This week we’ve been focusing on technology, but ironically, my mind’s been on feelings and the actions they bring about.  Prior to opening up these stories, I expected to read tales of cold, clinical pseudo-life.  While reading Philip K. Dick’s DADoES?, this prediction shifted towards a direction I explored last week; the boundaries between “human” and “other”.  However, rather than being focused on areas like intelligence and language, this week seemed more centered on empathy as an identifier of humanity.  I found myself wondering, though, how Fondly Fahrenheit fits into this running topic (even Frankenstein touches upon it!).  The android seems to be unfeeling and violent, so how could it have empathy? 

I emerged with an answer.  FF is not designed to make us question the emotional range of androids.  Rather, I saw it to be a demonstration of the – in my opinion – uniquely human desire to control other’s feelings.  This makes sense within the context of the other stories.  In DADoES?, our protagonist talks about the evolutionary development of empathy and how it facilitates survival of social animals – this, he says, is why owls and cobras don’t hesitate to kill prey (meanwhile, some humans choose vegetarianism and radical nonviolence).  In this sense, collective survival relies on group cooperation; even one outlying sociopath could bring about destruction.  I feel that this is where fear of the uncontrolled “other” (whether android or humanoid) was born.  Perhaps this also applies to Asimov’s piece – we are disturbed by the existence of entities that we are unable to manipulate.  Interestingly enough, many of this week’s stories seem to suggest that free will and foreign emotional landscapes from others are perceived by humans to be akin to enslavement.  Those that we can’t control, that we can’t understand, that we struggle to empathize with frighten us to the core because we anticipate such individuals to be an omen of death.  And, as Rick says, “[we fall] together into the trough of the tomb world”.

Having said this, I have a few questions for you all:

If we became solitary creatures, would we still care as much about how we – and others – feel?

If humans “beat” death, would we still have empathy for one another?

If group cohesion and consistency of collective feelings is so important, why do we react so strongly when others take control (i.e. the resistance against the multivac)?