Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is a science fiction novel published in 1968 by Philip K. Dick. It’s the story of a man named Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who lives in a dystopian San Francisco after most of the human population has relocated themselves to Mars due to the extensive damages to Earth after a global nuclear war, known as World War Terminus. One passage in the first section of the novel that I thought was particularly important was actually about John Isidore, a ‘chickenhead’ (derogatory slang for someone whose mental capacity has been affected by radiation), who lives completely alone in an empty apartment building. In the second chapter, he is seen using his empathy box to drown out his loneliness. Being on a mostly empty planet, silence has started to have a horrible effect on Isidore. He states that “… it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated from a vast mill” (19). This description shows how crippling the silence has become, how much of a “void,” and a vast nothingness it represents (20). When he feels the totality of the silence, it’s overhwleming and makes him feel powerless. The one method of connection that he has to other human beings is his empathy box, because his dreary living situation is only a further reminder of “the echo of nothing” that constantly surrounds him (21).
The empathy box is an aspect of Mercerism, a religion designed to cultivate empathy and community values. Everyone using the box, past or present, experiences “physical merging–accompanied by mental and spiritual identification–with Wilbur Mercer,” the leader of Mercerism (22). During this odd virtual reality scene, Isidore clutches the handles of the empathy box and is fused with all others using it. He “heard in his own brain the noise of their many individual existences” (22). Though empathy, and the capacity for it, becomes a major distinction of humanity in the book, empathy to this level is intentionally extreme and cult-like. At one point during his virtual climb up a mountain, Isidore is struck by a rock and “He felt the pain” (22). His arm is even bleeding after. He blames it on “The old antagonists” but later finds comfort in the fact that he hears the other voices say, “We got hit, on our left arm; it hurts like hell” (22-23). This section demonstrates the extremity of empathy to the point of mind control. In particular, the use of “our” in the phrase “our left arm” shows more than a natural human empathy toward others and instead, it’s a fusion and a loss of individuality.
Right before Isidore exits the box, he experiences “himself as encompassing every other living thing” (24). This impossible sensation reveals the irony of over-regulated life. Mercerism has become an overcompensation for the reality of human life. In a world encapsulated by so much artificiality, even the essential identity of what it means to be human has been corrupted. It is clear that feeling like his individuality is secondary to collective consciousness has become Isidore’s only rescue from silence, which is synonymous with despair. Finally, the repetition of the word “existence” begs the question: what does it mean to exist? And is that different from what it means to be human?
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