Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, is a science fictional story set on a futuristic dystopian Earth. World War Three, or as it is called in the novel World War Terminus, has left the Earth scarred by nuclear attacks and caked in radioactive dust. Earth is now scarcely populated by humans, many of which evacuate to Mars, and void of almost all animal life. The only humans left on Earth are those required by stay by their professions, such as bounty hunters like protagonist Rick Deckard. The niche of the bounty hunter is to track down and retire any androids that manage to escape their lives as slaves on Mars and flee to Earth. The latest and most advanced model of android in existence is called the Nexus-6 which are physically indistinguishable from humans in every way. However, humans and androids can be told apart based on empathy. Androids supposedly do not express as much of it as humans do. The only way to tell whether an individual is a human or an android is to administer a test called the Voight-Kampff. This test is designed to measure the subject’s empathetic response to a series of questions. If the subject scores low enough, he or she is deemed an android.
In Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, humans and androids look and move exactly alike, but if you begin to dive beneath the surface, it becomes clear that there are some distinct differences. An android is a cyborg, which in the words of Donna Haraway is “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism” (149). Obviously what really distinguishes humans from androids is the fact that humans are born, not built. However, that is not the difference that Dick chose to highlight in his novel. He intended to spark a debate based on the following: since humans and androids are indistinguishable physically, is there anything in our human nature that still makes us superior to these machines? One topic often discussed is whether androids experience empathy to the same degree that humans do. Empathy describes being able to relate to and love another life other than your own. Although in the novel the Voight-Kampf test is in place to determine whether an individual is android or human based solely upon empathy, it’s questionable whether that test is effective. Some humans experience empathy to a much lower degree than others, such as psychopaths, but that doesn’t make them biologically inhuman. A few androids addressed in the novel do seem to experience some empathy. In the case of Roy and Irmgard, they seem to have some sort of romantic relationship which requires them to express human-like emotions and empathy. Roy is devastated when Rick shoots Irmgard which reveals that he did care for her in some way.
The most prominent conflict in the novel is between man and technology in the form of humans versus androids. The androids are slaves on Mars and are seen as inferior by their human counterparts. However, androids are exactly like humans in every aspect besides their lessened experience of empathy. The goal of the androids is to gain complete equality to their human counterparts. The novel is better understood when paralleled to the current inequality between the civil rights of Peoples of Color and whites. The Black Lives Matter movement parallels the want of the androids to become equal to humans but also coerces readers to view the plight of the androids in a different light.
Dick wrote Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep during the Civil Rights Movement. In the 1960’s, African Americans and other Peoples of Color were fighting and struggling to gain equal rights for themselves. This struggle for equality appears to be a main issue in the novel because the androids are trying to make themselves exactly the same as humans in every way. In 2013, the Civil Rights Movement was brought back into focus when the Black Lives Matter movement was created. Now, before we go any further, note that the androids from the novel and the Black Lives Matter movement are only being compared in the sense that both groups want to be given equal rights to the group that views them as inferior.
Is what distinguishes a human from an android the definition of humanity? In the novel, what is suggested to define humanity is empathy. Yet empathy is not exclusive only to humans, some animals also exhibit it. Therefore the question arises, what truly defines humanity? In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, humans dial the Penfield mood organ for which emotions they wish to feel. These emotions created by the mood organ are simulated and are not responses to real stimuli so in this case, what makes humans different from androids? In the novel, the prime example of the inequality between humans and androids is Mercerism and the empathy box. Mercerism is a sort of religion to those in the world of the novel. It centers around an elderly man named Mercer as he climbs the same mountain repeatedly while being bombarded by stones. One can connect to Mercer when they hold the handles on the empathy box. The purpose of this exercise is to evoke an empathetic response in users to the suffering of Mercer. The only thing that is suggested to differ between humans and androids in the novel is empathy. Therefore, androids aim to eliminate Mercerism in order to level the difference between themselves and humans. When Buster Friendly, an android TV personality, exposes Mercerism as a fraud, Roy is pleased. He says, in an accomplished and relieved tone, “the whole experience of empathy is a swindle” (Dick 193). Humans now have one less connection to what is said to make them human.
Androids are portrayed as being without true emotion but the same is true for humans in the novel in some instances. When they want to feel a certain emotion at a given time, they use the mood organ. In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, there is a real conflict between humans and technology, but what are humans without technology? Both in the novel and in the real world, humans rely on technology very heavily. In the novel, they use the mood organ to control how they feel, use hover-cars as transportation, have electric animals to symbolize their economic stance, and even the androids were created as slaves to make human life easier. In the real world we aren’t so different. We are constantly using our smartphones for everything from telling us the weather to connecting with people across the world. We have tablets, laptops, computers, cars, and more.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, once physiological needs are satisfied, one can focus on other needs or wants. This hierarchy of needs is said to be exclusive to humans as the theory of human motivation. However, without having the most basic needs satisfied, humans are no different from animals, or perhaps androids. If our most basic needs are not met, we may need to resort to drastic measures until they are. Androids are portrayed as evil and stripped of empathy in the novel because they kill without remorse. But what makes them different than a human who is in a situation so dire that they may do the same? This parallels the Black Lives Matter movement because when peaceful demonstrations turn violent, those involved may need to resort to violence in order to keep themselves alive. In that moment, one would be able to kill without remorse.
Another debate evoked by the novel is whether or not there can ever be peace between humans and androids, will they ever be able to live side by side? This debate parallels the Black Lives Matter movement because years after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s, Peoples of Color are still not treated completely as equal to their white counterparts. Although the inequality of rights has been leveled for the most part and public areas have been desegregated, African Americans are still discriminated against in some circumstances and are subjected to offensive and sometimes violent acts based on the color of their skin. If, as the novel suggests, empathy is truly in our human nature, it is possible for peoples of all races to live together peacefully. However, humans and androids will never be able to live peacefully. Just as the nexus-6 androids made all empathy tests prior to the Voight-Kampf obsolete, new models of android will continue to be developed that will eventually make humanity obsolete. New models will become better and smarter and will be a real threat especially if their software can adapt and learn. In other words, there will be a conflict between humans and androids as long as they both exist.
It’s interesting that even with all the emphasis on empathy in the novel, the humans don’t seem to express it very much towards one another. For example, Rick and Iran. They live together as husband and wife yet they don’t seem to really love each other. Love requires empathy but Rick is solely focussed on chasing his dream of owning a real animal and Iran simply yearns to feel something genuine, and not generated by the mood organ. On the other hand, some androids display a romantic connection. Roy and Irmgard came to Earth on the same ship and seem to be very close. Roy is even devastated when Rick shoots Irmgard. This suggests that even with all the focus on empathy being the distinguishing factor between human and android, androids may be able to experience it to some degree.
In Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the natural conflict of man versus technology takes the form of humans versus androids. Androids were created by humans to be slaves on Mars that would make human life easier. When any android escapes slavery and flees to Earth, they are to be retired, or in other words killed. Androids are completely physically indistinguishable from humans and the only method of telling one apart from the other is an empathy test. However, in the novel androids have shown that in some cases they can exhibit more empathy than humans in other cases. Androids Roy and Irmgard seem to be more emotionally attached that humans Rick and Iran. Rick even goes ahead to sleep with another female.
So in the end, the main question of what truly defines humanity remains without a solid answer. When an android flees slavery and is not a threat to Earth’s society, they should not be retired without a second thought. In the case of Luba Luft the opera singer, she was a talented artist that actually had something to offer the world yet she was lost. This instance brings back the Black Lives Matter movement because the reason the group started was because a young man who was believed to be innocent was killed. It is possible for humans of all races to live together peacefully, yet the same is not true for humans and androids.
Works Cited
- Davis, Lennard J. Constructing Normalcy. Binghampton, 1995
- Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Del Ray, 1968
- Haraway, Donna. The Cyborg Manifesto. Berkeley Socialist Reveiw, 1985
- Black Lives Matter, Haki Creatives, http://blacklivesmatter.com/. Accessed 8 Oct. 2017.