Imitation of life?

What does it mean to be a human?
This seems to be the real, emerging question through the whole idea that Philip K. Dick tries to implant in the reader’s mind while reading “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Because, of course, it was all about implanting ideas for him, to suggest feelings that creep under the skin, that lurk in the shadows and feed on our minds. They are the most powerful worms, those that excavate inside the thoughts, that create hives and nest into our ordinary reasonings.
What is to be a man? What a better way to answer than using a simulacra of a man, something that actually was man made? It is a matryoshka of Chinese boxes, through the imitation game – one that Dick loves so much: an imitation of an imitation that is, ultimately, the truest of things, isn’t it?
There is a convoy of other ideas and questions right inside the shell of this great story and this one, unmistakable doubt. Most of the real questions we find us to ask ourselves following the hunt of the replicants are, however, unsettling and far from our initial idea of a straight science fiction story, noir vibes and police quest action. This is the realms of doubts and we are lost in it, without a real way to get out than the mirror and looking into ourselves.


[This digression contains spoilers… since now it seems proper to say]


Deckard, the android hunter, should be our reference point as a human being and the best answer to the big, initial question. Nonetheless, he is the worst possible example of human being, defective in empathy maybe beyond help. He uses chemicals to shut down arguments with his wife or, simply put, to make those arguments to be not relevant anymore. He dreams to be ordinary, by being over the ordinary, craving a living animal instead of his artificial one, to be the one who is talked about in the neighborhood – to get a new social status. In order to reach this apparently futile goal, he hunts down man-made beings called androids, who seems to be well capable of being aware and feels like a human being feels. He does it for money and against living and moral beings that potentially could have all he lacks in many regards as a man.
The established world, however, asserts that those androids, made for hard physical labor, are not capable of empathy. Deckard discovers that, maybe, lacking empathy is not one of the traits that can be used above all doubts to discern humans from non-humans. One of his colleagues, Resch, is certain of being an android in disguise, because he ruthlessly kills other androids and lacks any remorse or other feeling tied to this gruesome activity. Only that he is not an android at all, to his own scorn. Deckard, instead, feels down after hunting down and killing a well-known opera singer, an android called Luba Luft, who was an astounding performer. And, of course, a sexual intercourse with one of them clarify that “everything has changed” for him.
What does it mean to be a human, then?

Men, androids and animals
The word “android” is a well chosen one from the author. While in the memorable movie adaptation “Blade Runner” the word “replicant” is used, here we have a classic term, matching an equally classic Science Fiction trope, slightly modified. These are not the Asimov positronic type from the golden era. The word literally hints the nature of these beings: it came from the mix of two Greek words, “ἀνδρ” (“andr”, for “man”) and the suffix “ειδής”, a derivative of “εἶδος” (“eidḗs”, “form, likeness”). It is something with the likeness of a man, but curiously, the word “eidolos” is the root of the English “eidolon”, and similar words in other languages. The definition of that is an idealized person, or thing – a specter, a phantom but even one aspect of reality, as most dictionaries are pointing out.
So, androids could be a different aspect of our reality too, other than simply a simulacra?
This is one of Dick’s favorite theme, the imitation of life, the replica of the real, which, maybe, is important as reality itself.
The Nexus 6 series is a new set of androids, recently produced, capable of being very human-like in all aspects. The Rosen company uses them as a flagship of their production. They are so proud of creating artificial beings so perfect they are almost impossible to tell apart from real humans – so much that they are happy to make the work of police force and bounty hunters almost impossible. It is a sign of their strive for perfection, maybe a corporate wish to create the definitive product, or simply a god-like pulse. Their ultimate goal, it seems, is to invalidate all the psychological tests like the Voigt-Kampff one created to expose the androids and tell them apart from human suspects without invasive surgery.
The mentioned test is completely based on empathy. It is a slow psychological violence on one’s capability of having feelings or to “correctly” address them. But who decides what is the correct way to prove feelings? The test is largely and curiously relying on the reaction about illegal situations with living animals involved. The animals were almost completely wiped out by the pollution resulted from the Third World War, and they are now a very expensive privilege of few. It is very symbolical that Dick uses animals to make them decisive in uncovering artificial beings among humans. He emphasizes how people makes a living animal a powerful mean for a superior social status while, curiously, we still are debating about if they have emotions or even a soul nowadays. Even animals, though, have their artificial counter parts… but artificial animals and artificial humans have different purposes.
The former is an almost an everyday tool, like a car and it is needed for social rating and thus is functional for a human to be more important than another human. Or, better, sometimes it fakes that importance, by making the artificial animal be considered a living one, lying on its real nature – and again, a fake reality seems more important than the reality.
The latter, instead, is needed to lift the humans from one of their main issues throughout the history: hard, physical labor stress. Why we need to have a thinking artificial being to do that is not known, but they do, they think and they think hard. Androids crave survival, as they are programmed to be automatically shut down by an organism failure within few years. They are pushed by instinct, and, sometimes, is not very clear why they act as they do. Exactly like humans.
The lack of empathy is not concerning them, as it is not certain why and when this applies if it does at all. They simply want to keep existing.
It is not known what their feelings for the artificial/living animals related social status are, or if they care about them to be real or manmade. One of the two points, when an interaction between an android and a (living) animal is told, is when Rachel Rosen, former lover of Deckard and a before not-self-aware android, is pushing one to death. She wants to hurt Deckard as he did when he killed the Nexus 6 pack of androids she cared for. Is it this one of the best examples of empathy shown in the book? To kill for avenging a feeling, to amend a loss, to hurt someone, for rage or cold thinking?
It is really emblematic that the second scene with an interaction between an android and a living animal is the one with Pris and the spider. She tortures the little animal, by cutting his legs one by one, just to see if he can cope with the loss and keep on going with his life. It is like the android is trying to see if she can still go on knowing that her own life is at stake, that her time is limited. Is the life force so supreme? How does it feel to crawl instead of walking through the path of life?
This collaterally proves the validity of the Voigt-Kampff test, apparently showing the lack of importance that some androids can feel about living animals. But does it? Androids clearly do not care about social status, having being ripped from it by birthright. They simply do not see the importance of that, and thus this can change the meaning of the scene: it is not lacking feelings or cruelty display, but being dismissive toward the human conventions and rigid social pyramid. Maybe, Dick is telling us that androids are really free of most of the restraints human beings love to apply to themselves. Their struggle is a more primal one, the fight for their lives, while mankind is only striving for social approval.



The Mercerism and the parallelism
The religious issue is another important point of the novel.
The Mercerism is a new religion, based on the figure of Wilbur Mercer, a modern prophet whose a recorded feat of climbing a hill while being hit by stones is the main and ultimate trial for every faithful one: they are called to live this ordeal by a virtual device, that literally puts the viewer, the commoner, in the skin of the prophet while he suffers in his ascension.
It is not by any coincidence that the very Nexus 6 that Deckard hunts seems to be the responsible of exposing the truth behind the very well established religion. Wilbur Mercer was an actor, and the hill ascension scene is a fake one, a studio reproduced environment. Again, another fake reality that became better than reality itself.
Then, we suddenly shift from our original question. It is not anymore about human, and maybe a little bit less about reality. This is deeply connected to what we have discovered by cutting down in bits the meaning of the word “android” before. The real question Dick wants us to crave for, to have it implanted in our mind is… it is really important if it is not real? Does the reality of things really matter?
It is a leitmotiv of all of his novels and stories, mostly, and here is stronger than ever.
What does Deckard learn in the end? He quits the job since the reality of things does not matter to him anymore. The humans in his life have not clearly and out of all doubts presented any evidence to tell them apart from androids, in an interesting turn of events and shift of positions. It is like it is up to them now to show their empathy capability, not anymore the opposite. He still believes in Mercer, at the point that he sees him in the last confrontation with the Nexus 6 and believes he saved him. He does not care of his real existence… he is real for him.
Faith makes reality to be questionable, to shift the point of view and the arguments about it in a different plane, where the reality of things is not relevant and a different logic is applied. It is very ironic that science constructs like the androids are exposing something like religion to his true essence, a philosophical matter, maybe hinting that feelings, like empathy and the mysteries of the human mind, are exactly like that – a non-quantifiable phenomenon. If Mercer is a fake but his philosophy is true, it does really matter if people directs their prayer to him or not?
This emblematic turn of events is heavily reflected on the real nature of the famous TV entertainer Buster Friendly, whose in the novel is strongly suspected to be an android too, as he is a tireless performer. Buster Friendly is the perfect embodiment of the brain washing media action, one of the sub-layers of the novel plus the ruthless power of the corporations and the consumerist ideology – each and every of them often recurring in Dick’s literature. Putting Buster into the android ensemble, the author points again to the same hint. He makes the people laugh, he entertains a whole population and he does it so good that nobody really cares what his real nature is. Again, existence is different from essence, one of the perennial philosophic matter that dwells in every human culture and highlights whether the real question about the existence of God is, somehow, a question about the existence of the benefits from the belief itself.

The real question and questioning the real
The doubt called by the title of the novel in a very subtle way is really taking another shape, as we do realize that the point of view is shifted too: it is not if the androids dream of electric sheeps, if they crave to have some of their kind as a social status symbol instead of a living one like we do. It is: does the reality of things really matter?
Is it not the simple fact of being living and aware a statement itself? And this, collaterally, brings us to the other question too, if we do really know what is to be a human being or not. Maybe our values are not so important for others, maybe if they are not, there is no way to measure what is really living.
As humans, we often lack empathy toward other living beings, even the ones inside our species ring. And unilaterally think on reality, neglecting other possibilities, blindly following beliefs like religious ones and personals. Our lack of knowledge about anything in this universe strongly resonates with the deep doubts we are struggling to resolve inside us. So, maybe, we have to move forward and try to draw a line. Does our little, real world really matter and – with this we come back to the cryptic title of this story – do dreaming of fake or real things does really matter?
They are only dreams.
Is it that important that the dreamer is real?
He is only a dreamer.