At the end of chapter 19, Rick finds the three remaining nexus-6 androids and kills them. He first kills Pris, possibly the hardest one to kill because she looks exactly like Rachel. Then he kills Irmgard. This causes Roy to give up and Rick kills him last. Before Rick kills Roy he says, “Okay, you loved her. . . And I loved Rachel. And the special one loved the other Rachel” (Dick 205-206). Rick suggests here that it was possible to love an android.
Humans built nuclear weapons before we learned how to live together, love one another, and be peaceful towards each other. Instead of learning to live together we have to kill each other for “peace and harmony.” These androids were very close to being human, so do you think human and android could ever learn how to live together, love one another, and be peaceful towards each other? Do you think we as humans can figure out how to live together, love one another, and be peaceful before we end up in a nuclear apocalypse trying to figure out who is an android and who is a human?
I don’t think that humans and androids will ever be able to live together in harmony. This novel was written in the 1960’s when the Civil Rights movement was going on so African Americans were still fighting for equal rights. The androids are slaves on Mars in the novel so if People of Color are still fighting for equal rights today in 2017, it would take a very long time for androids to become equal to humans and even then I don’t think they’d be able to live peacefully. If new models of androids are constantly being created and the Nexus-6 androids are able to evolve, androids may become more powerful and intelligent than humans and surpass humanity completely. Creating an artificial intelligence that could potentially surpass humanity can only end poorly.
If we lived in a world where Androids and Human shared space, I do not think that we would be able to live in peace. I say this because we will always have an issue where androids will never be 100% human. I believe that androids will never have the ability to posses a soul. Our soul is the determining factor of our humanity. While in todays society we are steadily on the edge of nuclear warfare, I do not believe we will ever live in a world with peace. The leaders of our world today are dominate hungry and while others continue to show there dominance other countries become angry and a force to fight back and show there power.
I think androids and humans would be able to eventually live peacefully together, it would just take an extraneous amount of time to occur. People dislike fast extreme changes as were are not built to adapt as fast as tech is. We adapt slowly and move at a cautious pace. We feel we must understand and know everything about a certain idea before we can trust and believe in it or in case this does not occur it becomes a threat. the idea of androids needs to slowly be reframed over time.
Humanity has to figure out how to live together or risk the end of humanity all together. With the combined strength of the Earth’s nuclear arsenal, live could and would likely be totally eradicated from the planet. Humans have showed the ability to care, love, forgive, and make peace with enemies in the past. For example, the Jewish population did not retaliate and slaughter the population of Germany post-WWII for reparations for the Holocaust. Humanity has the ability to solve manners in a diplomatic and non-violent way, and with nuclear apocalypse the punishment for failing to do so, cooler heads will prevail.
I do believe that humans and androids could learn to live together in peace but I feel like it is important that humans see themselves as equal to androids or there won’t be peace. If Rick can come to love androids and see the value in their lives, then I feel like all humans can if they give it a chance. This is situation is similar to whites and blacks being able to live alongside each other after slavery. Black people were treated horribly and viewed as less than human just like androids. And even though there are still hate crimes and injustices towards African Americans, there has been much progress. I feel like if African Americans can come from being seen as less than human and property so can androids.