Philip K. Dick and Philosophy

by D. E. Wittkower

  The real-world meaning and stakes of “pre-crime” and “pre-guilt” may have been clearer to Dick’s audience then than they are to us today. Today this meaning and these stakes are perhaps harder to see, but no less real. As one example of a growing return of McCarthyism, Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) called Barack Obama “anti-American,” and said she wished “the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America?”

  In the realm of pre-crime, Guantánamo still holds fortyeight detainees described by the US Government in the January 2010 Final Report of the Guantánamo Review Task Force as “too dangerous to transfer but not feasible for prosecution.” Our representatives are increasingly acting in ways which only make sense given outlandish and insupportable conspiracy theories, for example, outlawing Sharia law in Oklahoma, and introducing birth-certificate-certification proposals in the state legislatures of thirteen states.

  In the same way, the drop-outs and druggies today are perhaps less obvious than in the Sixties, and the problem of conformity is less clear and pressing today than it was in the Fifties. But these two coupled social problems have certainly not disappeared. The challenge to us today is the same: how can we refuse to be determined and live a life of freedom without losing perspective and losing control? As a conceptual problem, staying grounded without getting buried is not so difficult. As a practical problem, it’s very difficult indeed.

  In his later life, Dick confronted this issue in a different way. In making sense of his mystical experience with a pink beam of light, he found he needed to free himself from his belief in conventional reality. But once the floodgates opened, he found himself writing in his Exegesis about telepathic crabclawed invaders from Sirius who brought religion to the ancient Dogon tribe, and he spent his last years writing brilliant semi-autobiographical novels in an attempt to gain some perspective on his own ever-shifting belief system.

  In all these ways freedom and determinism, for Phil Dick, are not just about knowledge or fundamental reality. Freedom and determinism are also about, perhaps primarily about, how to live: what we need to do to be free, how we are being determined and adjusted, and, most of all, how to be self-determining—how to be free from the determinisms and occlusions of received social, political, economic, and religious reality without careening off into the void through drugs, isolation, or madness.7

  10

  How to Build a Democracy that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Hundred Years Later

  BEN SAUNDERS

  The existence of ‘pre-cogs’—telepaths with an ability to see the future—is a common feature of Dick’s stories. In The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Barney Mayerson uses his powers for business advantage, while in “The Minority Report” precogs are used to prosecute people for future-crimes.

  Their role needn’t be so limited though. If we had people who could predict what was going to happen before it did, then why not have them installed as our law-makers as well as enforcers? This happens in The World Jones Made, where Jones is appointed as ruler in the face of threatened alien attack.

  We may not be facing an invasion of extra-terrestrials, but imagine how much better life might be if our politicians were able to foresee events such as terrorist attacks or stock market crashes before they happened. If there were such people among us, wouldn’t we want them to rule over us? And, given that there aren’t, how should political offices be assigned?

  Rule of the Wise

  The Greek philosopher Plato recommended rule by philosophers, rather than pre-cogs, because he thought only they had the necessary knowledge. This would have sounded as ridiculous to Plato’s original audience as to modern ears. But Plato didn’t mean the kind of philosophers that exist today, such as the authors writing in this book.

  The term ‘philosopher’ comes from the Greek for lover (philo) of wisdom (sophos). Plato simply meant that the wise or knowledgeable should rule. If we update his claim for a modern audience, it would be that experts ought to rule. Military decisions should be made by generals, medical decisions by doctors, and—Plato thought—political decisions by those with political skill or expertise.

  Perhaps if Plato had read Dick, and knew of any pre-cogs, he would’ve said that they should rule. He portrayed his mentor, Socrates, as guided by a ‘divine sign’ that warned him of danger, so perhaps he thought of Socrates as a pre-cog of sorts. If we had pre-cogs, like Jones, Agatha Lively, or Socrates, then their knowledge of the future would enable them to make wise decisions, and so Plato would’ve insisted that they should rule over the rest of us for our own good.

  Sadly, perhaps, this is mere wishful thinking. We may have fortune tellers and astrologers in our midst, but their predictions are generally so vague that they can’t be proven right or wrong. Few would suggest that we ought to give power to these people simply because they claim to see the future.

  The idea that the most knowledgeable or competent should rule still has a certain appeal. We wouldn’t want children or the mentally incompetent governing us. We don’t even let them vote. If we had a wise group of experts in our midst though, why not give them power to make decisions for us?

  One reason is that anyone can claim to be an expert, but we lack any accepted test for who is and who is not one. Various religious leaders claim to be moral authorities or to know the future from revelation. Since these self-proclaimed authorities disagree though, there’s no reason for the rest of us to accept the commands of one rather than another.

  We all think that some people possess more political expertise than others. Unfortunately, there’s little agreement on who these wise rulers are. Some believe that Sarah Palin should rule and others that Barack Obama should. Presumably the supporters of each side believe that their favored candidate is the one who’ll make the best decisions. Unless we can reach consensus on who the experts are, the idea that experts should rule cannot guide us.

  What’s the best that we can do in the absence of any such agreement? In the modern world, democratic elections are regarded as essential for legitimate rule. If most people think that Obama’s the best choice to govern, then he should be president. But those who doubt the competence of ordinary people are unlikely to regard them as any more capable of electing wise leaders than of governing themselves. That’s why the Founding Fathers introduced the Electoral College. Plato argued that asking the people to choose their rulers is like asking children to choose between a doctor’s medicine and a confectioner’s candy. They choose what they like, rather than what’s actually good for them.

  Any attempt to choose rulers by election is bound to be controversial. Modern politics has degenerated into a near constant competition of personalities seeking re-election. The claim that any of these politicians possess special expertise or foresight would rightly be viewed by most with suspicion. Surely none of them are pre-cogs or they’d make better decisions. But is there an alternative?

  Spinning a Bottle

  Contemporary American politics is dominated by Republicans and Democrats. This wasn’t how it was supposed to operate. James Madison sought to avoid conflict between competing factions. Ancient Athenian democracy—the system Plato was criticizing—managed to avoid factionalism because, rather than being elected, most office holders were appointed by a lottery, using a device known as a kleroterion. This was regarded as a particularly democratic means of selection, since it gives all an equal chance of appointment. A lottery is blind to any claims of special competence or expertise.

  We can get some insight into how such a system might work from Dick’s first published novel, Solar Lottery. In this remarkably prophetic work, Dick describes how twentieth-century crises of over-production led to a society dominated by television quizzes. Prizes escalated from material goods to power and prestige, until the position of Quizmaster became the most important prize of all. The Quizmaster is effective ruler of the known galaxy and head of a vast Directorate.

  The Bottle g
ame that determines the Quizmaster seems to depend on luck rather than skill. Some games rely wholly on one or the other. Chess is a pure game of skill, with no random element, whereas chutes and ladders depends solely on the throw of dice. Others involve both chance and skill. Poker, for instance, requires strategy but players are somewhat at the mercy of the cards they are dealt. The presence of mind-reading ‘teeps’ means that any strategy is predictable, thereby turning the game into one of chance.

  Reese Verrick claims to possess skill in the Bottle game, which has allowed him to retain his position as Quizmaster so long. Those who get a run of good cards in a casino often attribute their fortune to skill, and Verrick may be similarly deluded. Whether or not the Bottle involves or rewards strategy, its random twitches are capable of defeating even the most skilful player. Such an unexpected twitch deposes Verrick and promotes Leon Cartwright, an unclassified electronics repairman and leader of the Prestonite sect, in his place.

  Appointing rulers randomly may seem outlandish. Lotteries have been used for many purposes though, including appointing juries, drafting soldiers, and allocating green cards to US immigrants. Maybe choosing politicians in this manner would bring government closer to the people.

  In their 1985 book, A Citizen Legislature, Michael Philips and Ernest Callenbach suggest just this. They recommend replacing the present elected House of Representatives with a randomly selected sample of ordinary people. This, they argue, would result in truly representative government: a portrait of the people in miniature, ensuring that all groups in society (blacks, Latinos, women, religious, atheists, and so on) were represented in government.

  The proposal to select a representative chamber randomly is obviously different from appointing a single individual—like the Quizmaster or president—by lottery, but many of the same principles apply.

  Throwing the Rascals Out

  Selecting rulers randomly would protect us from tyrants or dictators. While this threat may seem distant to those of us living in established democracies, it was a live possibility not only for the ancient Athenians but even for the American Founding Fathers. The system of checks and balances they devised, including the separation of powers, was largely designed to prevent any one individual from possessing too much power. The two-term limit on presidential office, introduced by the Twenty-second Amendment, had a similar rationale. A pessimistic defense of democratic elections regards them as no more than a means to ensure regular turnover of rule. Such an account was offered by the twentieth-century Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter.

  Schumpeter was skeptical of any claim that elections revealed a meaningful ‘popular will’. Ordinary people, he noted, are so far removed from politics that they are easily swayed by crowd psychology, and put more thought into a game of bridge than how to vote. He viewed political competition as rather like the marketplace. There’s a danger that if one firm or party has a monopoly they will abuse their power, so customers or voters will suffer. Elections ensure rotation of office, so no leader can persist for too long.

  A slightly more optimistic view is that the prospect of re-election will encourage politicians to moderate abuses of their power in order to hold on to office in future. But this assumes that voters will recognize abuses and hold their leaders to account. If that’s unlikely, elections might as well be replaced by a lottery. This ensures that, sooner or later, all rulers will be thrown out of office. None can have permanent possession of power.

  Herb Moore recognizes such reasoning in Solar Lottery when he informs Cartwright that the random twitch of the Bottle prevents dictators. No one can be sure of his or her status in the future. Random selection brings another danger though. The person selected may simply be incompetent.

  Checks and Challenges

  The Bottle appoints someone as Quizmaster. Since the selection is random, anyone can be chosen, regardless of qualifications. There’s no guarantee that they will be fit for the task. They may even be completely psychotic, like Robin Pitt, Quizmaster number thirty-four. We want some means of removing such individuals, before they do too much damage. This is all the more important when the ruler is a single individual, rather than a chamber of four hundred and thirty-five, where a few crackpots may do little harm.

  One way they can lose office is if the Bottle twitches again, but it would be foolish to rely entirely on such random machinery, given that it’s this mechanism that selected them in the first place. A deliberate way of removing officeholders is necessary; something like removing a president by impeachment, without having to wait for the next election.

  The ancient Greeks recognized this need too. They weren’t prepared to let their kleroterion select anyone at all. One way they excluded undesirable or incompetent officials was by restricting eligibility to adult citizens—which, for them, meant men of certain wealth. They also subjected all those selected to a process of scrutiny or trial before they could hold office and had arrangements for fining or removing those guilty of acting unconstitutionally.

  Dick’s society has similar mechanisms. Though unks (unclassified lower classes) could technically be chosen by the Bottle, most of them sell their power cards, which are their tickets to the lottery. This ensures that they never get to rule. Even if their number comes up, it’s the holder of their power card who benefits.

  This trade seems rational, given the six-billion-to-one odds against any single power card being selected. Imagine if someone offered to buy your lottery ticket for $50. While it could be worth a fortune, the chances are it won’t win, so this seems a good price. Someone buying up all the tickets this way can ensure that no one else can win. The consequence is that power is concentrated in the hands of those who hold the power cards, which undercuts any democratic justification for the Bottle. As Cartwright recognizes, the rules of the game are stacked heavily against the unks.

  The more formal check is something known as the Challenge. An officially appointed assassin is charged with the task of killing the incumbent Quizmaster. An incompetent Quizmaster, it is assumed, will soon be assassinated. This artificial selection mechanism filters out incompetent Quizmasters, ensuring that only the fittest survive.

  The Bottle and Challenge form two complementary halves of a selection procedure. The random element is designed to give all a chance of office and to prevent anyone, however competent, from enduring too long. The threat of assassination is supposed to remove anyone incompetent swiftly, so only those who at least moderately capable remain in office long.

  You might question whether skill in avoiding assassination is any predictor of competence to rule. Perhaps a person could be very good at staying alive but very bad at governing. Similar questions could be asked about electioneering though. A candidate might be very good at winning votes, but still ill-suited to office. Maybe the spin of a Bottle, at least with an accompanying Challenge, is no worse a selection mechanism for rulers than our media-driven elections.

  How Can Random Machinery Be Rational?

  Disgruntled at being defeated by a twitch of the Bottle, Verrick questions the rationality of the whole system. His grumbling is no doubt partly due to being a sore loser. I’m sure many politicians complain about losing elections they thought they should win too. It may seem that Verrick’s criticism has some merit, though.

  Lotteries have often been derided as irrational, because they replace reasoned human choice with blind chance. Random selection can indeed throw someone out of office for no reason and elevate in his place someone picked without any regard to merit or ability. Why would we want someone picked in this way? Surely, if we want competent rulers, we’d do better to choose them ourselves than leave the matter to luck.

  A lottery isn’t inherently rational, but nor is it irrational. It’s just a tool that we can use to make certain decisions. Tools can’t be rational or irrational—only agents can act for, or against, reasons. Tools are better regarded as arational; simply lacking in rationality, rather than opposed to it.

  Somet
imes it’s irrational to make decisions by lottery, for instance to choose a career or life partner. These are cases where people can usually make better choices for themselves. There’d be a real loss if these choices were taken away from people and replaced with random allocations. A system of arranged marriages, organized by lottery, would probably be disastrous.

  This doesn’t mean that there’s anything intrinsically irrational about lotteries though, merely that they’re an inappropriate tool to use in such circumstances. It’s like using a screwdriver to open a can of beer or a key to turn a screw. You might manage to achieve your goal, but it isn’t the best tool for the job—and not because it’s a bad tool.

  We can’t assess the tools themselves for rationality, because tools aren’t the kind of thing that can be either rational or irrational. We can only assess people, since only people make reasoned choices. If you decide to use a key to turn a screw, when you had a better tool to hand, then your decision’s irrational. Similarly if you use a lottery to make a decision where it isn’t really appropriate, we might judge you (or your choice) as irrational, but not the lottery.

  There are cases where it’s rational and appropriate to use a lottery though. One might want to be unpredictable in order to avoid others second-guessing one’s course. In Solar Lottery, this is how people respond to the threat of being teeped. When there’s a risk that your intentions could be known in advance by others, the safest strategy is a random, unplanned course of action. In Solar Lottery, this was the approach used by the assassin DeFalla and supposedly perfected by Keith Pellig.

  Lotteries may also be justified when we want to ensure impartiality. This applies to cases like the military draft or green card lottery. Here we think that all should have an equal chance and no one should have the power—or responsibility—of choosing.