do sheep dream of electric blankets?

'the whole experience of empathy is a swindle' - R. Baty. 

so horsemouth wandered out to canning town (kind of along the route of the green way but not actually using the green way) - there he bought a copy of do androids dream of electric sheep? once again, another book by philip k. dick that revolves around empathy. affect. once again it is a depopulated world, in ruins, post-war. unreliable narrators to the left of me, androids to the right. it's no.4 in the SF masterworks series, first published in 1999. like pets the androids don't live long - back on earth animals are rare. empathy is now a much bigger thing than it was in the jobmarket, 'emotional intelligence' etc.

horsemouth missed his chance to pick up some dark woodstained louvre doors that he could have used as a screen - that's no good horsemouth you've got to be quick.

 today is a bright sunny morning, last night horsemouth went and did his duty to prevent backsliding at the monkey-on-a-stick housing co-operative (he was right - there was some attempted backsliding) and to prevent the camelisation of a good initiative (when he arrived they were trying to fit wings to the poor beast and to fit it into a bobsled). he's agreed to babysit his brother's kids at the end of the month. it would be nice to get in another gig before howard goes back to work. and then there's that pesky birthday.

 sean has been in touch,

"Haven't read do androids dream... for ages, so I could be getting mixed up with the film, but.... I find all that stuff about empathy pretty uninteresting. A lot of it just seems like needy whingeing elevated to a worldview. Literature for man-children who like to complain their parents never hugged them when they were young. 

At the same time, its also somewhat suspect.....isn't lack of empathy the proverbial defining quality of the sociopath? Aren't they people too? Not to defend sociopaths, but this classification of certain people as less than true humans seems iffy; perhaps this is why Dick's work has become increasing acknowledged by the chattering classes in the age of the war on terror and the prison/industrial complex. Especially, as you point out, empathy doesn't necessarily translate to ethical action; torturing afghans is a dirty job, but someone's got to do it, right? 

Actually, the despicable authority figure appears as a sympathetic character on several occasions in Dick's books (eg Flow My Tears The Policeman Said). They're a bit like the Hitchhikers Guide cops who kill people, then agonize about it to their girlfriends afterward (remember them?), except they're not figures of fun and we're expected to...er...empathize with them. 

Compare this with Jack Kirby's brilliant (but alas, short lived) early 70s comic Omac; they cover similar territory to Dick, but in just a couple of pages completely blow him away. Omac sees in the machines a reflection of his own alienation (as former lower class worker Buddy Blank); unlike Dick, Kirby has a critique of political economy. Omac proceeds to blow up the android factory (hooray - down with the machines!) Thought you might like the Robert Crumb page (on Philip K. Dick's moment of religious conversion)" .

horsemouth and howard continue working (at chateau bremen naturally) on world's bliss (which come to think of it takes a pessimistic view of human existence) and howard's new song, which last week was called your child self but this week appears to be stealing lyrics from matty groves. oh - he forgot - they also worked on chris bell (of big star)'s you and your sister (as covered by this mortal coil with kim deal and tanya donelly singing). horsemouth recorded a guide version of the guitar part for howard to practice against, it's a difficult one to sing.