathy added in. We don’t always use it because we have grown to feel that it isn’t useful or possibly damaging to use it all of the time. While social media has made it seem like humans are less empathetic I think that there is something else to look at here. Humans probably still didn’t care as much about each other back then as they could because of multiple factors like race or gender. Trying to feel empathetic back then was something that people did not do because they were different and it wasn’t worth the time until history decided to make it worth the time. Now instead of avoiding people that weren’t like us we don’t feel empathetic to people like us. This could be because of technology bringing us closer together or it could be because of some other factor that we don’t fully understand. We can’t fully tell how humans would have been in the past with the technology we have today, but I also think that it probably wouldn’t make them any less empathetic, they might just use their empathy for different people than they would have before.

Works Cited

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Del Rey, an Imprint of Random House, 2017.

Grasgreen, Allie. Empathizing 101. 24 November 2010. <https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathizing-101>.

Surugue, Léa. Reading books and watching films makes you kinder in real life. 19 July 2016. <https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reading-books-watching-films-makes-you-kinder-real-life-1571434>.

Are standardized tests biased?

Can you imagine testing your intelligence to emigrate to a new planet? What if you were denied entry because of unknown reasons, and you found out that you didn’t pass the entry test because of your very own genetic makeup. What if the government told you that you couldn’t reproduce, marry, or emigrate to another planet? Well, this is what happened to John Isidore. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, John Isidore is known as a “chickenhead” who works a “simple” job. A job that would be beneath someone else, but he did that job with no bitterness. When I think of humanity, I think of a person like John Isidore. John Isidore is a person with mental issues because his genes were severely damaged by the radioactive fallout. He is both described as a “special” person and as a “chickenhead”. According to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a special is a person who has failed an IQ test. For this, he was now known as a special on Earth. A chickenhead is a special who “had failed to pass the minimum mental faculties test” (Dick 19). He lives by himself in an apartment building in San Francisco. In the novel, John practices Mercerism, a “religion” that brings the Mercerites closer to Wilbur Mercer, by increasing their empathy. While reading the book, the readers found out that John had a mental condition and had a low IQ. For this reason, John was not able to leave Earth for Mars, the new America.

Several times throughout the book, John was alone in his apartment, he uses the Mercerism religion to give himself a purpose in a life that other people would call awful. Remember, the use of Mercerism connects John to other humans. We all love human contact, right?!? Therefore, John is the moral compass of the novel. He believes that all forms of life like plants, animals, and androids deserve respect. Stop reading and raise your hand, if you have ever heard about the Common Core. I can bet a dollar that you have heard about the Common Core, the Scholastic Assessment Test (SATs), and the American College Testing (ACT) in your lifetime. According to Merriam – Webster’s dictionary, a standard test is “a test (as of intelligence, achievement, or personality) whose reliability has been established by obtaining an average score of a significantly large number of individuals for use as a standard of comparison” (“Standard Test.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2018.) So, are standardized tests biased? Let’s find out!

The United States is often referred to as the melting pot because there are so many different cultures that came to our country, but when it comes to people who have a disability there’s no secret about the lifelong stigmas surrounding a certain word like disability. Justin Dart once said, “The hard reality is this. Society in every nation is still infected by the ancient assumption that people with disabilities are less than fully human and therefore, are not fully eligible for the opportunities which are available to other people as a matter of right”. (qtd. in DEMOS, 2002). This post determines the accuracy of standardized tests in the new Common Core world and how it connects to the text of the unethical testing of entry to mars.

According to Davis, “To understand the disabled body, one must return to the concept of the norm, the normal body. So much of writing about disability has focused on the disabled person as the object of study, just as the study of race has focused on the person of color. But as with recent scholarship on race, which has turned its attention to whiteness, I would like to focus not so much on the construction of disability as on the construction of normalcy. I do this because the “problem” is not the person with disabilities; the problem is the way that normalcy is constructed to create the “problem” of the disabled person”. (Davis 3) People with disabilities are not seen to fit social norms. What makes you a kind human, if you judge another person for having a disability. In the olden days, people who had disabilities were viewed as sick, seen as defective, were euthanized, called retarded, and separated from their “regular” family. As a person, how do you define “normal”? When you think about “normal” and “abnormal”, do you really believe those words can tell you about a person’s character? Can assessments be used to test your intelligence to see if you can emigrate to another planet? These are questions I want you, the reader, to ask yourselves while reading this post.

Assessments are an essential part to get ready for the Common Core when analyzing a child’s reading and writing levels. In elementary school, an assessment is needed to accomplish the objective, to analyze the writing level of a student authentically, to determine the student’s reading level, and to determine the strategies needed. As a teacher, there are several ways to assess this and analyze the student’s reading behaviors. During my internship last year, the teacher analyzed the student’s behavior and asked him questions to make sense of what was occurring in his learning environment. The student responded orally to the questions asked and wrote a brief writing sample to determine the level of his writing complexity to see if it was appropriate for his grade level. According to the core standards website, “The Common Core is a set of high-quality academic standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy (ELA). These learning goals outline what a student should know and be able to do at the end of each grade”. (Core Standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018, http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/. Accessed 08 Oct. 2018.) The Common Core Standards were introduced by policymakers on Capitol Hill for the standards to be established by every state except for a certain few.

So, do you want to know why the Common Core is biased? Common Core focuses on testing and has a set of standards that are already made for the teacher, and tests are already provided for teachers. What does the Common Core tell you? The Common Core assesses the teacher’s ability to teach and assesses the student’s ability to test and learn. The Common Core measures how much the school has learned compared to the other students around the county and state, ergo the word “standardized”. So, why is the Common Core problematic? Well, some teachers have refused to help students who are struggling in the classroom because they cannot stop what they are teaching to reteach a chapter for one student. The needs of that student are pushed aside to hope that one specific child will understand later. So, do you believe that this test could be used to emigrate to Mars?

Now, let’s talk about the SATs! The SATs is a standardized test and it is used mainly for college admissions here in the United States. I remember taking the pre-SATs in 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, but other than that I never studied for the SATs. On TV, you noticed all these students studying for the SATs with flash cards, books, and with a tutor that their parents hired. One question, did you ever study for the SATs? I probably already know the answer by asking you where you grew up. When I took the SATs in 12th grade, the test had vocabulary I never used in my life. But, this test was supposed to measure my intelligence to get into higher education. To tell you the truth, I can think of several companies in the USA that will not ask for your SAT scores when you start applying for jobs. For example, one company is Google. They look at your work ethic and test your humanity with questions before you are hired. Would you rather fill in bubbles to emigrate to Mars, or would you rather answer questions about yourself to test your humanity to get on that planet?

You have now heard about the Common Core and the SATs, now let’s talk about one more test, the ACT. The ACT is another standardized test that is used mainly to get into College in the United States. Like the SAT, The ACT is a multiple choice test where you fill out bubbles. In the U.S., you can either take the ACT or the SATs, but both are still found to be bias and inaccurate. The ACT is biased because of race, class, and gender. If you are white and male, you have an unfair advantage. This test can be directly related to your family income. The richer the family, the higher the scores will be. For example, again, some vocabulary words on the test may not be familiar when you are taking the test. So, what is the alternative if a test has already deemed you incompetent?

In my opinion, standardized tests and IQ tests are not reliable for entry on Mars. Intelligence should be measured by how well you would do in a certain life situation (e.g. everyday smarts). I believe anyone can take a standardized test, but what would that person do if something drastic happened in their life. If that person could not handle that life complication we should not see them as intelligent. IQ is just a number! If that person cannot improve their everyday life then their so-called intelligence needs to be tested another way. IQ tests are not accurate because human intelligence is so vast. IQ tests were used in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to differentiate people from each other. Either they had high or low intelligence, but I believe it was proven that where you lack in one area you can be seen as smart in another. But what is intelligence? Is it someone who can ace a spelling bee, someone who can do math problems without a calculator, or someone who can figure out a problem when they get in a jam? According to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, intelligence is “the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations”. (“Intelligence.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2018.) See, the definition is saying you must overcome your life’s challenges to be seen as intelligent. Which means intelligence is a broad term, and that means it is more than logic.

During my time at Anne Arundel Community College, I had the opportunity to learn about Dr. Howard Gardner a developmental psychologist in my special education class. Dr. Gardner is known for the theory of multiple intelligences. Dr. Gardner’s theory states that not only do human beings have several different ways of learning and processing information but that these methods are relatively independent of one another. Many other psychologists believed that intelligence is a single entity. Dr. Gardner believed life and culture were a large influence and helped determine a person’s intelligence. According to Gardner, Society held tasks and different types of intelligence at different levels. His theory mentioned that a person could be great in several forms of intelligence but can be below average in others. Since 1999, Howard has identified nine multiple intelligences. So, are you convinced yet?

If you had the opportunity to rewrite Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, would you change John Isidore’s predicament? I most definitely would! And that is why we are human. Because of our empathy! Empathy makes us Human. As readers, we connect with the characters we are reading about on the pages of a book. In this case, John Isidore was the underdog in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. I was rooting for him, we were all rooting for him to win to find love and make a friend. In our culture, we like to root for the underdog. In other countries, our country is seen as the underdog. As a human, we hope that other people can do what they put their minds to. This book is the perfect underdog story because John Isidore was a lovable character whom you wanted to root for. So, what makes you human? Is it your fear? Your wit? Your desire to learn? Or, how you’re able to empathize with others? My empathy and desire to change makes me human! Please let me know what makes you human in the comments.

Works Cited:

Core Standards. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2018, http://www.corestandards.org/about-the-standards/. Accessed 08 Oct. 2018.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. New York: Penguin Random House, 1968. ebook.

Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body. Verso, 1995. Chapter 1: Constructing Normalcy

“Intelligence.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2018.

“Standard Test.” Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2018.

Wray, Mike. “DEMOS Project- Module: Disability Awareness (Print Version).” Jarmin.com, Feb. 2003, jarmin.com/demos/course/awareness/print.html.

What Makes Us Human?

The Creation of Adam C. 1512 by Michelangelo

What makes us human can be seen without argument on the surface. We are bi-pedal, omnivores with opposable thumbs and a tuft of hair at the top of our head and no tail on our bottoms. A key debate item on what makes us human is our ability to emphasize with others, human and animal alike. Empathy has been seen in other mammals outside of humans including dogs, elephants, and chimpanzees. Animals have the ability to demonstrate the aptitude to “feel into” others to understand how they are and do something to help out. If this is so widely seen in mammals then this is not a human trait. Examples of humans making the wrong choice is clearly illustrated in Philip K. Dicks novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Halfway through the novel the main protagonist Rick Deckard is assigned to kill an android that is a public star on Earth and performs opera. Deckard himself enjoys her singing and enjoys opera and is almost convinced she is human. This does not stop him from “retiring” her (Dick). Only at this scene do we begin to see Deckard start to show empathy towards androids. Explained by James Harris at Johns Hopkins University, empathy is “an evolutionary mechanism to maintain social cohesion… you’re more sensitive to the pain of other members in a group” (Viegas, 2014). Deckard is unable to emphasize with the androids for so long because he thinks of his job as a “Us versus Them” complex. The determining factors on what separates human beings from chimpanzee’s, dogs, and elephants is our ability to think of not only the future but alternative ones. From this we are able to make deliberate choices.

A study done in 2010 at University of Michigan tested college age students’ ability to emphasize with each other. Through the use of a survey that asked questions like “I don’t feel sorry for other people when they are having problems” or “when I see someone being taken advantage of, I feel kind of protective towards them” to then gauge their reaction. Reactions were based on a sliding scale if the question described the student well or not at all. After completing this survey Michigan State found that college students are forty percent less empathetic then those who graduated two to three decades ago (Grasgreen, 2010). If as a generation we are becoming less empathetic and finding empathy as a less desirable trait, then we cannot claim that empathy is what makes us human. This is seen again in the novel, where the more empathetic character is John Isadore, who is claimed to be a chickenhead and special. Isadore is a chiceknhead because of his inability to pass an IQ test, and special from the radioactive dust that has made him unable to reproduce. If he is seen in the caste system as an untouchable, then his ability to feel empathy and emphasize easily is also undesirable. Isadore’s own boss mocks him when he mistakes an organic cat with an electrical one and becomes disheartened by its death.

Another prime example of empathy not belonging only to humans is in the overall themes seen in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. While this book was published in the late sixties and highlighted issues seen during the cold war like sexism and the civil rights movement it also still holds truth to the present. The unsympathetic treatment of women and people of color in the sixties can be seen today through the #MeToo movement and the Black Lives Matter protests. In this novel, the major ideal and factor that helps to tell humans and androids apart is the ability to display empathy. There is a literal religion in the book based on empathy called Mercerism (read as Marxism) that revolves around the idea of an “Empathy Box”. The box takes the human characters to a scenario that is best described as multiplayer virtual reality and allows them to think and feel in a sort of hive mind state (Dick).

Yet, one of the main characters of the book Rick Deckard is very unremorseful until the middle-ending chapters of the book. Rick’s job is a bounty hunter, who gets paid to kill androids that were slaves on mars and escaped to earth. He holds no remorse for killing the almost seamlessly human like androids and has a main goal of gaining enough money to buy a real animal (Dick). The androids in this book show much more empathy then Deckard is able to. One android, named Pris Stratton, is visibly upset and distraught after learning that her friends that are androids have been killed, (by Rick) and that the killer is after her next. Her empathy shown towards the remaining two androids is that of someone who is scared of her friends dying. They are all in a similar boat and does not want harm to befall her friends (Dick). Empathy cannot be considered a human trait when we are so hesitant to display acts of empathy, but robots are easily able to feel for others with no hesitation.

Empathetic Rats Spring each other from Jail 2011, Ed Young

Major contributions to taking apart the idea that empathy makes us human is that other animals show empathy. Asian elephants for example are able to tell when someone in their group is stressed and will use their trunk to caress the upset elephant. This can be akin to a person consoling a baby that is crying by caressing them (Suddendorf, 2013). This is also seen in mice. Mice will only console family friends when they are in pain but will not reach out to other mice. This can be seen in humans, because we are more likely to help people that are similar to us than people who do not look like us. This was also true for the androids from the novel. An entire group of escaped androids had built their own police station as a way to protect each other and seem inconspicuous to the human population around them. When found out by Deckard, they ushered him into a room alone and tried to find an easy way to kill him without attracting too much attention to their makeshift safehouse (Dick). An assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University who studied mice said that based off this finding “We believe there’s a genetic contribution to the ability for empathy” (Viegas, 2014).

A reason we may be less empathetic is from desensitization from twenty-four-hour news outlets, social media, and exposure to intense violence daily. A constant stream of violence and graphic images from the internet and the television can sometimes make it harder to emphasize with others. This is seen in Tim Recuber’s article “What Becomes of Empathy?” when he discusses the empathy gap. Seeing tragedies happen over seas in very different and distant places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it can be hard to feel anything but helpless. The empathy gap describes the feeling of maybe wanting to sympathize with the attacks in Iraq but not doing anything about it or to help. But when the Paris attacks and bombings happen, there is more of an outcry because that is a little less distant and different. Humans in general have a hard time feeling empathy for others especially when it crosses racial boundaries (Recuber, 2016).

Another reason it can be hard to emphasize with others is because of how divided we have become. In Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto” this is illustrated perfectly in a section named Fractured Identities. The paper talks consistently about feminism but can be applied to broader groups as well. In this article, Haraway explains how even in groups of marginalized individuals who should be able to “speak the same language” and relate to one another, that this is still not possible. While Feminism is predominantly made up of women, all of those women have a different experience with feminism (Haraway 295-300). A white woman upset at how her looks are ridiculed in her workplace is not able to relate to a black woman who is unable to get past the interview stage because she doesn’t fit into European beauty standards. There is no one person who is just a feminist, because they fit into other categories and go by other labels as well. With different labels, different backgrounds and different experiences, it can become almost impossible to unionize with others.

Works Cited

Buonarroti, Michelangelo. The Creation of Adam. C. 1510, Sistine Chapel Ceiling.

Dick, Philip K. Blade Runner: (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?). Ballantine Books, 2007.

Grasgreen, Allie. “Empathizing 101.” Inside Higher Ed, 24 Nov. 2010.

Haraway, Donna. “A Cyborg Manifesto.” The Cybercultures Reader, by David Bell, Routledge, 2007, pp. 295–300.

Recuber, Tim. “What Becomes of Empathy.” Cyborgology, 20 July 2016.

Suddendorf, Thomas. “What Makes Us Human?” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 8 Feb. 2014, www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-suddendorf/what-makes-us-human_b_4414357.html.

Young, Ed. Empathetic Rats Spring Each Other from Jail. 9 Dec. 2011.

Viegas, Jen. “Elephants Added to List of Animals That Show Empathy.” Seeker, Seeker, 18 Feb. 2014, 7:00 AM, www.seeker.com/elephants-added-to-list-of-animals-that-show-empathy-1768309442.html.

Souls Make Us Human – For Now

Danny Pink (played by Samuel Anderson as a Cyberman in Doctor Who Episode “Death in Heaven”

Defining what makes humans human is an arbitrary process at best. Some people take it completely blasé and state that the definition of a human is that they belong to the Homo Sapiens species. While true from a strictly biological stance, this ignores the philosophical and existential aspects of the question. According to many internet sites, the way to distinguish a robot from a human is from picture recognition, be it transcribing distorted letters and numbers or picking each box with a picture of a street sign in it. For many people though, the trait that seems to mostly widely separate humans from animals is intelligence. It’s very obvious that humans possess higher levels of intelligence than anything else in the animal kingdom. However, with the ever-looming dawn of artificial intelligence, this soon will not be enough. Superintelligences far beyond our capacity to even fathom their levels of intelligence are a very real and near possibility. This means that humanity cannot be defined as the most intelligent things on Earth. What makes us human and separates us from machines and animals is what can best be described as a soul. This is not so much the soul in the religious sense, but in the sense that it is our awareness and consciousness.

It is often believed that empathy is what makes humans truly human. To a degree, this is an understandable idea. People who act without empathy, such as sociopathic killers, are often referred to as inhuman or even monstrous. In fact, horrendous crimes that are truly lacking in empathy are frequently described as “inhumane”. Charitable works trying to better the lives of others are referred to as humanitarian efforts. While other languages may not contain the same mindset, English at least clearly associates humanity with empathy and kindness. This is a flawed parameter, however. The fact is that quite often, humans are far from the most empathetic species around. In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, humanity is divided into several castes. Of these, the lowest class is the “specials”. Persons whose body and/or DNA was corrupted by the radiation from Earth’s nuclear fallout to the degree that they are rendered either infertile or unable to pass some form of intelligence test are branded “specials” and ostracized. They are shown to be viewed as less than human in several cases, yet the kind actions of John Isadore despite his abuse show that they are at least as human if not more so than the higher classes. Below even the specials are the androids. Enslaved by humanity, with any escapees ruthlessly hunted down, several androids are shown acting empathetically. Interestingly, where the androids simply want to live out their lives in peace, humans such as Phil Resch delight in killing them for no reason other than the joy of it. Androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are shown to be at least as human as humans themselves. Characters like Resch are still humans, even if they act inhumanly. Humans are not solely defined by empathy, but something far more complex.

Traditionally, humans have been viewed in a similar light as animals. Many of our social interactions are based on primitive biological needs to survive, reproduce, and compete for resources very similar to the instinctual behavior of animals. This explains much of human behavior, from wars to families. However, humans are becoming much more analogous to machines than animals. Humans are spending more and more time using computers/smartphone and have become linked like the nodes in a computer network. This has led to a great deal of debate over its effects on the human mind as well as its sociopolitical ramifications. Many humans have had upgrades via surgery. With the possibility of advanced prosthetics, cybernetic implants and enhancements, and even eventually uploading minds to computers, this almost leads to a Ship of Theseus type of debate – if we replace all our human parts with nonhuman substitutes, are we still a human? To restate the question, is there more to being a human then our hardware (bodies) and software (thoughts)? I believe the answer is yes. This idea is tied to the debate over Weak AI vs. Strong AI.

There are two major theories on how artificial intelligence will exist. These theories are known as Strong AI and Weak AI. Strong AI proponents believe sufficiently advanced AI would be a true working consciousness. A truly advanced program could think. Weak AI proponents believe that AI, no matter how advanced, are essentially a rock tricked into thinking and that they can only simulate thinking without actually thinking. A popular thought experiment is the Chinese room. Essentially, the thought experiment asks about a box with a person inside and Chinese symbols being entered into the box. The person inside the box matches the inputs to a program that lists the appropriate Chinese symbol output. The experiment asks if the person understands Chinese. This is compared to if an artificial intelligence matching inputs and outputs using a database of responses, similar to chatbots now in development, are intelligent and Strong AI. I believe that Weak AI is the furthest humanity can ever create and that it is impossible to create true Strong AI. Moreover, it would be nearly impossible to verify the AI’s status as a Strong AI.

The androids in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are possibly Strong AI, but it is impossible to truly tell without experiencing their viewpoint. If they were Strong AI, then they would possess a consciousness and therefore be human. Essentially, humans likely will never be able to verifiably create an artificial entity with a soul nor transfer their own souls to an artificial vessel. Humans are bound to their consciousness, created by the mysterious machinations of the human brain.

A study by the University of Michigan has found that empathy has dropped by forty percent within the last twenty to thirty years. Does this mean humans are becoming less human? As humans become more machinelike due to technology, they are having serious compatibility errors like computers running different software programs. This calls to mind the conflicts between the humans on earth and those on mars within Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Despite the dominant religion of Mercerism preaching empathy and kindness, it is clear that most of the humans do not truly experience empathy. Numerous characters clash within the novel simply due to being unable to understand the circumstances of the other characters. Notably, Deckard resorts to using an emotion organ to force his wife to agree with him rather than any attempt at true understanding. He makes no attempt to comprehend his wife’s emotional distress, instead seeking to optimize her efficiency. This calls to mind the empathy test in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? known as the Voight-Kampff test which is used to identify androids. It is stated that even some humans, due to their different life experiences, would be unable to pass the Voight-Kampff. Empathy can be very subjective and variable. Timothy Recuber, Visiting Assistant Professor of Communication at Hamilton College, discusses this idea. He brings up police brutality and the surges of empathy for not just the victims, but for police. A more recent example of this phenomenon is the Brett Kavanaugh hearings which saw support for both Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford. Many claimed to believe Ford’s testimony and linked her to the #metoo movement while supporters of Kavanaugh expressed sympathy for what they claimed was an innocent man being falsely accused, often spreading the hashtag #himtoo. It’s not fair to say either side lacks empathy as they clearly don’t; they just felt it more strongly for a different party.

If it’s impossible to agree on who is showing empathy in those circumstances, what sort of empathy tests would we create for AI to be analyzed with? How would we judge their levels of empathy? Surely there would be massive biases from the perspectives of the humans testing an entity they cannot hope to relate to. Such an entity, if aware, could have morals and ethics utterly incomprehensible to humans. Perhaps even more disturbingly, does passing an empathy test even prove the presence of empathy? Like the Chinese Room thought experiment, a weak AI capable of simulating empathy could surely pass an empathy test, but does that mean it feels empathy? Even humans can fake empathy. Many serial killers, despite clearly displaying a lack of basic empathy, are described as warm and loving people. The somewhat solipsist truth is that it’s impossible to truly say what somebody experiences without being that person and experiencing it, meaning that we would be unable to truly demonstrate an AI is Strong or Weak without some hitherto unknown means.

Animals do not display self-awareness to the level of humans. Machines do not either, and will not for the foreseeable future. Humans, however, do. This makes them unique on Earth, and possibly the Universe. Unless a new, aware life form arrives from either space or a laboratory or humanity, in our quest to play God, destroys our “souls” trying to upgrade ourselves, humanity will continue to be the only creatures known to be self-aware.

Works Cited:

“The Chinese Room Argument”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 9 April 2014, plato.stanford.edu/entries/chinese-room/

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. Doubleday, 1968.

Grasgeen, Allie. “Empathizing 101”. Inside Higher Ed, 24 November 2010, www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathizing-101

Recuber, Tim. “What Becomes of Empathy?”. The Society Pages, 20 July 2016, thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/07/20/what-becomes-of-empathy/

Rodriguez, Jesus. “Gödel, Consciousness and the Weak vs. Strong AI Debate”. Towards Data Science, 23 August, towardsdatascience.com/gödel-consciousness-and-the-weak-vs-strong-ai-debate-51e71a9189ca

Empathy’s evolution into ableism

Within the past few months, plastic straw bans have become all the rage. Last July, Seattle lead the initiative becoming the first major U.S. city to ban plastic straws. Corporations like Starbucks are starting to follow suit as well. This seems to show a growing movement towards helping the environment. After all, plastic waste is one of the biggest threats to our environment right now. Research has predicted that there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish (Sutter). Banning single use plastic straws seems like a logical step towards helping our earth, but it appears that might not be the case. This is just one of many small scale environmental “fixes” that is encouraged among society that actually doesn’t do enough to help. Not only that, but these short sighted solutions actually do a lot of damage to the disabled community as a whole.. Short-sighted, small scale environmental “fixes” that are placed on the consumer like straw bans are similar to the emphasis on empathy, especially empathy to animals, shown in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, emphasizing a sort of empathy that hurts society more than it actually helps.

Courtesy of P.J.L Laurens and Wikimedia Commons

There have been claims that Americans use 500 million straws per day, which seems to lead to a catastrophic amount of waste, but studies suggest that straws make a much smaller dent on our ecological footprint in the ocean than we think. Straws account for less than one percent of all the plastic waste in the ocean. When exaggerated numbers like this are presented, people result to quick, short sighted solutions and then don’t think about the consequences. Most people don’t realize that straws exist to help the disabled drink beverages, and having them available at all restaurants helps make their lives a lot easier and restaurants more accessible.

Small, simple solutions like ditching plastic straws have become extremely popular, not because they’re extremely impactful, but because of how easy they are to incorporate into everyday life and it becomes something to flaunt that shows how much someone cares about the environment. There are countless examples of this environmentalism-lite, between taking shorter showers, turning off lights and recycling. Though these all help, they aren’t impacting the environment as much as people think. What it’s mostly doing is making people feel good for helping out and then ignoring how it affects the disabled community.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, a similar phenomenon of small scale empathy expectations is also placed onto society. All of the humans in this society follow a religion called “Mercerism” which follows the plight of Wilbur Mercer, a human that was persecuted while climbing a mountain. This religion was spread to help unite humanity, or what was left of humanity on Earth after World War Terminus. The main tenant of Mercerism is empathy. Humans are taught to be empathetic towards each other and the only separation between humans and the undesirable androids is a presence of empathy.

The odd thing about Mercerism is that the people of this book don’t seem to exhibit that much empathy. There is a huge focus on it, people constantly remind each other to be empathetic. None of the “regular” humans act empathetically out of their own free will, they only act empathetically to show off to their neighbors and look good to them. Rick Deckhart finds out that his neighbors horse is pregnant and says to him “for you to have two horses and me none, that violates the whole basic theological and moral structure of Mercerism” (Dick, 10). Deckhart is only playing this empathy card to try to get his neighbors horse. He’s extremely jealous of his neighbor, for he has no real animals to tend after. Deckhart has an electric sheep he looks after, but he despises it, constantly talking about how embarrassed he is of the sheep and how much shame it brings him. Yet he can’t get rid of the sheep because he knows “how people are about not taking care of an animal; they consider it immoral and anti-empathic.” (Dick, 13). The only reason he tends after an animal is to show his neighbors how empathetic he is. His only sign of empathy is a shame, a show, which is similar to how some people see straw bans and other environmental “fixes”.

This isn’t the only example of lost empathy in the world of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. When the Earth was destroyed by World War Terminus, most humans left the earth because of radioactive dust that was left over from the war that had debilitating effects on humans. If someone was exposed to too much fog, they would become physically disabled, in that they couldn’t reproduce, or mentally disabled, becoming a “chickenhead”. The novel follows one of these “chickenheads”, John Isidore, and he is shown to be the most compassionate and empathetic character we see. He is empathetic towards animals, humans and androids alike, showing true, genuine empathy for all of them. Yet these “chickenheads” aren’t allowed to immigrate off of the destroyed Earth to the new colonies on Mars because of their afflictions from the dust.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Dick is trying to say that empathy has lost its meaning, it is no longer a genuine emotion and become something done for show, often leading to short-sighted reactions that end up harming a portion of the population. It has become something to flaunt to you neighbor, remind them how much more empathetic than you are than them. In the novel Mercerism rose as a product to of World War terminus, and in real life environmentalism rose as a product of climate change. Both of these have good intentions, but end up short sighted and damaging. People become empathetic for show and don’t truly consider who they’re affecting. This point is more relevant now than even before. A University of Michigan study has show that current college students are 40 percent less empathetic than those who went to school twenty to thirty years ago (Grasgreen).

Humans are only doing these small fixes like straw bans and recycling because it helps them feel like they’re making a difference. It makes them look good. They’re not truly helping the environment and addressing the root of the issue. They’re content in doing tiny fixes for two reasons; the problem is extremely large and society doesn’t expect them to solve this issue. People choose to ignore the true stakes of the issue, just going for the most superficial part of it, making them seem more contentious, but not too much so that they would become overzealous. In modern society, empathy has become a balancing act, dancing between caring enough to make others admire you, but not too much as to make others uncomfortable. People never stop to think that these “solutions” hurt the disabled around them.

Similarly, the humans in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep look after an animal because society wants them to, but no one really acknowledges why they should look after animals. Animals initially became so coveted because most became extinct or endangered from the global war. The humans are the reason most animals are extinct and now that the war is over, they have to look after animals, but they just do it now to look empathetic to each other. They don’t do it to help recover the animal populations that were destroyed by war. Not only that, but restricting some of the population to Earth to create a “better” colony on Mars might seem good, so they can pass on “desirable” traits, but these limitations just hurt people who are already at a disadvantage. That’s extremely similar to a lot of these environmental quick fixes people do. We never think of why we recycle besides of the fact that it “saves the planet”. Most people don’t stop and think that we need to save the planet because of damages tracing back from before the industrial revolution, and they don’t stop to think that something drastic needs to be done to counteract the dire circumstances.

Part of the reason this is such a huge problem is because empathy can only be stretched so far. Empathy is a nice problem, but when it’s just for show, that’s a huge issue. Even if it isn’t just for show, empathy still isn’t extremely effective on its own. It’s suggested that empathy is only the first step in helping others, and it can be damaging if empathy is on its own. Empathy can be used as a step to make a desire to help others, but it can also create apathy or disgust when someone or something is too foreign (Recuber). It’s easiest to empathize with what we are similar to, but it’s extremely hard to try to empathize with an animal that’s so different from us, or from something so much bigger that it becomes abstract. That’s exactly what happens in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep with the animals, especially the electric ones, and what happens in reality with humans trying to empathize with the health of our environment. This is what leads to caring about things for show.

People need to realize why we do things to help the environment and care more, instead of just caring for show and doing the small things that make us look good. Just like caring for an animal because society makes you, instead of caring for an animal because most animals are almost extinct. Society gets caught up in fixing some small symptoms of a bigger issue. It’s all about “reducing straw waste” instead of “reducing all waste” or “saving the manatees” instead of “stopping global warming”.

When empathy becomes expected of us, that’s when we need to question why we’re expected to feel empathetic. If society is forced to feel empathetic towards something, it’s important to question why we’re empathetic towards that thing. Why do the humans need to care for the animals in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? They need to care because almost all animals have gone extinct through a world war. Caring is enforced in order to try to save the wildlife of Earth, and to try to help the human race maintain its humanity. In modern society, people are told to recycle and reject single use plastics because of a huge plastic waste issue on Earth that is endangering the health of the world.

This compassion is forced on the common people and that’s the real problem. It’s not their fault the animals are almost extinct. It’s not the fault of the consumer there is so much plastic waste. The plastic waste is forced on them with excessive packaging, a readiness of single use plastics and a bombardment of other ridiculous plastics that no one is asking for. In both of these instances, people are forced to act a certain way to fix certain problems and then are shamed if they don’t, yet these problems are not created by them. The ones that created the problem remain unaffected, still perpetuating the problem and not feeling bad at all. Making people empathize with small things helps blind them to the larger systemic issues. All the empathy is forced onto regular people by a larger force. It’s hard to focus on the big picture when you’re looking at a small detail.

Having expectations to care for something can be helpful, but the purpose might become lost, or the empathy may become too distilled. When someone is too focused on a small issue, they react quickly, and these reactions end up hurting others. It’s hard for people to focus on empathizing with the disabled when society has forgotten about them, actively silencing this community, and then leads attention towards another object to empathize with. Once the purpose is lost, too distilled, or even causing collateral damage, then the empathy becomes basically useless. At that point, why even bother.

Works Cited:

Seattle Becomes First Major U.S. City to Ban Straws – The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2018/07/01/seattle-becomes-first-major-u-s-city-to-ban-straws/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.923b6f3f83fe. Accessed 4 Oct. 2018.

CNN, John D. Sutter. “How to Stop the Sixth Mass Extinction.” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/12/world/sutter-vanishing-help/index.html. Accessed 4 Oct. 2018.

Recuber, Tim. “What Becomes of Empathy?” Cyborgology, 20 July 2016, https://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/07/20/what-becomes-of-empathy/.

Grasgreen, Allie. “Empathizing 101” Inside Higher Ed, 24 November, 2010 https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathizing-101

Laurens, P. J. L. Straws. [object HTMLTableCellElement]. Wikimedia Commons, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:User_Abigor_global3.JPG.

USPS. 6c City Park. Prevention of Pollution 1970. 28 Oct. 1970. USPS, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Usstamp-save-our.jpg.

A Little Empathy, A Lot of Change

Empathy is what makes us human, and it has an effect on self-esteem and social anxiety disorder

The ideal human being does not exist, but having self-esteem, social anxiety disorder, or both, may lead one to believe that they are worth less than another human, based on the impossible standards imposed by society. How does self-esteem and social anxiety disorder affect one’s ability to feel human, and have worth? Since the beginning of time, humans have had face-to-face, friendly, and sexual interactions with other human beings, so why are self-esteem and society anxiety disorder prevalent in our society? We can blame the idea of the ideal human being in our society, and the varying levels of empathy in each of our lives. By reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, one can better understand the affect of these standards on a society. Dick creates the image of an artificial, post-apocalyptic world, which hosts a society with the standards of being physically and mentally abled. If a human being is not affected by the nuclear fallout, and abled, they have the chance to migrate to the new planet, Mars; because of these standards, different characters suffer from low self-esteem and social anxiety disorder symptoms, including androids. The ultimate question remains; is empathy what makes us human, based on the affects it has on our individual self-worth and our interactions? By looking at the science and meaning behind self-esteem and social anxiety disorder, we can use the characters Rick, Iran, and Rachael, and the main concept of the book, empathy, to answer this question.

What Is Self-Esteem?

To truly understand what self-esteem is, I visited the website verywellmind. This website over-flows with information in different areas of psychology. Within this website, self-esteem is characterized as developmental psychology. This website also covers topics of disorders, self-improvement, and advice. verywellmind is one of the few verywell sites, others being verywellhealth, verywellfit, and verywellfamily. On this website, I have gathered information from the article “What Exactly Is Self-Esteem” by Kendra Cherry, which explains the signs of low self-esteem. Cherry states the definition of self-esteem:

“In Psychology, the term self-esteem is used to describe a person’s overall sense of self-worth or personal value. In other words, how much you appreciate and like yourself.”

She also goes on to say that self-esteem is “often seen as” a “stable and enduring” personality trait, which can “involve a variety of beliefs about yourself, such as the appraisal of your own appearance, beliefs, emotions, and behaviors.” (verywellmind) Being a human requires a level of self-esteem that enables the appreciation of human imperfection, not fitting any ideal body type. In this article, the signs of low self-esteem are provided:

Negative outlook
Lack of confidence
Inability to express your needs
Focus on your weakness
Feelings of shame, depression, or anxiety
Belief that others are better than you
Trouble accepting positive feedback
Fear of failure

Before looking into the symptoms of low self-esteem in each character, it is important to look deeper into social-anxiety disorder.

What is Social-anxiety disorder?

To define a much more complex topic, I chose to visit the National Institute of Mental Health’s website to provide information about social-anxiety disorder, and it’s affect on a human being. The NIMH defines social anxiety disorder as a “common type of anxiety disorder.”

“Social anxiety disorder (also called social phobia) is a mental health condition. It is an intense, persistent fear of being watched and judged by others. This fear can affect work, school, and your other day-to-day activities. It can even make it hard to make and keep friends.”

Being a human also requires little to no symptoms of social-anxiety disorder, because of the affects it has on the life of those who have it. In this article, the signs of social-anxiety disorder are provided:

Blush, sweat, tremble, feel a rapid heart rate, or feel their “mind going blank”
Feel nauseous or sick to their stomach
Show a rigid body posture, make little eye contact, or speak with an overly soft voice
Find it scary and difficult to be with other people, especially those they don’t already know, and have a hard time talking to them even though they wish they could
Be very self-conscious in front of other people and feel embarrassed and awkward
Be very afraid that other people will judge them
Stay away from places where there are other people

Low Self-Esteem and Social Anxiety Disorder Depicted

We can look at the signs and symptoms of social anxiety disorder in Rick and Iran, and Rachael, and demonstrate how that has an affect on each character and their feeling of being human.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Rick Deckard is a bounty-hunter who stayed on earth after the nuclear fallout. Throughout the book, he displays senses of unhappiness and depression, a product of his low self-esteem. Rick demonstrates the feelings of depression in a conversation with his wife, Iran, telling her that he got the goat because he’s never been so depressed, that he has reached the point of empathizing with androids (Dick 160-161). He blames it on depression, and explains that:

“when you get that depressed you don’t care. Apathy, because you’ve lost a sense of worth. It doesn’t matter whether you feel better because if you have no worth -” (Dick 161).

Along with his symptoms of low self-esteem, Rick demonstrates symptoms of social anxiety disorder. After buying his black, Nubian goat, Rick “found himself shaking” (Dick 156) and “his hands numb”(Dick 156). I believe that Rick felt this way, because he was so excited, but the goat is so fragile that he is nervous about any interaction with it, for it is a great investment.

Iran demonstrates the low self-esteem feelings of depression. One of her most relevant expressions of her depression is when she says ,”My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.”(Dick 4). More concerning, she has a negative outlook on life when she states on a phone call to Rick,

“I’m so tired and I just have no hope left, of anything. Of our marriage and you possibly getting killed by one of those andys.” (Dick 87).

Another example of a negative outlook presented by Iran is when Rick bought the two of them a goat. At first Iran responded negatively, saying,

“You shouldn’t have gotten it without me,” Iran gasped. “I have a right to participate in the decision, the most important acquisition we’ll ever -” (Dick 157).

After Rick presents the goat as a surprise to her, Rick and Iran are temporarily cured of depression, being that their status has risen because of the purchase of the animal (Dick 158). The experience of having the goat, something to care for and be empathetic to seems surreal to them (Dick 159).

Rachael Rosen is a female that Rick encounters in the book. Although she is an android, she shows symptoms of low self-esteem. After sleeping with Rick, she thought that he would leave Iran for her, which does not happen. She figures that if he slept with her, he does not love Iran very much, but his new animal, his black, Nubian goat. As an act of jealousy of Ricks love for the goat, and his marriage with Iran, Rachael kills the goat and Iran sees it take place. Although Iran is clueless, Rick believes that “she had what seemed to her a reason.” (Dick 209); revenge.

Rick and Iran demonstrate symptoms of low self-esteem mentally, while Rachael demonstrates her low self-esteem verbally and physically with Rick, and what he loves the most. The absence of empathy, but the presence of emotion in Rachael’s response to Rick made her low self-esteem symptoms stand out from Iran’s low self-esteem symptoms, and Ricks social anxiety symptoms.

How does self-esteem and social anxiety disorder relate to empathy?

In order to discover the relation of self-esteem and social anxiety disorder with empathy, we must look at study that directly correlates them. In April of 2018, a study was published to NCBI, titled, “Burnout in Health Professionals According to Their Self-Esteem, Social Support, and Empathy Profile”. This study focuses on burnout, “a psychological and emotional affection associated with work which generates high distress and absenteeism in individuals” (NCBI), in health professionals. Health professionals were divided into four clusters, and measured by low, medium, and high self-esteem, “cognitive/affective empathy and perceived social support” (NCBI). Cluster 1 “characterized by 100% medium self-esteem and means slightly above those for the total sample in the empathy and social support variables” (NCBI), Cluster 2 characterized by high self-esteem or 100% self-esteem, “with scores on the cognitive empathy and social support variables above the mean for the total sample, and similar scores on affective empathy”(NCBI), and Clusters 3 and 4, containing professionals characterized by low self-esteem, produced scores different than the other two clusters, Cluster 4 scoring the lowest.

In the conclusion of this study, Cluster 1 scored the highest in empathy, Cluster 2 scored the highest in social support, and Cluster 3 “scored above the mean in affective empathy”(NCBI). Whereas empathy makes a difference in the study, self-esteem “is shown to be one of the explanatory variables making the main differences among” the clusters (NCBI).

A Post-Apocalyptic Solution

Although burnout, self-esteem, and social anxiety disorder differ in meaning and symptoms, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, dialing into the Penfield mood organ can temporarily mask the symptoms of each. The mood organ created by Dick, is used to set a specific, programmed mood on demand. Although this seems like a great solution to feeling symptoms of low self-esteem and social anxiety disorder, Iran presents us with an interesting idea. Dialing into the mood organ is unhealthy because the user is generally “sensing the absence of life”(Dick 5). One could compare the mood organ to modern medicine. Taking a dose of a medication only takes a symptom away temporarily, similar to that of the Penfield mood organ.

An Earthly Solution

Unlike the apocalyptic world created by Dick, there is no Penfield mood organ, although our medication does the same temporary job. After researching mental health, the question “Can people recover from mental illness?” and “Is there a cure?” are common, but the same answers remain. Answers such as, suggesting medication, diet changes, exercise and sleep. There is no, one cure for mental disorders or any other symptoms affecting mental health. There are various types of treatment for mental health disorders and symptoms, although some seem less frightening and invasive, than others, including psychotherapy, support groups, self help plans, and peer support. It is important to note that these treatments are built for those who have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder by a licensed physician, but they remain effective for humans with symptoms of each.

I suffer with majority of the symptoms of low self-esteem and social anxiety disorder. Although I have not been diagnosed, I find peer support and a self help plan the most helpful. My self help plan includes three steps to a better, and more effective day. 1) A routine of self-love, 2) Youtube inspiration and 3) Mirror practice routine. My routine of self-love includes waking up at 5 AM every morning, and having an hour of me-time each day. Me-time includes stretching, having a glass of water, and Pinterest browsing for different lifestyle inspiration, such as minimalism, and eco-friendly living. After me-time, I watch a few ASMR, or relaxation videos to clear my mind of any stress or worry, and then I meditate. Lastly, immediately after meditating, I pick any mirror in my home, and I stand in front of it, staring at myself for roughly five-to-ten minutes. I practice any conversations I may have that day, whether for a leadership event, or presentation for a class. This makes me feel more comfortable with my words, and the “vibe” I will give-off when speaking.

Why Does Empathy Make Us Human?

Looking back at the effects of empathy on self-esteem and social anxiety disorder, and the examples presented by each character in the book, it can be concluded that the main reason for their low self-esteem and social anxiety is the lack of empathy on earth, after the nuclear fallout.

Rick faces a lack of empathy because of his job; almost every character looks down upon his job, for his killing of androids for money. Iran faces a lack of empathy from Rick because she shows a face of depression, for almost the entire book. Rick cannot empathize with her, until he feels the depression that leads him to buy his goat. Rachael, on the other hand, is not empathized with because she is an android, and she has manipulated other bounty hunters into not retiring any more androids. (Dick 185) Rick soon regrets not killing Rachael after she kills his goat. In a conversation with Rick, Inspector Garland states that androids lack a “specific talent” that humans possess. He believes that “it’s called empathy.”(Dick 114).

In our world, empathy is something that varies from household-to-household, which creates instability within our society. Although it was depicted in the book by Dick, husbands are fighters and war-machines, wives are depressed and worriers, and mistresses are jealous and revengeful. I have taken into consideration two other articles “Empathizing 101” by Allie Grasgreen and “What Becomes of Empathy” by Tim Recuber. Recuber in supporting my solution to lessening low self-esteem and social anxiety. Recuber provides great points for a solution to unstable levels of empathy, by saying that he believes that “empathy is a virtue”(Recuber), and that “we need to keep working on ways to transform our empathy into action now, and in the months and years to come.”(Recuber). Along with this proposal for action, Grasgreen supports this by saying “empathy is so strongly believed to be a promoter of civility and understanding.” (Grasgreen). I believe that if we all learn to be more empathetic of those who do not fit within the ideal standards of society, low self-esteem and social anxiety disorder with not be so prevalent in our society. A little empathy, can bring a lot of change in society.

Works Cited:

“Mental Health Treatments” Mental Health America, http://www.mentalhealthamerica.net/types-mental-health-treatments

“Social Anxiety Disorder: More Than Just Shyness” NIH, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/social-anxiety-disorder-more-than-just-shyness/index.shtml

Jurado, Maria del Mar Molero, et al.“Burnout in Health Professionals According to Their Self-Esteem, Social Support and Empathy Profile.” frontiers in Psychology, vol. 9, no. 1, Apr. 2018. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.00424.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Del Ray, an Imprint of Random House, a Division of Penguin Random House, 2017.

Recuber, Tim. “What Becomes of Empathy?” Cyborgology , 26 July 2016, thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2016/07/20/what-becomes-of-empathy/.

Grasgreen, Allie. “Empathizing 101” Inside Higher Ed, 24 November, 2010, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/11/24/empathizing-101

Cherry, Kendra. “What Exactly Is Self-Esteem?” verywellmind, 20 September, 2018, https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-esteem-2795868

“People Man Woman Holding” pixabay, pixabay, 31 July. 2018, https://pixabay.com/en/people-man-woman-holding-hands-2561053/

Youngston, Nick. “Self Esteem” PicPedia.Org, PicPedia.Org, http://www.picpedia.org/highway-signs/s/self-esteem.html

Is self-care also community-care?

(Courtesy Flickr)
Sacha Chua via http://ryersonian.ca/a-post-election-guide-to-self-care/

Homo sapiens. The scientific word that refers to human. This word connects us all to one central state of mind but are there more? Perhaps, we should think of words like mammal or vertebrae. These words do accurately describe what it means to be classified as a human but do they show us what it means to be human? Do these words sum up the human condition that we all subscribe to? In simple, no. The human condition reflects on all of our experience, good or bad. The human condition is what brings us together in times of crisis and times of celebration. Being human is more than just a scientific classification but a state of being. One way to better understand the human condition is through the use of Phillip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. This futuristic book begins to analyze what makes us human by reflecting human life against that of a cyborg.

The human condition, when analyzed closely, is really about how people use empathy to go about their daily lives. The use of empathy allows people to better understand another person’s situation because they can put themselves in the other person’s position. An article from Inside Higher Ed, noted that people learn to be empathetic as children. Since the state of the human condition begins for each person as a child, it is important that we learn empathy as a child. Using empathy as a tool allows us to better know how to react in social setting. Empathy is the driving factor for our behavior at social gatherings like funerals because we can understand how loss effects people, even if we have not experienced it ourselves. Empathy also brings traits like love, compassion, and responsiveness into our everyday lives as well. These traits help us within society to help alleviate some of the issues we as a community or on an individual level may be affected by.

There currently is an issue with empathy as it relates to the human condition. A test given by the University of Michigan found that college students are 40% less empathetic than in the past 30 years. So what does that say about society? Many things have changed in the past 30 years like the increased usage of the internet and the prevalence of social media. There also was an attack on US soil, an event that changed the overall culture of western society. These changes also show a shift in our focus from community to self but they do not mean we are lacking empathy altogether. Today’s shift in empathy is due to an increase in focus on specific topics that the individual wishes to focus on. An example would be in the school environment where there is an increase in service learning projects. These projects allow the student to find something they are passionate about and work towards increasing their knowledge on the subject through service. These projects show a focus and commitment to bettering a community through civic service. A more popular example of this shift is that of the #self-care movement. This movement involves a variety of things from self-medicating and owning pets, all the way to the more common spa days and self-indulgencing tendencies of the millennial. It is important, however, to remember that this is not a new concept as taking care of one’s self was originally thought to be a way to make people more honest citizens who were more likely to care for others.

In Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, there is a theme of empathy. This empathy is shown through the two characters the book focuses on, Rick and John. The characters are still living on earth after radioactive dust has forced everyone to leave and begin living on Mars with the assistance of androids. Rick is living on Earth as an escaped android hunter, while John has been deemed unfit to emigrate due to health impacts of the dust. Rick shows empathy through his concern for his wife, while John shows empathy through his compassion for others. In an article written for International Business Times, it was argued that the use of fiction can help people to become more empathetic in real life. The article also suggested that being in fictional situation can help to prepare the reader for similar life situations, even if the setting is unrealistic. When using the characters from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep to reflect on the human condition, we can see that empathy today is still intact but is being heavily influenced by a focus on one’s individual focuses.

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, technology has grown to a point were individuals can control their mood through the use of the Penfield mood organ. The mood organ gives users the ability to preprogram their emotions. Rick uses his mood organ to help him wake up content in the morning and perform in a professional manner at work. Rick’s wife, Iran, also has a mood organ but to allow her to feel despair and sadness. Iran believes that feeling hopeless, even if it’s only twice a month, is reasonable since she still witnesses the things that would have made her sad but the emotion is blocked by the mood organ (Dick 5). Rick on the other hand, disagrees and tells her to change her setting for the day. Rick shows concern for Iran because he believes that feeling helpless for too long will prevent her from feeling other emotions like happiness. This concern for one’s family and their happiness shows empathy because Rick cares about how his wife feels. The relationship between Rick and his wife is something that everyone can relate to because of the human condition to want to connect to others and be happy.

An interesting connection can also be made between the mood organ and to the use of mood altering drugs. The mood organ changes a person’s mood to whatever they believe will be appropriate for their day. The use of mood altering drugs like antidepressants or antianxiety medications can help prevent the over stimulation of certain emotions. There is a lot of conversation about the use of such medications as there is a question about how much we allow ourselves to feel. Rick is clearly on the side of not feeling emotions that society has deemed unpleasant, while Iran believes we should feel everything. Neither character is wrong because the want to feel happy and the want to understand sadness help us to become more empathetic people. This relationship between mood organ and drugs relates back to the self-care movement. A 2014 study showed that there was an increase in of understanding of mental illness and a decrease of the stigma surrounding mental health. Many of those who utilize the ideas of self-care are doing so to preserve their own mental health when things stressful, whether they have a mental illness or not. These ideas can come in the form of prescription medications for diagnosed illnesses or aroma therapy teas.

Another way that Rick shows his empathy is through his love of animals. In the novel, a large majority of the animals have become extinct due to the radioactive dust. It then become a civic duty to care for an animal. Rick has a robotic sheep that he takes care for. He use to have a real sheep but it died of tetanus (Dick 11). Rick cares for his robotic sheep by bringing it hay and snack but also by petting it as well. Later in the book, Rick purchases a real goat to begin caring for as well. He has plans to care for the goat just as much as he cares for his robotic sheep. The love and commitment Rick puts into his animals shows his empathy for other because animals in this radioactive environment would not be able to care for themselves.

In the book, readers also see John’s compassion through his love of animals. John works as an assistant in a robotic animal hospital. The first animal John picks up on his morning commute is a cat with what was believed to be a short circuit (Dick 67). We later find out that the cat was not robotic but suffering from disease. John is extremely upset about this mistake but through his compassion for others he is able to come up with a solution of giving the owner a robotic animal at no charge. Later on, John shows this same compassion for a spider in his kitchen. The spider has had four of its legs removed by an android named Pris (Dick 193). When John gets the chance, he takes the spider outside to be released, knowing that away from Pris that spider will no longer be harmed.

This can be directly related to self-care and how we as human take care of our animals. As humans, we understand that people and pets live happier, longer lives when in an environment of love. The human condition as a whole requires love because without it we would do actions for one another without truly caring about the outcome. This is related to self-care because many people have turned to animals for support. It was estimated that 4,000 service dogs were placed in the United States between 2013-2014. These dogs have been trained to assist with a variety of conditions from anxiety and depression to PTSD. This focus of self-care through the animals allows individuals who require assistance to have access without feeling the need to ask others. In addition, the use of the animal allows individuals who are having a hard time connecting with others to gradually gain empathy for the animal. As the empathy for the animal builds, the person may find it easier to connect with others around them.

The society within the book relies on empathy boxes to allow people to connect to one another but it is what the main characters do within their daily lives that show their empathy for other people. In the novel, John shows compasions for others when he helps a group of androids, who have been outlawed on Earth. John lives alone in an abandoned building but then become the unexpected host to three androids who are hiding from Rick. The androids are afraid of being deactivated, alone, and have nowhere to go. John relates to them because since he has been deemed intellectually altered by the dust, people treat him as if he is less than a person. John decides to help the androids because he wants them to feel safe, even if it means confronting Rick. The compassion John shows for the androids can be related to the compassion people show in their everyday lives for themselves and those around them.

The self-care movement loosely revolves around compassion for self and those around you. One way people show their compassion is through the use of group spa dates, self-help books, and anything else that can be #TREATYOSELF. The self-care industry has been estimated to be worth over $10 billion dollars . These items have been key to opening new doors for people to reinvent themselves and feel rejuvenated. The reinvention, can also come from the ability to help others as seen with John and his android guest. As John hides the androids, he gains a better understanding about his world and the inequalities within it. John shows strength when the female androids are fearful of being found and determination to stand up for them when Rick arrives, even when his feelings are hurt by the mutilation of the spider.

Empathy is the ability to understand someone else’s feeling but as times have changed there has been a shift in the direction in which empathy has been focused. Empathy has become more self-focused and its focus been nurtured through the self-care movement. This movement has allowed people to focus more on their own feelings to better understand the world around them. As seen in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, these concepts of self-care reflect an ability to begin gaining empathy. Within the book, there are underlining self-care themes of self-medicating, therapy animals, and #TREATYOSELF. By relating the book to self-care, we see that empathy is on the rise by shifting focuses to more individualized thoughts that then mature into compassion and empathy for others.

We have the privilege of shaping our midterm essays to fit a real publication. Cyborgology, an academic, peer-edited blog, has agreed to work with our class to contextualize and format this assignment for submission to their publication. This publication takes issues presented in literature and contextualizes their overarching questions by relating the content to relevant political and cultural events. Therefore, you will take the themes we have discussed regarding Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and present them to an educated audience in terms of a current event you consider parallel in some significant way. The goal is to shed light on both the novel and our society by pairing them together.

Using the audience, format, genre, and style of a typical Cyborgology post (see list of examples here) as your model, you will craft a ~2,000-3,000 word blog post that answers the question “What Makes Us Human?” with a particular emphasis on the concept of empathy. In order to address this question you must frame it in terms of the texts we have read. Every paper must use Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep as the primary example, and use at least two of the articles we have read as secondary evidence. You are also welcome to include up to two additional sources from either our course readings or reliable outside sources that you consider essential to make your point. (In other words, you must have a minimum of 3 sources, and a maximum of 5 sources.) All sources must be integrated through summary, paraphrase, or quotation with proper MLA formatting (use OWL at Purdue for guidance).

Please see the Cyborgology submission guidelines for further information. You can and should include hyperlinks to your sources as indicated in this guide. You are also encouraged to use images, videos, or infographics that demonstrate your point (with captions and citations). Also, read this post on writing for a public audience by editor David Banks.

Sample outline: *From Cyborgology editor David Banks*

Introduction to X
Sentence telegraphing at the possibility that X is better understood with Y.
Summary of coverage of X
Why summary is wrong/incomplete/misunderstood by 3rd parties.
Introduction of theory Y
Application of theory Y
Synthesis of X and Y
Prescriptions and conclusions

Two printed copies of your draft in TNR, size 12, double spaced are due on 10/4 in class and a revised copy for our conference. Your final essay must be posted to our site under category “midterm” and tag “cyborgology” by 10/9.

Here is the rubric.