Human vs Android

Have the androids taken over already?

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Philip K. Dick is getting more relevant with each passing year. He turned out to be the it philosopher for our time, even though he’s been dead for over 40 years. I think he should be read widely and not just by sci-fi fans aka nerdy men but by anyone interested in understanding the world around us.

Two themes that PKD explored consistently in his books were: What is an authentic human? And what is the nature of reality? Back in the 1960-70s these questions seemed arcane, they maybe only preoccupied the minds of the Timothy Leary acid taking boomer hippy crowd. But today these are the questions that concern mainstream culture and all of us. So PKD was only 50 years ahead of his time. No big deal — it’s a pretty common prophet trope.

Within the universe there exist fierce cold things, which I have given the name "machines" to. Their behavior frightens me, especially if it imitates human behavior so well that…

These creatures are among us, although morphologically they do not differ from us; we must not posit a difference of essence, but a difference of behavior. In my science fiction I write about about them constantly. Sometimes they themselves do not know they are androids. Like Rachel Rosen, they can be pretty but somehow lack something; or, like Pris in WE CAN BUILD YOU, they can be absolutely born of a human womb and even desing androids -- the Abraham Lincoln one in that book -- and themselves be without warmth; they then fall within the clinical entity "schizoid," which means lacking proper feeling. I am sure we mean the same thing here, with the emphasis on the word "thing." A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake. We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate which his fellow living creatures fall victim to; he stands detached, a spectator, acting out by his indifference John Donne's theorem that "No man is an island," but giving that theorem a twist: that which is a mental and a moral island is not a man

This last line “a mental and moral island is not a man” is important to remember now when nihilism reigns supreme and empathy is either mocked or exposed as hypocrisy.

But 13th century Persian poet Saadi had the same idea as PKD regrading who is an authentic human and what is the defining human characteristic. Here is his poem “Human Beings” that is inscribed on United Nations building in NYC —

Human beings are members of a whole,
In creation of one essence and soul.
If one member is afflicted with pain,
Other members uneasy will remain.
If you've no sympathy for human pain,
The name of human you cannot retain!

It seems like the people in charge in our society may look human and may be made of the same stuff as humans, but they behave like machines. They’re androids — moral islands. They have no empathy, care nothing about the world around them. And they fear the real human. The human is weaker and gentler than the android, but a human has empathy and has strength in his communality. And it is this communality that the androids want to destroy. The androids are intelligent and cunning and they have put their wits to good use — presenting their good face to the public, arguing that they just want what’s best for all of us.

PKD had a lot to say about this android’s ability to be deceptive…

Now I do not intend to abandon my dichotomy between what I call "human" and what I call "android," the latter being a cruel and cheap mockery of the former for base ends. But I had been going on surface appearances; to distinguish the categories more cunning is required. For if a gentle, harmless life conceals itself behind a frightening war-mask, then it is likely that behind gentle and loving masks there can conceal itself a vicious slayer of men's souls. In neither case can we go on surface appearance; we must penetrate to the heart of each, to the heart of the subject.¹

—Evgenia

P.S. I recommend you to read in full PKD’s essays that talk about this android/human split “The Android and the Human” (1972) and “Man, Android, and Machine” (1975). But his most famous book Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep, which was adapted into Blade Runner by Ridley Scott, dramatizes this theme as well. It’s interesting that the book at its core is very different from film’s simple, melodramatic story about mortality and the love of human for android who is also capable of feeling. That’s Ridley Scott’s concoction. PKD’s book is a much richer, darker and more philosophical work. And it is never sappy about a hot female android and her feelings — in fact, in the book PKD comes to a conclusion very different to Blade Runner’s — Androids are intelligent cruel machines, they can’t be reformed, they can’t be taught empathy, they are, in human terms, psychopaths and they have to be "retired.” There is not other way of dealing with them and they are too dangerous to just let them be among humans.

Want to know more? We just recorded our first book club discussion on PKD.

BOOK CLUB #1: Alienated by design

1. Man, Android, and Machine (1975)

https://philipdick.com/mirror/websites/pkdweb/Man,%20Android%20and%20Machine.htm