So this is a video of the Northwestern University Production of Mozart's The Magic Flute. This clip is an hour long, so I don't blame you if you don't want to watch it, but if you so desire, it is a really stunning production.
“Papageno: ‘My child, what should we now say?’
Pamina: ‘The truth. That’s what we will say.’
Leaning forward and peering, Rick studied Pamina in her heavy, convoluted robes, with her wimple trailing its veil about her shoulders and face. He reexamined the poop sheet, then leaned back, satisfied. I’ve now seen my third Nexus-6 android, he realized. This is Luba Luft. A little ironic, the sentiment her role calls for.”
--Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep pg 98
This section of ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric,’ in which Rick finds his third android performing as the lead to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, really sparked my curiosity. Why did Philip K. Dick use opera to introduce this android? And why The Magic Flute? After reading this section I looked up the opera online, where I read a synopsis and watched parts of the Northwestern University production. The basic plot is the story of Tamino, a young attractive man who befriends the comedic buffoon, Papageno. In the first act the Queen of the Night shows Tamino a portrait of her beautiful daughter, Pamina, but tells him that Pamina is trapped by the evil sorcerer, Sarastro. She promises Tamino that if he rescues Pamina, they can be married. Tamino and Papageno set off on the quest to defeat Sarastro, but soon discover that in fact Sarastro is a kind, benevolent sorcerer who is protecting Pamina from the evil nature of her mother. Sarastro and the Wise Men of the Temple agree that Tamino and Pamina can be married, if they both prove their moral purity. They are tested throughout the play to demonstrate that they are ethical and will be kind and compassionate towards one another. Eventually the two pass the test, get married and live happily ever after.
I think the link between the opera and the book becomes clear: in both cases the “wise” officials are testing the people around them to see if they possess the proper amount of “empathy” and “compassion.” Does that not seem totally wrong? Who are these wise individuals to decide what is deemed moral? Who decides the proper empathetic reaction to a test?
During the times in the novel when Rick was giving the Voigt-Kampff test, I tried to monitor my own reactions, to see if I would pass.
Question 1:
“You are given a calf-skin wallet on your birthday.” (Dick 48)
Reaction:
Hmm… well honestly I don’t know if I could tell the difference between a calf skin wallet and one designed to look like one. I have always cringed when my aunts got fur coats for Christmas, so my inclination is that I wouldn’t approve, however I don’t know if I have enough courage to embarrass the person giving it to me.
Question 2:
“You have a little boy and he shows you his butterfly collection, including his killing jar.”(Dick 49)
Reaction:
I have always enjoyed looking at butterfly collections. I remember in fifth grade when we were responsible for insect collections. It was a morbid sensation watching the beetles poison from the cotton ball drenched in finger nail polish remover. And as grim as I felt watching the insect die, I soon forgot the feeling, plucked the bug out of the jar and relished in posing it creatively on the bug collection board. Does that mean I am un-empathetic? Am I an android?
Question 3:
“You’re reading a novel written in the old days before the war. The characters are visiting Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. They become hungry and enter a seafood restaurant. One of them orders lobster, and the chef drops the lobster into the tub of boiling water while the characters watch.” (Dick 49)
Reaction:
Ok, I have to make a confession. In high school, our speech and debate coaches told us that if we made it to state we could go eat a fancy restaurant and have whatever we wanted, “Steak, or lobster, your choice,” she said. As a freshman my eyes brightened “LOBSTER!” I had always seen the lobsters at seafood restaurants, but our family could never afford them. I was so excited to pick out my own personal lobster from the aquarium. When the day came when I finally got my lobster I was so excited. I thoroughly enjoyed describing to my fellow speech and debaters how the cook dropped the lobster in the steaming pot, how it screamed. Then when it was served, I took one of its claws and jabbed it at one of the vegetarians at the team. Writing it out makes me sound like a monster, however I wasn’t being morbid because of lack of empathy (well maybe lack of empathy for the lobster) but more because I was having fun, enjoying the moment. I guess I didn’t fully realize what I was doing…..
The reason why I go through the test is to show that I am not sure how well anyone could truly measure a person’s ability to care. I think I would fail this test, but I don’t think I am an android. (Of course I could have been given a false memory.) I care very much for people, and animals for that matter. I remember raising my goats for 4-H. Upon the day I had to sell one of them I cried, I couldn’t imagine the idea of him, being ground up into Cabrito. Everyone around me said it was a fact of life, but I could not imagine life without Soda Pop. 
This Actually not Soda Pop, this is my other goat Rocky, who live a long life, before my Dad took him to the slaughter house....
So if I do not get outraged at the idea of a lobster dropped in a scalding pot, but do feel a huge amount of guilt when my goat is sacrificed to the 4-H gods, where would the empathy test put me? It seems like part of the point of these empathy tests is not to label people androids and blast them with lasers, but rather to better know thyself.
“That I have much ado to know myself.”
---The Merchant of Venice I. i. 1 by William Shakespeare
By better understanding our emotional intelligence we should be better able to extend that compassion to our fellow living beings. One of the most riveting pieces of information I found in the readings was the data on those with alexithymia. In Goleman’s article he discusses how the average person, like Eric Eckardt, is unable to maliciously injure someone without a certain amount of guilt. However a “psychological fault line is common to rapists, child molesters, and many perpetrators of family violence alike: they are incapable of empathy. This inability to feel their victims’ pain allows them to tell themselves lies that encourage their crime.” (Goleman 66) What the article does not describe is the idea of finding oneself before isolating those who cannot feel empathy. So often society is willing to imprison or put to death those who murder, rape and molest, however it seems to me that to be a truly empathetic society we must have compassion for these people, as the data seems to point out that it is not there fault, they cannot control it.
So I guess the basic principle I am trying to communicate is that the idea of the empathy test, seems to be misused. It should not decide whether two lovers should get married, or whether or not you are an android. The idea of these tests should be to help find ones own areas in which he or she lacks compassion and develop those areas, so that hopefully they can achieve the most challenging goal: share that empathy, to those who cannot share it back.
Can those able empathize with those who can't?
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