Pathetically Unempathetic

Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" is set in a post-apocalyptic future. World war has pushed many humans away from Earth to a colony on Mars to escape a cloud of radioactive dust that encompasses a large portion of their home planet. Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter, has been tasked with exterminating a rogue group of Nexus-6 androids, the most sophisticated humanoid robot developed, "...the Nexus-6 have two trillion constituents plus a choice within a range of ten million possible combinations of cerebral activity. In .45 of a second an android equipped with such a brain structure could assume any one of fourteen basic reaction-postures" (Dick, 30). These androids appear completely human, their one weakness being that they feel no empathy or emotion. The Voight-Kampff Empathy Test is used to determine if a subject is android or human by asking troubling questions that would promote disgust and empathetic responsiveness in a human being. While the Nexus-6 may understand what the test is calculating, the android's emotions are but simulated reproductions and therefore are not genuine, and cannot be faked.

Rick Deckard has never had trouble retiring an android; his feelings toward them the same as toward an non-living entity. Eldon Rosen, the owner and creator of the Nexus-6, presents him with the subject Rachael Rosen, introduced as Eldon's human niece. Rachael fails the Voight-Kampff test with flying colors and is proven to be a Nexus-6 type android with the implanted false memories of Eldon's deceased niece, though her beauty strikes Deckard as if she were human. The false memories used by the Rosen Association on Rachael attempt to bring a normally unfeeling, blank android closer to the empathetic reasoning and understanding of a human. These beings, highly intelligent with psychologies based entirely on logic, have no chance of ever producing true empathy for any other living thing, nor even for themselves. Though sophisticated, the Nexus-6 android can only emulate an emotion because it's meant to, never because it feels it should. Empathy, a human emotion entailing the understanding and acknowledgment of the pain or joy of another, is what separates the humans of Dick's world with the unfeeling human replica androids of the Rosen Association.

Rick Deckard plays a key role as the middle-man between the world of the human and that of the android. Not particularly religious, Deckard views Mercerism, the religion of the human species, to be a tool for use only when needed. Deckard also views androids as completely heartless, though before this assignment has never experienced the true nature of a Nexus-6. Trouble arises for Deckard upon the retiring of Luba Luft, a beautiful female Nexus-6 unit. Luba Luft procures a job as an opera singer at the War Memorial Opera House. Deckard is instantly attracted to Ms. Luft, not only for her stunning looks but also due to her amazing voice, "...Luba Luft had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of simulation" (Dick, 141). Deckard views Luba Luft's talent as incredible and can see no true reason to end her artificial life. In fact, Deckard views her life as equally valuable to the life of a human being. Phil Resch, a fellow bounty hunter, retires Luba without thought or remorse. Deckard instantly feels disgust for Resch, and a deep-seeded sense of wrongdoing toward Luba, "I rode down with two creatures, one human, the other android...and my feelings were the reverse of those intended" (Dick, 143). Deckard feels empathy toward the android, his ability to rationalize her death shrouded by her lustrous voice and seeming interest in humanity, "It's sex," declares Phil Resch, "Because she--it--was physically attractive...You wanted to go to bed with a female type of android-nothing more, nothing less" (Dick, 143). Deckard's empathy here toward a cold, calculating piece of machinery grinds against all previous logic within him. Deckard has never been faced with feelings toward a machine, nor is he prepared to deal with the pragmatical notion that this mindless drone could care for human art, sing such passionate tunes, or be so seemingly beautiful.

In an attempt to find the depth of android love, Deckard calls Rachael Rosen, inviting her to a San Francisco hotel room, "...I'll give up on the remaining andys. We'll do something else" (Dick, 182). Deckard cannot believe that a creature with the capacities of Luba Luft could truly be as mindless and emotionless as Phil Resch painted them to be. Ironically, Rachael Rosen's particular design is geared toward turning android bounty hunters against their profession through her beauty and their sexual desire. Deckard's intimate encounter with Rachael reveals that androids have no empathetic reasoning nor understanding; only a cold, calculating relationship with the world outside of themselves, "No emotional awareness, no feeling-sense of the actual meaning...Only the hollow, formal, intellectual definitions of the separate terms" (Dick, 190). Androids prove to have no true emotions nor any understanding of the purpose of emotional terminology to humans. Androids feel no remorse for saying or doing things that an empathetic, sensitive human would have much difficulty expressing. After making love, Rachael reveals her schematic to Deckard quite methodically, "No bounty hunter has ever gone on after being with me. Except one. A very cynical man" (Dick, 198). The man Rachael refers to in this passage is Phil Resch, the same man who 'killed' Luba Luft. Deckard realizes that, to continue his professional career, he will have to become as cold-hearted and disassociated as Resch toward the androids.

Deckard is left with a, "new and horribly unique depression" (Dick, 167), and decides to take his vile bounty to purchase a living, breathing animal. Mercerism encourages humans to own real animals; a living animal being the only remaining creature other than a human capable of giving and receiving empathy. Though Deckard owns an electric sheep, he feels no empathy or sense of love toward it. Deckard purchases a black Nubian goat and returns home to his wife, Iran, who is filled with a great joy that leaks into Deckard, "Let's run downstairs and give thanks to Mercer" (Dick, 172), says Iran happily. Wilbur Mercer, the religious figurehead of Dick's Mercerism, is the manifestation of all human pain personified; strolling evermore through a tumult of rocks and insults toward a solitary and inevitable death. Using a piece of technology called an empathy box, all of human kind can connect to a conscious human collective of shared emotion in Mercer's walk. The empathy box is meant to bring all humanity closer together, allowing the collective to experience all pleasures and pains of its existence with itself. Iran wishes to share the joy of she and Deckard's newly-purchased Nubian goat with her fellow Mercerian's in return for the positive emotions she has received in the past from the collective group of peers.

When fused with Mercer, humans enter into a hive-mindesque experience, giving their pleasure, happiness, sadness, or pain to Mercer and sharing in the pleasure, happiness, sadness, and pain of the rest of humanity, "He experienced them, the others, incorporated the babble of their thoughts, heard in his own brain the noise of their many individual existences. They-and he-cared about one thing; this fusion of their mentalities oriented their attention on the hill, the climb, the need to ascend" (Dick, 22). By concentrating and becoming one with Mercer, climbing his path toward death along with him, feeling the sting of the rocks that are flung by unseen enemies and the scorns of the insults trailing his every step, humanity unites into an ever-loving, ever-feeling entity of pure empathy aimed toward life. Deckard does not wish to fuse with Mercer in a cloud of greed, "They'll have our joy, but we'll lose. We'll exchange what we feel for what they feel. Our joy will be lost" (Dick, 174). Deckard does not wish to share his pain or his pleasure with the collective for he has not yet finished contemplating ,and certainly not understanding, what happened to him upon the death of Luba Luft. Deckard's disgust with humanity through the actions of Phil Resch may be to blame for this. Deckard, feeling empathy for a machine which he respected and watched 'die' in front of him, can see no reason to share empathy with humanity, the source of Resch's uncaring act. Deckard would rather stay with his wife, reveling in the new animal and keeping the joy to themselves, than share this joy with a species who would thoughtlessly end the 'life' of a creature as fair as Luba Luft.

Humanity, through Mercerism, shares the joys and depressions of life amongst each participating member. Deckard, through Iran's prodding, eventually takes his place at the empathy box. Rather than joining into the collective, Deckard is met with the face of Mercer himself, "I am your friend, but you must go on as if I did not exist...Don't you see? There is no salvation" (Dick, 178). Mercer attempts to show Deckard that life is pain personified; that some pain must exist for life to continue, and that salvation is personal and can never be truly reached until death, "You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life...this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life" (Dick, 179). Mercer reveals to Deckard that there are no sins; both wrongs and rights must exist in the world to produce civilization. All things, both good and bad, are major factors in the continued drama of human life. Without these things, humans would be reduced to unfeeling, emotionless husks; very similar to the unfeeling, passionless android.

Irmgard Baty, the android wife of Roy Baty, leader of the Nexus-6 revolt, claims with great anger that Mercerism is the representation of, “...that empathy that humans have--men and women throughout the Sol System [are formed] into a single entity...isn't that a way of proving that humans can do something we can't do” (Dick, 209)? Irmgard's anger seethes from the fact that androids can only comprehend the term “empathy” but can never feel it. To her, humans use empathy in their religion to further separate themselves from androids. The Nexus-6's fail to comprehend that even if Mercer does not truly exist, humanity's empathy and the joined emotion of the empathy box will continue far into the future. John Isidore, a “chickenhead” affected by the radioactive dust of the previous world war into retardation, is present during Buster Friendly's revelation that Mercerism is a hoax. Isidore escapes into his empathy box, seeking Mercer's retaliation to Friendly's claim, “I am a fraud. They're sincere; their research is genuine,” says Mercer to Isidore, “They will have trouble understanding why nothing has changed. Because you're still here and I'm still here” (Dick, 214). The androids believe that through Friendly's revelation the whole of humanity will turn their backs on the idea of Mercerism and thus empathy, which they find illogical. In fact, Mercerism being a fraud does nothing to change the acceptance of the religion throughout mankind's experience. Mercer being real or imaginary was never a part of Mercerism; simply the empathetic connection with people outside of oneself makes Mercerism far more than the image of a man walking up a hill toward his demise. In truth, humans use empathy to deal with the darkest moments of their experience. The sharing of great happiness, to bring joy to others, or great sadness, to be replaces with comfort, is what brings humanity to Mercerism in the first place. The android can see only the surface of things, the actual factual representation of each moment. They live in a shell unaware of the world of complex emotion existing beneath the structures of man's society.

Deckard eventually reaches, “...the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come” (Dick, 227). Deckard feels that he has reached the end of his life; all constructs within his mind tumbling into dust. With the impossibility of retiring another emotionless android overflowing his mind, Deckard drives to the border of Oregon, an area completely void of life. Dust and “kipple” blot out any memory or hope of life that once existed here. Deckard takes this time to contemplate Mercer and the experiences he has had recently with the imaginary figure, “For Mercer everything is easy...because Mercer accepts everything. Nothing is alien to him” (Dick, 230). Deckard realizes that to continue the life he has claimed as his own, he will be required look past the emotions he feels for all androids. Deckard feels that he has become, “...an unnatural self” (Dick, 230), a misconstrued restructuring of the person he once was. As a bounty hunter Deckard was not allowed to feel emotions, especially not toward his victims. After seeing the advanced properties of the Nexus-6, it's beauty and it's blindness, Deckard loses faith in his previous viewpoints, as well as his own will to live, “...he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked; the dead stones, the dust stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves” (Dick, 231). Deckard experiences the life and struggle of Mercer, but in quite a radically different way than the rest of humanity does on a daily basis.

Rather than feeling the emotions of many, Deckard only feels his own pain and isolation, thus embodying Mercer through his actions, “...the first rock...struck him in the inguinal region. And the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering touched him throughout in its undisguised actual form” (Dick, 231). Not only does Deckard experience the cold loneliness of Mercer's walk toward death, he also experiences the pain and isolation caused by Mercer's decision to become what he has been to humanity, “I'm Wilbur Mercer; I've permanently fused with him. And I can't unfuse. I'm sitting here waiting to unfuse” (Dick, 233). Deckard knows that his experience has changed his life, but he feels that it has changed for the better, “I had the absolute, utter, completely real illusion that I had become Mercer and people were lobbing rocks at me...when you use the empathy box you feel you're with Mercer. The difference is I wasn't with anyone; I was alone” (Dick, 233). Deckard views the experience with Mercer to be far less than what he has experienced. The empathy box produces the synthetic version of Mercer's experience; one that can be felt by millions of humans throughout the Solar System. This unfeeling, sensory delusion of a man carrying on his shoulders the pain of all others can be compared to the synthetic emotion of an android. Both are illusions claiming to be real, clouding the true essence of being. Deckard's experience was one in the same with Mercer's; the solitude and finite one-ness of life weighed by the pain of the deepest darkness of humanity.

The Nexus-6 can express no empathy, and thus was never capable of understanding the emotions of others; it is simply not programmed to feel. While built to simulate and give the illusion of emotion, the Nexus-6 produces nothing more than visually interpretive manipulation. The androids think of nothing but themselves, for they know and can know of no other. A being without emotion simply cannot care about it's own existence or the existence of another. Though the intelligence of the humanoid Nexus-6 surpasses that of many classifications of man, the inherent lack of empathy and emotion discolors them into a vile, disturbing mechanism of hatred and destruction. Mercerism, connecting all humans across the cosmos, teaches the valuable message of empathy through the sharing of emotions amongst the collective. Deckard's close encounters with the emotionless Nexus-6 drones leads him on a path of self discovery; learning that the true power of humanity lies in an innate ability to feel all things: pain or pleasure. No android, whether beautiful or hideous, can reconstruct the true nature of a human; a caring, feeling, emotion-filled being who thinks of others before considering himself. This beauty, one that in thousands of years may never be truly emulated, is the brilliant light of empathy; our ability to feel and interpret the minds and thoughts of those near us that pushes us toward a future that always attempts to be brighter than the fading past.