Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

The religion in Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (later published as Blade Runner) is known as Mercerism, after its chief representative Wilbur Mercer. Mercer is a messiah-like character with whom the people relate in an artificial empathy which is mechanically created. The specific purpose of this religion is not to advance the spiritual enlightenment of the people or to encourage their ethical behavior, but rather to induce conformity in the citizens of this society of the future. Dick clearly means this religion to reflect in part what is seen by non-religionists as the negative aspects of religion in the real (non-fictional) world. At the same time, to see Mercerism as nothing more than a satirical stab at religion is to underestimate the seriousness and complexity of Dick's intent.

When the religion of Mercerism and its elements are compared to the religions of the world as described in Huston Smith's The World's Religions, the basic elements of those religions are found in Mercerism, but in every case in a perverted form. Dick intends not to create a viable religion, but to depict those aspects of religion which are used by powerful social, economic and political forces to control the people and impose civil order and stability. This study will examine the religion in Dick's novel and will compare its central elements with the elements of the religions in Smith's work. The essence of the comparison will be the argument that Dick uses Mercerism bot

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he did not violate the rule laid down by Mercer. You shall kill only the killers, Mercer had told them the year empathy boxes first appeared on Earth (Dick 27). On the other hand, John Isidore, a subnormal "chickenhead," considered mentally and otherwise inferior to Rick, is also a Mercerite, and empathizes with the very entities Rick is paid to kill. John practices without qualification the call to empathy at the heart of the empathy ritual which is in turn at the heart of Mercerism itself. This ritual involves the Mercerite's taking hold of a machine which allows the holder to imagine Wilbur Mercer himself making his way up a hillside while being stoned by unseen evil forces. In partaking of this ritual, the holder--and all other simultaneous holders--experience empathy with Mercer, even to the point of suffering the identical physical wounds that Mercer suffers when he is hit by a thrown stone (Dick 18-19). The religions in Smith's study all involve some form of empathy. of For example, discussing Buddhism, Smith notes that Mahayana Buddhism focuses on the compassion one human being experiences in relating to the suffering of another human being: "For Mahayanists the fate of the individual is linked to that of all life, and

Category: Literature - D