Phillip K. Dick’s enticing novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a book that relates the experiences of a bounty hunter, Rick Deckard and his job to terminate robots to sustain humanity. The title tackles human relation to the environment, their reaction to the advent of technology, and depicts the role of spirituality in the post-nuclear apocalyptic earth. The following document discusses the themes of human activity on the environment, humanity as a virtue, and spirituality as an aspect of humanity.
Part 1
The setting of the novel is in the post-nuclear apocalyptic earth when most animals are extinct, and men pride themselves in owning at least a natural animal. The aspect of the book reveals man’s interest in owning and controlling nature by twisting the interests of the environment to fulfill manly desires. The bounty hunter, Rick Deckard’s primary goal is to collect enough funds to purchase a natural goat in replacement for his electric one while his wife slips into a self-made depression for her desire for a live animal as that of their neighbors (Schuster, 26). The notion is a sorry picture of how man is striving to save the environment after engaging nuclear methods haphazardly, leading to the destruction of the entire globe. The novel reveals that humans have complete disregard for the environment as after the nuclear revolution, man only preserves nature, not for the sake of conserving the environment, but for self-actualization. The same aspect is an indication that man values only the stuff that is rare and hard to come across.
The trait this novel reveals in humans aligns with the
law of demand and supply in the business world, where an increase in the product’s demand leads to a subsequent rise in the cost of its acquisition. Dick’s novel is educative and seeks to out the turn-the notion of American consumerism by trying to prove that humans can still acquire satisfaction from the cheap and readily available resources instead of striving for more expensive products that may instead have menial values. According to Mirmobin and Ensieh, the novel reveals several aspects of American consumerism that persist from generation to generation even in the post-nuclear apocalyptic period (221). Despite the degradation of the virtue of humanity and the rise in computerized duplicates with better attributes than humans threatening the human population, the real humans continually compete against one another, striving to spend more than they can realistically earn. The urge to stay above the rest fans the existence of the
Part 2
law of demand and supply as cheaper commodities rise excessively in value due to scarcity and high demand.
lives of others.
The novel inherently raises the question of humanity, to which the author provides a mixed and ambiguous response. The author initially attributes humanity to the ability to feel empathetic towards fellow humans and later reveals that the real humans bear no significant differences with their machine counterparts. According to Schuster, Rick Deckard used the Voigt-Kampff test to determine the extent of humanity in the two categories of humans, who had become identical and structurally inseparable (40). Accordingly, the tool asked specific questions, which elicited empathetic responses attributable to real human participants alone. As such, Phillip Dick depicted humanity as the ability to show emotions and empathy towards others. Instead, the biological humans exhibited more sadistic behavior and contempt towards their fellows and more towards the duplicates than the android creations in the end. In his search for bounties to purchase his dream sheep, Rick Deckard lost his sympathy towards the clones and may have murdered some of his fellow humans who may have failed the test as he also did. Therefore, humans in the novel typically violated their true virtue of humanity by displaying lesser emotions regarding the
The book depicts the android beings as less human, usable and destructible, and incapable of sustaining existence and self-awareness. The primary notion of real humans’ superiority lies in the fact that they can feel compassion for others and may provide an environment of equality and acceptance. Mirmobin and Ensieh believe that the emphasis of Dick’s novel on human empathy is indeed satirical as the same humans display the fear of control by the android machines and resort to terminate them permanently if they fail to oblige to the former’s demands (230). The sole purpose of Rick Deckard was to kill the android replicas of humans who would not submit to domination by man as the society feared that the machines would become more powerful than the humans. The concept was to preserve the more empathetic humans and destroy the non-emotional machines that are a threat to humanity. The action in itself is ironic as the fulfillment of this dream entailed non-remorseful, unethical, inhumane killing of beings with similar attributes to man for their imperfection. The story thus reveals that humans are more realistically emotion
Part 3
less than empathetic.
The role of religion and spirituality in Dick’s novel is that it steers the unification of the human race and provides a center for moral values through which all humans may gain hope in the face of adversity. In this novel, religion serves to institute moral and empathetic principles that enable humans to become sensitive to and aware of the emotions experienced by other living creatures in the world (Schuster, 36). Ideally, Mercerism is a fictional religion in Phillip K. Dick’s story that embraced humanity as the core of existence and discernment for all humans. Through this religion, the humans in the novel can align with the central idea of mutual respect and love for all creations irrespective of their diversity. Notably, religion inspires Rick dickered, and others like him to appreciate a more realistic version of humanity, which fosters acceptance and continuity in place of hatred and self-actualization. Mercerism thus appears as the only hope for the world and the
potential sustainer of sanctity in the event that the advancements in artificial intelligence and nuclear energy present existential conflicts.
Nonetheless, the author, despite depicting Mercerism as a virtuous institution, reveals that it is a fake religion but with a high social value to the society. As per Mirmobin and Ensieh, the social significance of the belief in Mercer and his experiences overweighs its legitimacy as it fuels social acceptance and facilitates mutual coexistence (240). The concept of the religion revolved around ascribing to the experiences of its founder Wilbur Mercer, who sojourned empathy from his followers by climbing up a hill amid limitations from the rocks and despise from non-empathetic onlookers. However, it is satirical to note that the same religion that seeks to connect humans to a pool of empathy advocates for the death of the androids, and despite acknowledging it as a wrong-doing still deems it critical for the protagonist to murder the duplicates.
The novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep covers numerous themes, including humans’ interaction with the environment, the aspect of humanity, and the role of religion in society. The writer reveals that although man may pretend to
protect the environment, they are the primary pioneers of its degradation due to selfishness. He further portrays that the empathy that defines humanity may lack as a virtue in the advent of
artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, the author places religion as a core social aspect for unity and sanctity and proves that it could be crucial in establishing mutual relationships in the future.