This quote comes from the movie Blade Runner which is based on Philip K. Dick’s wonderful book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? If you’re a Sci-Fi fan, this is an iconic scene. Its power comes from Rutger Hauer’s mesmerising performance throughout the movie leading to this classic final scene (the soundtrack by Vangelis played its part too).
The lines Hauer delivers before this short monologue are interesting too
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it?
That’s what it is to be a slave
You can watch the scene (about 4m long) - although without seeing the rest of the movie it probably won’t have the same impact.
The basic idea behind Blade Runner is that in some future (a fairly bleak and dystopian future) it’s possible to make robots that are almost indistinguishable from humans and some of these go rogue. The blade runner, played by Harrison Ford, is the government bod assigned to hunt them down and to terminate them. There’s a senescence built in to these synthetic humans (called replicants) which is why Roy (the replicant played by Hauer) delivers his final speech; he knows he’s just about to die.
The overarching theme that is being explored is the question of what it means to be “human” but, as indicated by the lines that are (usually) missed out when quoting Hauer’s monologue1, it’s also about not seeing yourself as just a machine that is an enslaved part of a larger machine (the bleak society).
No worrying about whether he is a girl or a boy robot for Roy. Or whether his synthetic gendered ‘soul’ matches the body his creators have given (assigned?) him - the identity question here is whether he is ‘human’ at all, or just a machine.
After writing my last piece, I cogitated. This is not a wholesome experience to witness. I don’t have ‘resting bitch face’ so much as ‘resting miserable face’. I’ve been told to ‘smile’ and ‘cheer up’ more times than any sexually harassed feminist assailed by the patriarchy and the oppressive gears of misogyny.
I’m not miserable - I’m usually at my most content when cogitating - but my face must do odd things when I’m indulging in a bit of thinking. It probably does odd things at other times too. I remember being a little concerned after reading a BBC article on sexual harassment which listed “looking the wrong way” as one of the offending behaviours. God only knows how many people I’ve inadvertently harassed over the years.
The thing that started the noggin joggin was my attribution of the ‘left’ as being unpaid propagandists for Pharma over the last 3 years. There is no good label to use here - the ‘left’, the ‘woke’? But I think we can all recognise the broad characteristics I’m trying to describe here.
They are the “be kind and compassionate” crowd, the people who seem over-enamoured of the “current thing” and lecture the rest of us. Sanctimonious arseholes might be a better descriptive label.
They are the kind of people who, unironically, call J.K. Rowling a “bitch” and wish that she be raped. They lecture the rest of us about kindness and compassion, whilst being the least compassionate and kind people to those who disagree with them. Obviously, along with the definition of so many other words these days, the definition of empathy must have been changed.
I wonder whether the word nuance has been similarly redefined. Because ‘woke’ and ‘nuance’ are not usually words you’d immediately associate with one another. These are the people who are trying to remove any nuance in the ‘trans’ question by labelling any exploratory investigation into the reasons for ‘trans’ as conversion therapy.
And so I cogitated, looked thoroughly miserable, and wondered about how it came to be that so much faith was put into large corporate entities that, as the recent historical record shows, do not deserve our trust. Pfizer probably have more instances of fraud and malpractice cases against them than I’ve been asked to smile.
If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be in an abusive relationship one of the things you might have noticed is that, often, people simply don’t believe you when you describe some of the things that happened. If I told you that simply saying “I’m a bit tired” led to a 5 hour session of being shouted at, spat upon, kicked, etc you probably wouldn’t believe it. If I told you that there was no retaliation or raised voice in response, just calmness and firmness, you’d think I was making shit up. If you ever heard “it couldn’t be that bad or you would have left” - a very valid question - then you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
It’s not all that easy to simply leave an abusive relationship and particularly not when you’ve convinced yourself of some value in that relationship that is worth enduring the abuse. The women who end up in shelters are probably quite close to breaking point. It often takes a good deal of courage to walk away.
It’s also worth mentioning that abusers are not always evil. Some people have such fractured inner constructions of themselves and their self-worth that there’s a constant, and often insatiable, quest for external validation. There’s nothing in their ‘inner’ tank - it needs to be continually topped up - and if that doesn’t happen in the way they expect, or something rocks this fragile state (and it’s often something very trivial), things can escalate into severe rage very quickly. The rage is driven by extreme fear and panic inside, of course.
Now, I’m not suggesting that people who fly off the handle and respond with ‘bitch’ and rape wishes to the most mild and compassionate questioning of their core beliefs are in any clinical sense like some of these fractured abusers - but there’s a certain commonality. The response of the ‘woke’ to some mild comments (there are only 2 sexes, for example) are wholly disproportionate. It’s not ‘trans’ people they’re getting frothed up about, but the perceived attack on their own ideology and sense of virtue and worth.
So much of the public covid response was about ‘doing the right thing’ - it was dressed up as a ‘rational’ response to an external threat (the CoronaDoom) - but it was really about being seen as, and perceived to be, a compassionate decent person. Attacking the core narrative wasn’t just an attack on ‘science’, but more fundamentally an attack on someone’s sense of self-worth. Note the use of the word selfish to describe anyone who didn’t go along with the bullshit.
You have to hand it to the government propagandists (the military-grade propaganda that we now know it to have been) they did a spectacularly good job.
They made it very hard to believe that governments and Pharma could be this corrupt, this abusive. If you believe yourself to be “kind and compassionate”, it’s very hard to comprehend the depths of depravity and the sheer lack of anything resembling a conscience that some people have. It’s easy to label those who attack your views, your core sense of self-worth, as ‘hateful’ - but it’s hard to imagine people who are ‘hateful’ when it comes to public health. They’re trying to make things better, surely?
As the evidence about the horrors of the whole covid response and promotion of the ‘vaccines’ slowly unfolds I think we’re all going to be in the position of Roy - seeing things “you people wouldn’t believe”.
It’s often said that Hauer improvised this monologue, but that’s not true. He did, however, write it. The night before shooting he took the original script and changed it, quite drastically. The director gave the OK to do this with the attitude of “let’s see how it works out”. How it ‘worked out’ ended up being one of the most iconic scenes in Sci-Fi history.
Empathy has been mutated, yes. We used to separate it into cognitive empathy, understanding that others have feelings which are true for them, and into emotional empathy, feeling or simulating feeling the emotions displayed by others or the motions requried by the decorum of present social situation.
What's left thanks to generations of PC thugs is simulated emotional empathy: the visual stmuli is given, and the emotion kicks in. No conscious though or cognitive faculties involved.
"Within thirty seconds any pretence was always unnecessary. A hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer, seemed to flow through the whole group of people like an electric current, turning one even against one's will into a grimacing, screaming lunatic. And yet the rage that one felt was an abstract, undirected emotion which could be switched from one object to another like the flame of a blowlamp." Orwell, 1984.
And strong emotional stimuli is habit forming.
Furthermore, empathy has long held a positive charge it in no way should have. "Being empathic" is cheered as a good quality, when all it means is that emotion continously trumps and tramples cognition. The real word for that character that empathy has pushed out is sympathy. Being able to feel and show and act upon care and concern out of compassion.
We can even date the switch, roughly. The Rolling Stones called their tune "Sympathy for the Devil", not "Empathy for the Devil" for a good reason, and we can deduce that in 1968 sympathy still meant sympathy and hadn't been muddled up with empathy.
In the 1980s however, Gordon Gekko's "Greed is good" had become the thematic tune of the times. In greed there's no room for sympathy with anyone, while empathy is very useful for any manipulator. To manipulate you must know what the victim feels, and even feel it at least simulated to best understand hpw to use those feelings as levers and pulleys and crowbars too.
And from there to here it's just a jump to the left.
I think the whole "left vs right" conceptual framework is no longer fit for purpose. I'm a classic old-school lefty. I've always supported national health services, public education, trade unions etc etc. But now, because I'm not on board with all the woke nonsense, those people would no doubt describe me as a far right fascist, which is absurd.
The most vile totalitarians in western societies these days can be identified by their pink hair, tattoos, facial piercings and their incessant proclamations of their virtue as they struggle against the fascists of the "far right".
Such people aren't left wing, they're just self obsessed lunatics.
And while I'm here...I was married for seven years to a narcissistic sociopath. Your description of an abusive relationship fits our marriage to a Tee, and your description of the abuser as an empty vessel is particularly apt. It was like being married to a hollow person...there was nothing behind the facade.
I hope your very perceptive narrative isn't based on personal experience because I wouldn't wish that misery on anyone. If it is, you have my sympathy.