(of many such discussions.)

All these ruminations appear to converge eventually upon ~ What does it mean to be human? (and a perhaps expected corollary: where Social Darwinists mean to focus upon any detail as would fragment any such unifying idea - felt as anathema.)

No, I won't attempt answer, either - but I've noticed a theme within many P.K. Dick stories, whatever the main action-plot:

As: Blade Runner / Do Androids Dream ...
I thought it was Boffo that the protagonist runs off with a 'replicant'! - begging all sorts of questions whether say, 'ersatz memories' can produce a continuity of character / sense of Self? - indistinguisable-enough from the usual genesis.

And it is not much of a stretch to compare that plot with MLK's dream of, "little black and white boys/girls holding hands", some.. day.. For the concretized amongst us -- a replicant would be a less formidable hand-holding partner than a ___ [fill in despised ethnicity of a time/place].

In the story: the replicant was a more human(e) partner than - the city-full of "humans" being fled! May we suppose that Dick called that, a minor-QED of sorts?



(We Don't 'Know' what 'Makes Us Human' or, since prose is Never really enough) -

Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
T. S. Eliot

or maybe these two:

We know too much, and are convinced of too little. Our literature is a substitute for religion, and so is our religion.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.


It wasn't just 'communism' all enigma-wrapped in conundrum paper.