Review: Human Is?
Postmodernism, Reviews February 27th, 2008A very short review of Human Is? by Philip K Dick
I am not normally one for short stories but I mainly enjoyed this collection. The anthology contains the inspiration for the movies Paycheck and Total Recall – strangely I have seen neither. I had expected a fairly straight forward collection of sci-fi technology related themes but I guess I should have known better from the Dick novel/films Blade Runner, Minority Report and A Scanner Darkly! The theme is not so much technology but on reality and human cognition. The majority of stories have humans trying to understand reality, often via some abstracted representation – and usually doing a poor job of it. Post modernists might say that there is no objective reality to be mistaken about but I am not going to address this today!
My favorite stories were: Adjustment Team – where a man discovers his awareness of reality turns out to be rather like Plato’s cave dwellers – a bit incomplete. It reminds me of the anime short “Beyond” from The Animatrix. I don’t want to say too much about either.
The Mold of Yancy – asks if a totalitarian regime could be created not from oppression but from persuasion…
Oh, To Be a Blobel! – I thought this was darkly hilarious. I won’t even attempt to describe the plot although wikipedia has a good attempt.
And one story I did not find as appealing: The Pre-Persons – rather than the usual Dickian questioning of reality this had a strong underlying message. The story was a parody of the pro-choice movement. The story imagines a world where abortion was legal up to twelve years after birth. The reason given is children have no soul and are unthinking automatons until this age. The situation is compounded by street patrols of dog catchers who also collect stray and unwanted children. Obviously Dick does not really believe in this but it is an attempt to point to the absurdity of calling something alive at the moment of birth and not before.
He has a point that it is in some ways totally arbitrary. Of course that is not hard to rebut from existentialism! What right have people not to be murdered? Is that not also arbitrary? And any point chosen to limit abortion/contraception is in some sense arbitrary… The point I am trying to make is we must decide upon arbitrary rules to live – or the alternative is nihilism.
Anti Citizen One
March 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm
What right have we not to be murdered?
Although I agree with the general thrust of your review (which was interesting) and we have played about with this conundrum wherein rights are arbitrary gifts and not natural endowments.
My answer to the question would be – we must have the right to self-determination and autonomy or what need have we of rights?
So I could argue that my being murdered is an abrogation of my self-determination to live and claim my right to life.
The flip side and paradox of this situation is that my right to self-determine that I will murder others surely also has a claim to be heard?
This is an obvious point when we reflect upon it, but is it a sensible one?
Rights – in the manner in which we normally discuss them – are spoken of in pseudo-objectivist terms. Even I talk about them in such a way despite the fact I reject their objective or natural status I insist that for them to be meaningful in the moral language game they must be universally applicable.
Thus we must consider the sensibleness of whether my right to murder is a right at all – in comparison say to my right to self-determination.
We may perhaps be able to say that my right to self-determination (including my right to choose not to be killed) is refuted if I simulataneously demand the equal applicability of my right to murder (to deny others the right of self-determination).
How so refuted?
If we decide or determine the “universality” of rights (even arbitrary ones) then to uphold my right to self-determination but to negate somebody elses is paradoxical.
In conclusion though there are two troubling questions that all “rights-bound” cultures need to consider.
1) If these arbitrary rights are decided upon – who may decide which rights are adopted and whom may judge when a conflict of rights emerges?
2) If we accept the thoroughly arbitrary nature of rights – and constantly present them as arbitrary or in flux – then what shall we do if someone (or perhaps even a majority) decide that these arbitrary “rights” are not universally applicable.
Your review and the pre-person story it refers to deals specifically with the latter question and the scenario of the non-universality of rights (such as the right to life) but the universally binding nature of an authority to confer the gift of these “rights” according to whatever arbitrary whim it decides.
I am increasingly led to consider that the notion of “rights” being natural – although unsound in principle and as Bentham would have it “dangerous nonsense” – are nonetheless an attempt at cultural self-restraint. It being what I would call the “myth of objectivity” by invoking a higher cause (nature, God, appeals to human decency etc.).
The myth itself is potentially valuable – even if the terminology is false.