The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy

by Bruce Krajewski

  The Man in the High Castle has a world divided between the Germans and the Japanese, but generally leaves out the Russians, as if they had no role in the post–World War II future. Some capitalists go out of their way to insist that capitalism is the best we can hope for. One psychological consequence of that is that the average person is hard pressed to imagine an alternative to the alleged free market. Yet, a virulent hatred of communists persists in a context in which capitalists insist that there is no alternative to capitalism. Why despise something, like communism, you imagine is not a possible position to hold?

  In a 1975 notebook entry, Dick puzzled over his popularity among both Western and Soviet Marxists. Dick explains in that notebook entry that the Marxists believed that Dick was having a subliminally critical impact on capitalism. Dick says that he later realized the reverse was true, that he had subliminally injected a Christian ideology into the thoughts of the Marxists, who did not understand what Dick was up to with his esoteric Christian and Gnostic writings. Dick was happy to program his readers and the reception of his texts. Dick’s happiness over the reversal ought to be the catalyst for Dick’s fans to revise their view of Dick as some kind of praiseworthy author.

  Despite the provocative title of this chapter, my purpose takes note of the late historian Tim Mason’s warning about dealing with fascism through individualism. “Methodologically individualism simply cannot work as a way of giving a coherent account of social, economic and political change” (“Intention and Explanation,” p. 219). When it comes to National Socialism, for instance, “‘Hitler’ cannot be a full or adequate explanation, not even of himself.” While Dick should be held accountable for his own works and words, Dick will never be the prime cause of any resurrection of fascism, but he might turn you, his reader, into an unwitting accomplice.

  III

  Captives of Unchance

  8

  Is It Free Will if You Pay for It?

  JOHN V. KARAVITIS

  “Everyone knows the part they play.” That’s the counsel that the propaganda film gives in the beginning of the first episode of The Man in the High Castle. Joe Blake is in that theater, watching, and waiting to be told the identity of his contact in the American Resistance. If anything could set the tone for the lives of those in this alternate world, it would be this simple statement.

  It’s a sobering message. It implies that you can’t change your situation. That you have to live your life on anyone’s terms but your own. That you have no control over your life. That you’re like a cork, bobbing up and down in the water. This message seems to be the underlying theme for both the TV series and the Philip K. Dick novel on which it’s based.

  Many Books Are Actually Alive

  With the takeover of the western part of the former United States by Imperial Japan, many aspects of traditional Japanese culture have taken hold. In the novel, we see this most clearly in the use of the I Ching. This is a three thousand-year-old book; the title means Book of Changes. Referred to as “the oracle,” it’s consulted when anyone wants to know how the future will unfold. Through a sequence of six random throws of either yarrow stalks or coins, the practitioner creates a hexagram which “pictures . . . the situation,” and results in the selection of a corresponding passage in the I Ching. This seemingly ambiguous and obscure passage is then interpreted by the practitioner asking the question.

  Examples of characters relying on the I Ching abound. When his supervisor Ed McCarthy proposes that they go into business crafting contemporary jewelry, Frank consults the oracle. “Should I attempt to go into the creative private business outlined to me just now?” In the midst of setting up their new business, Frank wants to know “How are things going to turn out?” Even when things do not turn out as expected, the oracle is never to blame. When Ed McCarthy points out that the oracle gave Frank incorrect advice, Frank rationalizes this. “Then the oracle must refer to some future consequence of this. That is the trouble; later on, when it has happened, you can look back and see exactly what it meant.”

  After the SD agents have been neutralized in their attempt to seize Captain Wegener at the Trade Mission, Tagomi turns to the oracle. “He wondered if in this instance the oracle would be of any use. Perhaps it could protect them. Warn them, shield them, with its advice.” Tagomi has absolute faith in the I Ching. He views the oracle as being intelligent and alive, because “As so often, the oracle had perceived the more fundamental query . . .” He expresses how confused he is by the Nazis and their view of reality. Tagomi thinks, “The oracle will cut through it. Even weird breed of cat like Nazi Germany comprehensible to I Ching.”

  Juliana uses the oracle “all the time to decide. I never let it out of my sight. Ever.” As she flees the hotel in which she has just killed Joe Cinnadella, she reflects, “Too bad I didn’t consult the oracle; it would have known and warned me. Why didn’t I?” Later, she tells Caroline Abendsen, Hawthorne Abendsen’s wife, “Listen . . . the oracle told me to come to Cheyenne.” For Juliana, the oracle is a source of wonder. “She scanned the text ravenously . . . It depicted the situation exactly—a miracle once more.” Upon finally meeting Hawthorne Abendsen, Juliana quickly surmises that the oracle wrote his novel. She then asks the oracle why, and what it expects them to learn. The implications of its answer—that not only did Germany and Japan in fact lose World War II, but that their world isn’t real—do not faze her one bit.

  Throughout the novel, the passages of the I Ching which are used to predict how a new situation will unfold are selected at random. Yet practitioners treat the results of the I Ching procedure as being inescapable. Indeed, the oracle is perceived as being intelligent, infallible, and alive. The main characters in the novel look at the world in a fatalistic manner and do not believe that they have free will.

  Free Will? Really? You Mean It’s Free?

  Free will is a subject that’s hotly debated even today by philosophers and scientists. In trying to define free will, you run into a paradox. A paradox is a conclusion that appears to contradict itself. The paradox of free will comes from French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827).

  If the exact positions and velocities of every particle in the universe are known for a given point in time, then, given the laws of physics, both the past and future positions of every particle can be determined for any point in time. Imagine a frictionless billiard table with a number of balls on it, all moving about. Knowing their exact positions and velocities at one point in time would mean that their positions could be calculated for any other point in time. Thus, since everything that will happen is determined by what has happened, how could free will exist?

  The challenge to this is that there is a lot more uncertainty in the world than Laplace was aware of. This is because the laws of physics with which Laplace was familiar were the laws of classical mechanics, not quantum mechanics. There is no way to know the positions and velocities of every particle in the universe at any given time. For example, some atoms are radioactive, and you can’t predict exactly when an atom will break apart. From the work of German physicist Werner Karl Heisenberg (1901–1976), the Uncertainty Principle states that you can’t determine both the location and velocity of a particle at any given time. This is the German scientist after whom the Nazis’ atomic bomb—the “Heisenberg device”—is named. With modern physics as we know it, our future is indeterminable, as is theirs.

  Laplace’s argument requires a situation that could never exist in the real world. It’s a simple, naive view of how the world works. We do not live in a deterministic, billiard ball-type universe. We do live in an orderly universe with laws of physics, and with events subject to cause and effect. The alternative would be to live in a chaotic and totally indeterministic universe. In such a universe, there would be no cause for anything, and nothing would make sense. It’s misguided to confuse a universe you can understand and make your way in with a universe where everything is predetermined. You would want to live in a universe where
you could, to some degree, predict how your actions will affect events.

  Objections to free will have also arisen in modern psychology. Neurophysiologist Benjamin Libet (1916–2007) determined that your decision to take a specific action occurs before you are consciously aware of it. The implication is that free will plays very little, if any, part in how we decide what to do. At least some of our decisions to act are made unconsciously. We are also creatures of habit, as Frank acknowledges while thinking about Juliana, and how she has fared since their divorce. “Her vanity probably as great as always. She always liked people to look at her, admire her . . . I could pretty well figure out what she was thinking, what she wanted.”

  Free will implies the ability to choose. But choices do not occur ex nihilo—out of nothing. Given that events are subject to cause and effect, choices cannot arise out of nowhere. It is this view of what free will should mean that leads to so much consternation. But where possibilities for action exist, a choice can be consciously made. Characters in the novel do make choices. Curiously, they also seem to believe that the future is predetermined. Although, as Robert Childan reflects, the oracle was “forced down our throats” by the Japanese, using the I Ching in important situations must mean that they feel that their future is out of their control.

  So, it’s curious why they would even bother asking the oracle anything. If the oracle could foretell the future, then knowing the future should mean that you would be able to act to change it. But if you could change the future, then the oracle would always be wrong! And if it were not possible to change the future by “knowing” how it would turn out, then it would be meaningless to ask the oracle anything in the first place! In the novel, no one ever repeats the I Ching process for the same question. Surely the characters must realize that they would get different answers to a question every time a hexagram is randomly cast! However, they act as though it would make no sense to cast a hexagram more than once.

  Can You Tell the Fake from the Reel?

  In the TV series, the I Ching plays a less prominent role. Here, only Trade Minister Tagomi uses it. Rather, the main plot line deals with mysterious newsreel films labeled The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. The Nazis, the Kempeitai, and the American Resistance pursue them. There is an obsession to collect these newsreels, regardless of the cost in time, money, or lives.

  Juliana’s half-sister, Trudy Walker, runs into her in a Chinese herbal shop. Trudy cryptically tells her, “I found . . . the reason . . . for everything.” That evening, Trudy again runs into Juliana, and gives her a newsreel moments before she’s shot dead by the Kempeitai. “What is this?” she asks. Trudy replies, “A way out.” Juliana plays the film at Frank’s apartment, and he realizes what it is. “Jesus, I know what this is. The Man in the High Castle.” Juliana is convinced it is real. “They look real ’cuz they are real.” Frank, however, is not convinced.

  While imprisoned by the Kempeitai, Resistance member Randall Becker tells Frank “That film can change the world.” The authorities want the film reels “Because they know that that film shows the world not as it is, but as it could be . . . They’re scared. Scared this film will bring the whole thing tumbling down.”

  “The films are more important than you know,” Resistance leader Karen Vecchione tells Frank at their first meeting. Lemuel Washington reinforces the importance of the film reels, but disregards their content. Juliana asks, “Have you seen the films?” Lemuel replies, “It’s not my job to see ’em. I just pass ’em along.” “Then you don’t know what they mean,” Juliana challenges. “I just know they help kill Nazis,” Lemuel responds. We later learn that the film reels are exchanged for information. “All we know is we get them to him and he passes back intelligence that we can use against the ‘Pons’ . . . If you came here looking for answers about the films, you’ll be disappointed,” Karen admonishes Juliana.

  Not all of the film reels are of our history. The film reel that Joe Blake viewed in Canon City has Soviet propaganda for Joseph Stalin from 1954; whereas, in their history, Stalin had been executed in 1949. In our history, Stalin died on March 5th, 1953. Toward the end of Season One, Frank and Juliana view a film reel that appears to show a future where San Francisco will be nuked, and Joe, wearing a Nazi uniform, will execute Frank. In the final episode of Season One, we see that Adolf Hitler has a large collection of these film reels! Hitler remarks to Colonel Wegener, “Most days I watch these films, and every time I learn something.”

  The film reels are perplexing. They don’t just show alternate histories. The latest film reel shows a horrific future. By the end of Season Two, we still don’t know who has created them, or why, or how exactly they are being released into the world. But the search for these film reels reveals the view on free will of those who hunt for them. The world is full of uncertainty, but people actively shape the world. We’re constantly faced with uncertainty. So we plan, make choices, and take action, as in the TV series. And even though he relies on the I Ching, Minister Tagomi succinctly, yet perhaps unwittingly, expresses this position on free will when he tells Colonel Wegener, “Fate is fluid, Colonel Wegener. Destiny is in the hands of men.”

  The Reason for Everything

  By the end of Season Two, we’ve witnessed a number of curious events that make us question the reality of this alternate world. Juliana’s mother, Anne Crain Walker, has a premonition that Trudy is dead. “But then I woke up . . . and it was gone. Just like that. I feel her again, just like nothing ever happened.” A short time later, Juliana sees Trudy in the outdoor marketplace! She tells Frank, who does not believe her. Through information that Minister Tagomi provides, Juliana finds Trudy’s body in an open mass grave. Even after Juliana reveals that Trudy is dead, Anne persists in her belief that Trudy is still alive. She tells Juliana, “Your sister is here, I can feel it.” Yet in the final episode of Season Two, Juliana is reunited with Trudy by Hawthorne Abendsen!

  Tagomi’s assistant Kotomichi, who is from Nagasaki, briefly exposes his right wrist and forearm while helping Juliana. We see burn scars reminiscent of those received by many people during that city’s atomic bomb blast. After failing to convince General Onoda that they should be more cautious in their catch-up nuclear program by showing pictures of the aftermath of the bombing of Washington, DC, Tagomi notices the similarity between the burn scars on Kotomichi’s forearms and those of the survivors of the DC blast. Tagomi later confronts Kotomichi, and learns that he is not the only one who can transport himself to an alternate world. Kotomichi was a survivor of the atomic bomb blast that leveled Nagasaki in his world. Lying in a hospital bed, in pain, he found himself in a “happier” world by accident. Tagomi, in trying to come to grips with the injustice and evil of the world that he’s seen and experienced, did so too.

  Do these curious events strike a familiar chord? I think they should.

  These events and the revelation that you could transport yourself to an alternate world by just wishing it sound a lot like what it must be like to write a novel! Only in this case, you’re writing your way out of a situation in your life that you do not like. It seems as though we’re being told that you can take control of your life, and write the story of your life, as long as you’re willing to make a voluntary choice to do so. As long as you’re willing to take control of the direction of your life. To set goals, to plan, to choose, to act—to express your free will.

  In the novel, Juliana learns the truth behind Abendsen’s novel. The oracle wrote The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, and it is true. Germany and Japan did in fact lose World War II. But this also means that their world is just a story, and not the “real” world. It’s a mass delusion. This idea is reinforced by the American antique replicas sold to Japanese collectors; the Zippo lighter once owned by President Franklin Roosevelt; and Tagomi’s experience of the alternate reality implied by the oracle’s answer to Juliana’s question. The novel also has the main characters accepting the futility of changing their lives, and we see this expressed most prominently i
n the persistent use of the I Ching to make decisions about the future. They are trapped in a novel.

  In the TV series, the theme of free will is repeatedly expressed. It’s what people believe that creates reality, and so it’s what you decide to do with your life that creates your reality. You have free will to direct your life, as long as you believe that you can. Childan takes a moment to explain to Frank a similar idea about belief—here, the suspension of disbelief—required in the antiques trade. “That’s your point? It’s all a giant racket?” Frank asks Childan. “And they’re playing it on themselves,” Childan replies. “It’s all in here. In the mind.” Here, the characters actively write their own story of their lives. In a sense, they are the authors of their own novel.

  Your Actions Define You

  In the TV series, we see the characters rebelling against their situations and laying claim to their free will. But the most prominent and indeed most illustrative example is not any of the characters that would first come to mind. I believe that the best example of the expression of free will is found in the actions of SS-Obergruppenführer John Smith. John Smith was born to a prominent family that lost it all during the Great Depression. He became a US Army intelligence officer who fought bravely in World War II; and yet, after the war, he rose through the ranks of the SS to become the equivalent of a general, and to be trusted by Adolf Hitler.

  We see John Smith continuously taking actions that expose him to the possibility of arrest and execution. He murders Hauptsturmführer Connolly, who, by order of Heydrich, had leaked details of his travel route to work to the American Resistance, by pushing him off of the SS Headquarters building in New York. Smith kills the doctor who knows about his son’s incurable multiple sclerosis, and then he makes sure that the doctor’s body is cremated, contrary to the demands of his widow for an autopsy. Smith maintains a line of communication with Inspector Kido of the Kempeitai, which could be construed as conspiring with an enemy agent. At the end of Season Two, Smith disobeys a direct order from Acting Chancellor Heusmann to stay at his post in New York. Doing so results in averting a final world war, and brings him to the height of respect and prominence in the Nazi Party. John Smith has continuously challenged the hands that fate has dealt him, and has always taken charge of his own destiny. As Acting Chancellor Heusmann counseled his son, Joe Blake, “Your actions define you . . . and they do not lie.”