Do Androids Dream of Animal Rights? By David Agranoff
In 1975 when Peter Singer’s classic book Animal Liberation[i] was published it was an earthshaking work of ethical philosophy. Singer sought to define Speciesism as a form of discrimination with equal ethical weight as racism and sexism. This was such a new and radical concept that the very idea of ethical treatment of animals in the 1970s barely had a movement or activists. Certainly, Animal advocates and veganism already existed (Donald Watson coined the term in 1944)[ii] but it was Singer’s book that started the movement that now has succeeded in getting alternative products in restaurants and grocery stores everywhere. Animal rights organizations and sanctuaries have popped up around the globe. We have seen progress in the push for Animal Liberation I thought impossible when the book quietly hit shelves.
Nine years before Singer’s groundbreaking book Science Fiction writer Philip K. Dick wrote a novel that centered heavily on the same themes in a speculative context. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep[iii] would go on to inspire the classic Science Fiction film Blade Runner. The animal ethics of the novel just barely make it into the film but in far more subtle ways. It is a blink and you miss it kind of thing. The novel is very much about empathy and rights both animal and post-human dominate the text right up to the final message of the book.
Philip K. Dick was not a vegan, and far from an animal liberationist famously eating horse meat when he was poor in the 1950s. It was on Phil’s mind as he made a reference to the very pet store where he bought the cheap horse meat in DADES, as “The Happy Dog Pet Shop” is the store Deckard calls to get the price of an Ostrich displayed in the front window. It is also the reason his character in his partially autobiographical novel VALIS was named Horselover Fat. That said he was a cat lover and I have a theory that his cats and his feelings towards them were huge inspiration for this novel.
In the context of this article, I need to admit some bias. I am a strict ethical vegan, I have been since Bill Clinton was in office for two weeks. I personally believe that if we can choose compassion over killing or exploitation then we need to. The last time I read DADES I worried that I was seeing something I wanted to see that was not really there. PKD was a writer of ideas and very thoughtful about philosophy and ethics. There is a big difference between trying to imagine the ideas in a fictional surreal landscape and putting them into action in real life.
None the less the point of this article is to explore the concepts of empathy and rights for animals as seen through the lens of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I will not hide my personal feelings on how these ideas should be applied to practical day to day ethics. Okay let’s get into it.
The Value of Animals post World War Terminus:
DADES takes place in a grim future of 2021, now in our past but was 55 years in the future when Philip K. Dick sat down at his typewriter and imagined a world destroyed by Nuclear Conflict. The who and why of World War Terminus doesn’t matter to Rick Deckard or the author who created him. “No one today remembered why the war had come about or who, if anyone, had won. The dust that contaminated most of the planet’s surface had originated in no country, no one even the wartime enemy had planned on it.”
While the movie is remembered for the Cyberpunk noir design that it pioneered, the world of the novel DADES has more in common with the desolation of the sequel 2049. The novel is often overlooked as a work of post-apocalyptic fiction, but the off-world colonies and “the Andys” (replicants in the movie) slave class would not have existed if the earth was not almost lifeless. The world of DADES is one of class stratification and complete environmental destruction, it shares the dust, pollution and the constant need for gas masks with John Brunner’s 1974 Masterpiece The Sheep Look Up.[iv] In that novel, it is Capitalism, industrial pollution and global climate change that creates the unsustainable future. Dick’s novel being post-nuclear doesn’t take away the nature of ecocide in this world. The human species is slowly committing ecological suicide and slowly murdering nature.
“A thousand thoughts came into his mind, thoughts about the war, about the days when Owls fell from the sky; he remembered how in his childhood it had been discovered that species upon species had become extinct and how the papes had reported it each day- Foxes one morning, badgers the next, until people had stopped reading the perpetual animal obits.” Global ecocide is not just a slow act of violence against nature, it kills more than non-human animals. Speculative fiction is in a unique place to remind those living today can and will doom future generations to extinction if we don’t change our ways. Today the Cli-fi (climate themed Science fiction) is a rapidly growing subgenre, and it is becoming mainstream as Barack Obama called Kim Stanley Robinson’s Ministry for the Future one of his favorite books of 2020.
In DADES the human race has all but waved the white flag in the ecological crisis, anyone who has the ability or the status has emigrated to off-world colonies. Not only is the air unbreathable, but almost all animals are dead. The only humans that remain on earth are the ones who lack skills to provide the off-world colonies or lack the resources to emigrate. Few animals remain and that means the ones who remain are revered.
The Value of Animal post World War Termius:
In the first chapter of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep there is a scene that highlights PKD’s underrated ability to write humor. Rick Deckard (played in the movie by Harrison Ford) the android bounty hunter goes to check on his electric sheep who was grazing on his rooftop pasture and ends up in a conversation with his neighbor Bill Barbour who is feeding his single living horse. Barbour is proud of the horse Judy, and the fact that she is pregnant. Deckard looks at the horse by herself and asks “What’s she pregnant by the wind?”
Barbour explains that he bought the highest quality fertilizing formula. Deckard is filled with envy, as the two neighbors chat about the prices of various animals according Sidney’s Animal & Fowl Catalog. Deckard himself “much studied” January issue. This conversation goes on for a few pages Barbour even showing condescending sympathy for Deckard, even suggesting he could get a mouse for $25. In Sherryl Vint’s excellent article Speciesism and Species Being in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? She points out “Most of the scenes in the novel involving animals show that the animals exist as commodities rather than as beings for the humans in this world. Deckard fears that his neighbors will discover that his sheep is electric because of the loss of economic status this would imply; there is no sense that the death of his real sheep caused him any grief on a personal level nor that his relationship with the electric one is different in any way.” [v]
It sets up a hilarious motivation for Deckard that extends through the novel that was lost in the film, keeping up with Joneses. Your ability to care for and show empathy towards rare animals is status in the post WW T world. The economics of this is laid out in stark numbers when Deckard considers the coast of buying a sheep, cow, steer or a horse. He does the math in his head. “The bounty of five Andys would do it, he realized. A thousand dollars a piece over his salary.” That makes the bounty of a dead Andy about a thousand dollars. Deckard doesn’t see the irony in this. On the very first page of the novel Iran calls Deckard a killer, and he rejects the notion. “I’ve never killed a human being in my life.”
This leading to a painful realization for the Andys, as seen through this comment by Garland the Andy who poses as a cop. “…Breaking free and coming here to earth, where we we’re not even considered animals. Where every worm and wood louse is considered more desirable than all of us put together.”
Escaped Andys are rejecting their role in a capitalist system to work as an artificial slave class, but escape doesn’t change their status in this culture. This is part of the reason Deckard can rationalize ending the Andys life yet moments later he is taking car of his electric sheep. He is living in a world where empathy is a way of life, yet he has to reject such notions to do his job. The irony comes when the very test finds the non-humans is one based on empathy.
The Value of Empathy and Ethics
When Rick Deckard lands his hovercar on the roof of Rosen Associates in Seattle his intention is to run the Voight-Kampff test to see if it can detect the presence of artificial human beings. The stakes are high as his colleague Dave Holden was shot by Max Polokov, Who is a Nexus-6, a new harder to detect style of android. Holden had been afraid the test would not work, but Deckard believed that was impossible. The test is based on the subject’s reaction to a series of question that gauge the subject’s response to ethical questions related to the treatment of animals.
In one of the few scenes that remains in the film Blade Runner almost exactly intact from the novel Deckard is asked to test Rachel Rosen who is presented to him as the daughter of the Elden Rosen the founder. He starts by asking what she would do if given a calf-skin wallet for her birthday. She wouldn’t accept it and would report the person to the police. He skips ahead to the eighth question which involves her son collecting butterflies with a kill Jar. Rachel responds that she would take him to a doctor. The test eventually includes a question about her reading a novel that takes place pre-war time and the people are eating boiled lobster. Rachel is horrified.
Deckard knows from the test that she is an android but Rosen attempts to convince him that the test doesn’t work because she grew up on a failed interstellar voyage that returned. Deckard begins to question himself and believes his test was wrong until he notices that Rachel repeatedly makes a simple mistake. To make up for his time wasted they offer Deckard a valuable Owl named Scrappy as gift.
“Your owl, dear” Rachel said “Remember? We’ll tie your home address around its leg and let it fly down to San Francisco; it’ll meet you there when you get off of work.”
It, he thought. She keeps calling the owl it. Not her.”
Deckard knows she is an android because she refers to the owl as it. This is a standard most humans would fail. It is my personal belief that when I meet a dog or cat that I would rather misgender them than take away their personhood by referring to them as simply it. In the post WW Terminus world animals have both a capitalist value but more importantly an ethical worth, as such no one would devalue them as it. Dr. Josh Toth of MacEwan University Wrote about these issues in his article Do Androids Eat Electric Sheep?: Egotism, Empathy, and the Ethics of Eating in the Work of Philip K. Dick.[vi] “…The novel exposes and critiques the problematic trajectory of human empathy—from the establishment of communities based on race, gender, and/or class to the end of racism, sexism, and/or classism to the end of speciesism. The novel’s anxiety about this trajectory is all the more apparent if we consider the fact that its publication (in 1968) coincides with the height of the American civil rights movement.”
The point is never made out right, but it is clear if you take the ethical direction of the questions of Voigt- Kampff test that the world of DADES suggests a vegan future. Dr. Toth goes on to say. “Voigt-Kampff test, which Deckard must administer before retiring a suspected android, works by provoking empathic responses to descriptions of animal suffering and/or death. If suitable (as in “instinctive”) empathy is not garnered, the subject is identified as an android and summarily retired. And, since it is a logical necessity that the humans in the novel are vegetarian, this problem of empathy is frequently tied to the problem of eating and/or consumption. Yet the theme of vegetarianism and/or eating is strikingly subtle and largely implicit. While the novel necessarily touches upon the practical implications of a world in which vegetarianism has become an ethical imperative, Dick’s interest in vegetarianism and eating is (if I can anticipate Derrida’s phrasing1) significantly more “metonymic” than literal.”
There is no other logical conclusion to consider about this world. It would make sense that the human race would have to adapt if animals could not survive the massive dust storms. In a world struggling to survive it would be wasteful to produce protein that yields one pound of beef when it indirectly dumps 20 pounds of feed including grain hay, corn stalks, and other non-concentrated, non-grain animal feed and an average of 410 gallons of water down the drain. Under the current system one half of the earth’s land mass is involved in the production of animal products, and livestock have damaged 60% of the earth’s range land.[vii]
If the human race was trying to survive by expanding to Mars and Proxima it would not make sense to expend resources keeping animals alive for protein when other sources are more efficient. The only impeachable argument in our 21st century for the eating of animals is desire and taste. In the 21st century of DADES that is even less valid.
According to Dr. Vint “What has been consistently overlooked is that Deckard comes to this realization only through embracing animal being, rejecting the speciesist discourse that attempts to construct hierarchies and divisions, a logic that rejects humans like Isidore within the novel, and which rejects animals and animalized humans in Western culture. The human/animal boundary is used to dehumanize the other so that ethics do not enter into certain kinds of killing: slaughterhouses, android bounty hunters, and concentration camps all operated on the same logic.”
The 21st century in our world that is not the case. Entire industries exist turning animal’s bodies into food, clothing and bi-products of many kinds, entertainment, experimentation use animals’ bodies as tools despite whatever pain or emotions they experience. Most people in our culture never consider the use of animals nor do they question our right to murder or exploit for things as trivial as a meal.
Dr. Vint right points out. “…it is worth noting that most of Dick’s audience would fail the Voigt-Kampff test. Its questions—about topics such as boiling live lobster, eating meat, or using fur— denote things that are commonplace rather than shocking in our world.”
It is appropriate to question if Philip K. Dick intended to make this point with DADES. Dr. Toth believes so. “…The novel exposes and critiques the problematic trajectory of human empathy—from the establishment of communities based on race, gender, and/or class to the end of racism, sexism, and/or classism to the end of speciesism. The novel’s anxiety about this trajectory is all the more apparent if we consider the fact that its publication (in 1968) coincides with the height of the American civil rights movement.”
In 1966 when it was written there was no animal rights movement, and PKD was writing about a surreal post-apocalyptic world. That said more than half a century later the ethical treatment of animals may be catching up with the novel. One thing is clear challenging and changing our ethics may or may not be the message but it is the arc for our hero Rick Deckard.
Hunters will be Hunted
On the very first page of the novel Rick Deckard fights with his wife who calls him a killer. He insists that he has never killed a human being. Deckard is aware of the exact monetary value of an android and various living animals. His Sydney’s catalog is worn down suggesting the idea he looks at it often. One only has to tour an animal shelter to see how little respect even animals considered part of are families are treated with. Many cats and dogs are surrendered (euphuism used by the shelters for dumping) to shelters when their caregivers simply decide they no longer want them.
In contrast to DADES a world where your status is so tied to your ability to care for animals that people buy electric animals to give the appearance of empathy. The irony central to the novel is Rick Deckard is hunting and killing androids with the goal of getting $5,000 for A real sheep.
Euphuism is the key to Deckard’s ethical conflict. He has to convince himself that escaped androids, by leaving their assigned roles become “solitary predators.” This leads to an important internal debate on page 29 of the novel. Deckard (and the system) believes it is impossible for androids to feel the concept of empathy. “Empathy, evidently, existed only within the human community, whereas intelligence to some degree could be found throughout every phylum and order including arachnida.” The android is unable to fool the test because it is not conscious of the desire to live in other beings.
Consider how euphuism is used to erase empathy for animals in our culture. Dogs and cats are often not even gendered, referred to as it, as Scrappy the Rosen corporation owl was. Dogs and cats have been “surrendered” to the shelter by “owners” not families. The number of euphuisms involved in the production of animal bodies into food is almost never-ending but perhaps the most sadly amusing in the context of this novel is concept of so-called humane meat. In the last few decades knowing that the movement for the ethical treatment of animals has been growing the industry has tried to market the concept of humanely raised meat. Even the marketing of “grass-fed” beef is used imply a life outside of factory farms. That begs the question - Is there a humane way to turn a living, feeling being into a product to be consumed?
In DADES with Mercerism as the dominant religious belief, followers who use empathy boxes the idea of humane animal exploitation is impossible. Deckard comes to that conclusion. “Empathy, he once decided, must be limited to herbivores or anyhow omnivores who could depart from a meat diet. Because, ultimately, the empathic gift blurred the boundaries between hunter and victim, between the successful and the defeated.”
All this leads to “Rick liked to think of them that way; it made his job palatable in retiring-i.e. killing, -an andy, he did not violate the rule laid down by Mercer. You shall kill only killers.”
Deckard changes the language to make himself feel better about the violence of his actions. If it is our hands or our money – many people change the language erase the guilt of our actions. As Professor Toth put it “The experience of the Mercer box (and the theology of Mercerism, more generally) mirrors the central tension in the novel—i.e., the tension between a need to experience empathy (and/as entropy) and the paradoxical desire to assert and maintain a sense of selfhood.”
Rick Deckard’s journey includes many times where he questions his humanity unlike the film he is very much human. The scene when he tests Rachel Rosen and has to question his certainly in the empathy test is important but not as important as his relationships with the bounty Hunter Phil Resch and opera singer Luba Luft. Deckard’s relationship to these two characters is the most important for Deckard’s arc.
Phil Resch is a bounty hunter that has been working out of a fake hall of justice run by androids. There is comical nature to the idea that he didn’t know that he was working for Andys. Deckard believes Resch is not human and is confident tests will show in part because of how quick he is to “retire” androids and the fact that he seems to enjoy it. Resch wants desperately to prove he is human pointing out the amount of care he puts into his squirrel. Resch starts to accept that he might be android before learning he is in fact human.
Many come to a surface reading of the novel and assume that Deckard falls in love with Rachel and begins to question his mission. While that might explain his arc in Blade Runner the novel has deeper motivations at work. Deckard is equally affected by Luba Luft singing Mozart’s Magic Flute. He is impressed with her talent, and wonders if her life is worth more than money he will be paid.
Dr. Vint points out “This leads Deckard to realize that his work as a bounty hunter emerges not from the difference between humans and androids, but because there is not a sufficient difference to maintain the economic exploitation upon which their world rests.”
Most human have never experienced what it feels like to be a hunted animal. There was a brief period before police caught the D.C. Sniper when those of us in the animal rights movement were making that point. Angus Taylor points out this is huge part of the point of the novel in his article Electric Sheep and the New Argument from Nature “The novel is not only an implied critique of hunting, and of our treatment of animals in general, but an admonition that none of us has clean hands when it comes to our treatment of others, human or nonhuman. By the end of the story Deckard has not rid the world of corruption and illusion; he has recognized the value of compassion and he has managed to survive, in order to resume his personal struggle. He realizes that even a robotic animal is worth caring for. “The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are.” [viii]
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Is so much deeper than most Science Fiction novels. The message of animal rights is right there throughout. The blurred lines of ethical responsibility are at the heart of the novel. Much like Philip K. Dick in conversation his novel contradicts itself at times. The reader is told to be compassionate and fear the android. One thing is clear the idea that empathy should be applied to animals is one that is in the novel. It is my belief that Dick was on to something decades too early. Radical empathy and ethical treatment are something we don’t have to dream about; we have choices and can make them. Choose Compassion.
[i] Animal Liberation by Peter Singer, 1975
[ii] Vegan Society founder Donald Watson honoured with blue plaque, BBC news https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-50351484
[iii] Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick, 1968
[iv] The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, 1972
[v] Speciesism and Species Being in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? By Sherryl Vint, 2007
[vi] Do Androids Eat Electric Sheep?: Egotism, Empathy, and the Ethics of Eating in the Work of Philip K. Dick by Josh Toth
[vii] https://www.theguardian.com/food/ng-interactive/2022/apr/14/climate-crisis-food-systems-not-ready-biodiversity
[viii] Electric Sheep and the New Argument from Nature by Angus Taylor
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