the love of the worker bees (horsemouth at 50)

this morning is grey. horsemouth has survived until 50 in line with the statistical trend for people of his colour, class, and birthplace. later he goes to the pub to be commiserated by his few remaining friends. horsemouth feels better about it than he did last year - last year he was in the pub drowning his sorrows by about 2pm - he was making some efforts to record a slide guitar part for dorothy, but it wasn't happening, for some reason horsemouth couldn't count bars. this year horsemouth is a little more organised (he has told people in advance).

so yesterday morning horsemouth went up to 3 mills green and lay about in the sunshine reading alexandra kollontai's love of worker bees (no definite articles please, she's russian) and in particular the first story vasilisa malygina - vasilisa struggles to establish a communal house, but the residents treat her like shit, defeated she retires. as horsemouth walked back he watched two pieces of litter engaged in some love play or perhaps doing the tango seemingly oblivious to the fact that one of them was an empty bag of crisps and the other a plastic bag containing the byproduct of the warm social relationship between a dog and a human. they skipped and danced and circled round each other until horsemouth drew near when they went silent and pretended to be inanimate again (at least until he had passed). if horsemouth were gogol they'd talk and have careers.

sean has been in touch;

 "Had some more thoughts about androids/replicants or whatever (hey, you asked).... Isn't all this Dick stuff about "empathy" a bit like speciesism? Animals lack what we might call empathy - red in tooth and claw and all that - but does this mean they have no right to exist on their own terms? I mean, why should intelligent machines behave like humans? Perhaps they will have other qualities - quite likely more viable ones - that we don't have....
What would be the point of creating machines that behave like humans anyway? We can already do that - under capitalism, the planet has become a huge facility for the mass production of humans....why build even more artificially? That is, of course, a rhetorical question. The ruling class want to make fake humans for the same reason they've made machines since the mechanical loom - to intensify production. Replicants would solve the difficulty of labour discipline - the final solution of the worker problem. So of course they wouldn't be designed to fully duplicate humans anyway.
I'm waiting for the internet to become self aware and start sending out terminators. Any day now...."

animals and empathy

well wild animals may exhibit some empathy (dolphins saving the odd sailor lost at sea etc. but in general they're too busy staying alive, hunting and killing (and, presumably, having fun doing it)).

but young animals definitely do exhibit empathy (and this is why we keep dogs and cats and monkeys as pets and deliberately infantilise them from their wild state). beyond that (rabbits, tortoises, goldfish) they function entirely as blank screens on which human's can project their empathy (and fondly imagine they are getting it back). the animals don't get a choice whether they are used as empathy surrogates by humans distressed at the 'red in tooth and claw' nature of capitalism and seeking succor in a trans-species domestic realm.

I think in a way PKD is parodying this by having people keeping squirrels and ostriches as pets - at least they're alive (unlike humans under capitalism). children are impelled towards animals as natural allies by sentimental adults (and then back away when they realize they have sharp teeth).

as the empathic (but not yet an ethical) circle expands less suitable animals are drawn into the 'pet' relationship - lions, bears, wolves etc. - traditionally 'wild' animals now seen as natural, balanced, and healing (of course these experiments are not always successful - look at 'bear life' dude killed and eaten by a particularly grumpy older bear ). only this morning on youtube horsemouth was watching some dude 'playing' with a pride of lions like they were big cats...

replicants and production - horsemouth will have to think about this.