Androids DB 2

“‘An android,’ he said ‘doesn’t care what happens to another android. That’s one of the indications we look for.’

‘Then,’ Miss Luft said, ‘you must be an android.’

That stopped him; he stared at her.

‘Because,’ she continued, ‘your job is to kill them…’” (Dick 101).

Opera singer.

Ha! As soon as I read that passage, this triumphant feeling occurred inside me. Luft totally had Rick’s number on that one and I was so glad to have him called out on it finally. He has been going around administering the empathy test, convinced that this test sets him aside from androids when all along he has actually had small glimpses of feeling for these creatures and kills them all the same. So I decided to back up and observe exactly what it means that Rick is considered human. I, for one, think he is lacking in some of the points that make people like Isidore seem more human.

Will Smith looking for a robot to kill.

From the perspective of compassion, empathy, and sympathy, Rick is definitely not cutting it. He may have compassion down, since the definition seems to call for the existence of another being and since androids are considered “it” and not living creatures (which I think they should be), he’s off the hook. However, what about sympathy and empathy? To empathize means “to treat something or someone with empathy” (Course Anthology 274L). The something in there is what caught my eye. So what about androids? To me, treating androids with empathy is more humane than not. However, Rick does not do this, except in the case of certain ones. For example, he is working together with Phil Resch and begins to like him, but when he remembers that Resch is only an android, he begins to lose any emotional feelings he might have had with him. For example, Rick later tells Resch he can talk all he wants and thought to himself “it didn’t matter” (Dick 140). That seems pretty cold. I was disappointed that Rick’s emotions were so shallow: that he could feel one way for a while and then upon finding out that Resch was “the thing beside him” rather than “the man beside him” change his perspective completely (Dick 130). Rick said so himself: he “had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed” (Dick 141). Humans should have a stronger resolve in their emotions and in empathizing with other things. To be human is to understand others, even if the others don’t share your anatomy or thought complex.

As for sympathy, I think Rick is lacking in that as well. Sympathy, which consists of being “affected by the suffering or sorrow of another,” for androids seems beyond his grasp. I couldn’t understand why that is. Here Resch is putting on a very convincing show of being human (while Rick is utterly convinced he’s an android) and Rick can only say cold things like “Andys can’t will anything. They can’t possess anything to will,” thus setting himself further apart from androids. As humans, we must possess the ability to be in the place of another being, not trying to distance ourselves. Resch continues on and on about how he loves to care for his squirrel and instead of caring about what he had to say, Rick was merely counting down the minutes he had to live.

The will that Resch wouldn't have gotten to write...

However, one big aspect that makes us human is our conflicting natures. We all have our own views and feelings, based on “very different definitions, ideas, and experiences” (Abstractions) and because of this we have the ability to argue, discuss, and come up with solutions eventually or continue our separate ways. It is these differences, though, that are so interesting and make us human. We can have independent thoughts that are possibly never swayed by other beings. Take Rick, for example. Although he believes that Andys have no feelings and it shouldn’t matter that he kills them for a living, his wife has a totally different viewpoint. She thinks it is wrong to hunt them and thus their ideas differ. Humanity in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep exists much as we do: with conflicting beliefs and ideas.

Debate

Thus, by being human, we do possess compassion, empathy, and sympathy. But we also have the ability to argue and negotiate and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. Dick produces very interesting characters in his novel and in doing so, he can help us realize what makes a human being. All of these characteristics are present, whether in Iran, Rick, or Isidore. Through all these people, we realize what differences set them aside and also what common features they all possess. From this, we can see how humans are portrayed in a general view by Dick.