Becoming Mercer, becoming Human

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (Androids)

Philip K. Dick (PKD)

When re-reading Androids for a university assignment this year, I considered the ‘android’ as a potential path of becoming (or current reality) for human beings. My chosen passage concerns an epiphanous experience for Deckard; a hopeful scene which for me signals a step for Deckard’s character away from his formerly ‘android-like’ behaviour patterns. There is a numinous aspect to this scene, which I found interesting given PKD’s fascination for mystical Christianity, and his own intense spontaneous spiritual experiences which began—years after the publication of Androids—in February 1974.

Passage (P183 — 184)

I’ve been defeated in some obscure way. By having killed the androids? By Rachael’s murder of my goat? He did not know, but as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certainly fatal cliffside fall – falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else’s degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves.

At that moment the first rock — and it was not rubber or soft foam plastic — struck him in the inguinal region. And the pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering, touched him throughout in its undisguised actual form.

He halted. And then, goaded on — the goad invisible but real, not to be challenged — he resumed his climb. Rolling upward, he thought, like the stones; I am doing what stones do, without volition. Without it meaning anything.

‘Mercer,’ he said, panting; he stopped, stood still. In front of him he distinguished a shadowy figure, motionless. ‘Wilbur Mercer! Is that you?’ My god, he realized; it’s my shadow. I have to get out of here, down off this hill!

He scrambled back down. Once, he fell; clouds of dust obscured everything, and he ran from the dust — he hurried faster, sliding and tumbling on the loose pebbles. Ahead he saw his parked car. I’m back down, he said to himself. I’m off the hill. He plucked open the car door, squeezed inside. Who threw the stone at me? he asked himself. No one. But why does it bother me? I’ve undergone it before, during fusion.

While using my empathy box, like everyone else. This isn’t new. But it was. Because, he thought, I did it alone.

My research for this essay began with Sherryl Vint’s Speciesism and Species Being, which provided an analysis of the relationship between humans and animals. For perspective on Mercerism I turned to Christopher A. Sims’ paper The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology. In David Rando’s Nonhuman Animals and Hope I found a critique of Mercerism. And in reading PKD’s essay Man, Android, and Machine I found a framing of the ‘android’. In reflecting on his own body of work, PKD writes, ‘A human being without the proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it,’ suggesting we can be as wary of creating androids that can imitate us, as we can of ‘becoming’ androids ourselves. PKD argues that ‘we must not posit a difference of essence, but a difference of behaviour,’ in other words, we should determine what is android or human based on how one behaves.

In this essay I will discuss how the passage where Deckard ‘becomes’ Mercer signals a step for his character towards autonomous humanity and away from his formerly ‘android-like’ behaviour patterns. Of the androids in the novel, Vint states it is, ‘Their inability to feel empathy [that] sets them apart from humans and justifies their enslavement and execution’ (112). Following from PKD’s arugment, if an android is an entity that does not exhibit empathy for others, then it is possible that a human may become ‘android-like’ by behaving without empathy, just as an android may become human-like by showing empathy (for example, the Nexus-6 androids become human-like when they exhibit empathy for each other). By autonomous, I refer to the ability to act in accordance with one’s own intentions. Androids in the novel lack autonomy, as they have been both programmed and enslaved by the humans who created them. Humans in the novel lack autonomy in that they are governed by the moral guidelines of—and the social pressures to conform to—Mercerism. At the start of Androids, protagonist Deckard exhibits ‘android-like’ behaviour. He demonstrates a lack of empathy for his fellow humans in his unwillingness to use the ‘empathy box’ which would share his moment of joy with others. While seeming to show empathy for animals like his pet sheep, Deckard in truth is more concerned with their commodity and status value. And of-course, Deckard’s ability to ‘retire’ six androids in rapid-time requires a certain android-like coldness, and suggests he is not yet in-touch with the inner moral compass that will eventually lead him to question such work.

Humans living in the dystopian future world of Androids have access to a technologically mediated religious state described as ‘fusion’. Followers of Wilber Mercer (like J.R. Isidore and Deckard’s wife Iran) enter a trance state using technology called an ‘empathy box’ whereby their consciousness joins the consciousness of other Mercerites, in what Sims labels a ‘consubstantial union’ (79). Through this process Mercerites feel connected with fellow humans in a world that has become increasingly isolating. Sims suggests the experience of collectively moving with Mercer on his journey up the hill is reassuring as it creates, ‘an empathetic synthesis of every human mind. From within this synthesis each individual has the knowledge that he or she is not stumbling through reality alone’ (80). Of-course, when Mercerites use their empathy boxes to fuse with Mercer, they each do so physically alone, so while the experience may be comforting, it does not actually bring humans together in physical space.

While Mercerism offers some comfort to humans, it does little to preserve the dignity of the animals it professes to value. Vint suggests that Mercerism creates a ‘religious fetishism’ (123) for animals rather than genuine empathy for animals. For instance, Deckard’s obsession with animals has more to do with attaining social status than genuine empathy for the animals. Vint argues that ‘animals are treated as commodities rather than as part of living nature’ (119). This commodification of the animal is seen in Deckard’s primary reactions to encountering an animal, which is to search his Sidney’s catalogue to determine their rarity and financial worth.

In my chosen passage, Deckard undergoes an ‘hallucinatory’ (183) experience whereby he does not ‘witness’ Mercer on his climb up the hill but effectively ‘becomes’ Mercer. Deckard achieves this spontaneously and alone. We realise that Deckard’s ‘hallucinatory’ experience is linked to Mercer when Deckard is hit by the first rock, which brings, ‘pain, the first knowledge of absolute isolation and suffering’ (183). It is curious that Deckard experiences this suffering in isolation as opposed to the shared pain of Mercerites when ‘fusing’. This indicates that Deckard is moving away from the dutiful following of the Mercerite collective, and towards a new autonomous state of being where he must confront his own suffering, the suffering of the androids he has made a living ‘retiring’, and the dignity of the animals he has pursued as status objects.

After halting, Deckard is ‘goaded on’ (183) by some invisible force and as he continues the upward climb, he reflects: ‘I am doing what stones do, without volition. Without it meaning anything’ (183). Deckard appears to be resigned to his purpose—to trudge onward in a Sisyphean task, deprived of meaning in his existence or autonomy in his actions. We recall his interaction with Mercer outside of Isidore’s apartment where Deckard asks if his retiring of the last androids is ‘outside Mercerism’ (174) to which Mercer advises: ‘What you are doing has to be done’ (174), convincing Deckard to betray his growing empathy for the androids by completing his assignment. Rando argues Mercerism emerged as a ‘spiritual and ideological development that allows humans to retain a sense of exception’ (480) from non-human animals and androids. Deckard experiences mounting inner-conflict in his dealings with the Nexus-6 androids, growing perhaps out of his appreciation for the aesthetic beauty of Luba’s singing and his later sexual relationship with Rachel; resulting in a difficulty maintaining this sense of human exceptionalism.

On the hill, Deckard mistakes his own shadow for Mercer, suggesting he has ‘become’ Mercer or perhaps has accessed an archetypal Mercer that exists within the human soul: Isidore claims Mercer, ‘isn’t a human being; he evidently is an archetypal entity from the stars, superimposed on our culture by a cosmic template’ (55). However the means, what is important is that Deckard has ‘become’ Mercer rather than accessed the shared experience of ‘following’ Mercer. When Deckard recognises his own shadow, rather than completing Mercer’s journey up the hill, he exclaims, ‘I have to get out of here, down off this hill!’ Here Deckard takes a step away from a dogmatic following of Mercerism, and towards becoming a new, more autonomous human—one who is less bound to the programming of his job (where he ruthlessly retires androids), less bound to the status-game of keeping commodified animals (as practiced by Mercerites), and directed instead by an emerging inner moral compass.

When Deckard leaves the path of Mercer, he finds what he initially believes to be an extinct species of toad. When Iran later reveals the toad to be electric, Deckard says, ‘it doesn’t matter. The electric things have their lives, too. Paltry as those lives are’ (191). This appreciation for the life of the electric toad echoes his newfound empathy for the androids. Deckard has accessed what I would suggest is the true, seemingly hidden message of Mercer; that all life, whether it is biological or electrical is valuable. As Vint writes, for the ‘first time, Deckard has been able to see what Mercer sees, life in what had seemed a dead world’ (123). Deckard is transformed by his experience of ‘becoming’ Mercer and as a result, moves towards being an autonomous human and away from behaving ‘android-like’.

Works Cited

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Doubleday, 1968.

Dick, Philip K. Man, Android and Machine. 1975.

Rando, David P. ‘Nonhuman Animals and Hope: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep’. Modern Fiction Studies, vol. 69, no. 3, 2023, pp. 466–91.

Sims, Christopher A. ‘The Dangers of Individualism and the Human Relationship to Technology in Philip K. Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”’ Science-Fiction Studies, vol. 36, no. 1, 2009, pp. 67–86.

Vint, Sherryl. ‘Speciesism and Species Being in “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”’ Mosaic (Winnipeg), vol. 40, no. 1, 2007, pp. 111–26.