The Sword and Laser discussion

**NOTE: FULL SPOILERS (so I'm not going to put in the spoiler tags)!**

This is the 2nd time I've read DADOES and I've enjoyed it both times.

However, I'm having a hard time understanding the whole Mercer thing. I understand that it is some kind of mind-control effort by the government, etc. But I have the following questions:

1) If Mercer was a sham, why does Decker see him in visions (the apartment building, etc) and actually think that he IS Mercer for awhile at the end? Is he just stressed out and exhausted? Was this just a result of continued exposure to the empathy box?

Was anyone else confused by this?

2) What is PKD trying to get at with the whole Mercer thing, anyway? I feel like he's making a philosophical statement or allegory, but I'm just not smart enough to get it.

Thoughts?

I think it's interesting that interacting with the empathy box seems to make people obsessed with being kind to animals (and being seen as being kind to animals), but it doesn't seem to inspire them to reach out to their fellow human beings except through the empathy box. It makes them feel connected, and that makes them fail to actually connect.

Very good point!

It's kind of like an internet experience. The thing itself is not real, but the experience is. Mercer is a sort of archetype conjured by the collective desires and subconscious of people using the empathy machines

I don't know, related but weird...
I can read stories of people getting injured/maimed/killed and while it's sad, it doesn't really register much sorrow in me, or see the same in a movie.
But I read a story of a cat being abused or a dog needing major life support after being hit by a car and left on the road or even someone just having to put down a beloved pet and I'm a bubbling mess.

On the one hand, I don't have kids, so that might be a part, whereas I do have a cat and can't imagine what it will be like when it's his time...but still. It's almost like what's described in the book, people seem to care more about animals.

There are definitely Mercerism/Christianity parallels (raised the dead animals/people, arrested, tormented, "plunged... into a different world"/"He descended into hell", fusion/Communion), but I don't understand the point, unless it's an atheist author evangelizing his beliefs by associating Christianity with the Al Jarry hoax.

The whole empathy box setup seems to be a staged Passion Play for the enjoyment/betterment/ritual worship of those faithful to Mercerism. Setup by whom? Maybe well-meaning people wanting to make care of animals a religious duty so that the few that remain are cared for and bred in order that animal populations recover. Or maybe by whomever (the government?) profits from the sale of animals. Or maybe by the Rosen Association, because there will never be enough real animals to go around, and Mercerism will drive most people to buy Rosen electronic versions.

On Mercer appearing to Decker, I have a wild theory. Mercer, the story goes, was arrested because "Local law prohibited the time-reversal faculty by which the dead returned to life" after which "they bombarded the unique nodule which had formed in his brain..." I think this describes Isadore's abilities. After hearing Buster's expose, Isadore (unknowingly) starts time-shifting everything around him to kipple. The androids certainly think he's doing something. Then, after using the empathy box, he finds he's holding the mutilated, drowned spider alive and whole; he thinks Mercer did it, but I think it was really Isadore's doing. Then, Mercer appears to Decker in the apartments; could Isadore actually time-shift Mercer (or Al) himself to interact with and save Decker? Or, perhaps project his own empathy-inspired visions of Mercer onto others?

Why Decker thought he was Mercer after the encounter and wandered off to a random place, only just happening to find one of the two most important creatures to Mercer, I have no clue, but would be very much interested in reading what others have to say!

My working theory about Decker's experience is that he's been basically marinating in the concept of empathy and fixating on it. He was in distress and then I think he hallucinated it.

AndTheRest's super-powered Isidore theory is wild and I love it. That certainly makes sense of a lot of the weirdness of the ending.

My only contribution is an overall comment: we seem to assume here and in other threads that Mercerism is a government-backed sham. But wouldn't the government have the power to close down Buster Friendly's broadcasts if that were the case? It seems more to me like both sides of this conflict are used by the government to control the people, or at least manipulate the people in certain ways.

I don't have a concrete interpretation of Mercer and the experiences described in the book. It was at the same time a religious experience (as in "inside your mind") and a physical one(as in "hit your head with a rock").

After reflecting on it for a while, I believe that what it actually means for the story isn't really that important.

Philip K Dick had hallucinations for months, and if you can survive that with your sanity more or less intact, the experience would bring a whole new perspective of what is real. At that time, there were things happening to him that were not valid to anyone else.

I think Mercerism was a way for the author to express this feeling. That it is possible to exist an experience absolutely real to a person, which would be at the same time completely alien to "the rest of reality". Even after Mercer declares himself a fraud, his existence is still valid for everyone that experiences it through the Empathy Box.

Crazy stuff, huh?

^ Reminds me of the Sandman (Neil Gaiman) comic in which a character is in two realities at once. Doll's House maybe? A quick google search didn't turn it up. Anyway, there's some neat split frames showing how her interaction is in two realities.

A lot of religious people would disagree with that religious/physical dichotomy. Well. Catholics would at least. The physical manifestation of empathy box stuff seems a radical extension of catholic sacramentality, where in the sacrament there is at once both realities, sign and signified, bread and God, as opposed to one merely pointing to the other.

Indeed, Rob, I might have not been very clear on my last message. By "inside your mind", I meant an experience that could not be shared by any means with others. Several religious traditions could fall under that description. And hallucinations as well.

Ah, that makes sense.

I feel it's a recurring theme in Dick's body of work that there's a difference between the rote, superficial rituals of institutional religion, and the personal, mystical experiences of individuals. It's almost certainly informed by his own experience, since he wrote about 8,000 pages of journal notes on his mystical experiences. You also see it in The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, but it's similar here:

There's a shared belief system (Mercerism in DADOES; Can-D in TSoPE) focused on an iconic figure (Mercer; Perky Pat), where hallucinogenics or euphorics are used as a kind of sacrament in a rote ritual, that seems to serve some kind of cynical social aim, e.g. enforcing empathy or distracting people from their terrible dystopian society. A literal "opiate of the masses."

But some individuals find a way to transcend the ritual and have genuine mystical experiences. That they're couched in the trappings of the "institutional" faith makes sense; in real life, those claiming to have mystical experiences will typically frame them in a cultural context familiar to them. E.g., you wouldn't expect a mystic from a predominantly Christian culture with little experience of other faith traditions to articulate their visions via Buddhist iconography, and vice versa. So even though "institutional" Mercerism might be a sham, Isidore and Decker could have genuine mystical experiences inspiring them towards empathy, but still seeing Mercer as the messenger.

Did anyone get the sense that PK Dick was also showing contrast between popular media (Buster Friendly) and religion? Deception was present in both, and it didn't seem by the end that it would matter to adherents of one camp or the other. For that matter, it seemed as if the expose about Mercer wouldn't really have an impact on his following (which seemed to be everybody to some degree). There really isn't anything in the text to prove that Buster Friendly was hugely popular (only a handful of characters seemed to mention him), while Mercerism seemed to be the driving force behind the keeping of live animals.

Yet Mercerism was shown to transcend its fabricated origins, while Buster Friendly's deception just seemed to be a cynical, sensational pandering to the uncritical masses.

Interesting point. They both seemed equally disingenuous to me.

For me, both Buster Friendly and Mercer seemed to add layers to a wider point about empathy and how it works. We can see in the world Dick has built that people have more empathy for animals than they often do for each other, undermining the common assumption that empathy arises from awareness of a shared nature. At the same time the existence of artificial animals undermines the idea that empathy is about feeling something for other living beings, as does the confusion over who is and isn't a real person and how the characters feel about them.

Mercer is the ultimate extension of this. An artificial empathy for someone who doesn't seem to be real. This exists alongside the connection people feel towards Buster Friendly, the face on their TV screen with whom they have only a one way connection, and who judging by his round-the-clock TV schedule isn't a real person either. Ordinary people feel more empathy for clearly fake people than for each other.

It sets up a wonderful irony - the police decide who's a real person based on their ability to feel empathy, yet the deepest empathy the real people feel is entirely artificial.

Buzz wrote: "Interesting point. They both seemed equally disingenuous to me."

I think that was the point. Everyone either followed one or the other, often mindlessly, yet both of them turned out to be fakes in the end. Very cynical, but the book did also hint that truth was less important than belief.