The religious significance of the novel's picture arises if the physical milieu in general is interpreted as a paradise bem designd (Earth itself, by way of WW Terminus), or, alternatively, as the post-technological version of the plagues of Egypt recounted in Exodus. That explains the reference to the fact that the plague of propagate contamination that had covered the Earth after the war "had descended from above" (Dick 13). There was no Passover option in the BR universe, and thence it is to be assumed that the conventional myths of Judeo-Christian religious usage existing before WWT has been discarded and then programmatically reconfigured by those who survived the war, in ways consistent with the ratios of power extant in the hold up young world.
The image of Earth as paradise lost can also be associated with the fact that so some(prenominal) human beings have left Earth altogether for resolution of Mars, as if humanity has been expelled from the Earth as Eden and the new human society is being nurtured on Mars. But the nudeness of life in the Martian colony can be inferred from the fact that so-called "precolonial" texts and other works of art--i.e., books, films, etc., from Earth culture--are criminalize on the new colony (130-33). The determination of Mars's new masters
to prohibit Earth nostalgia in transplanted human beings can be compared to the Genesis story of God's absolute ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden. Thus even in its foul state, Earth remains the icon of Eden, to be preferred to Mars.
The use of technology and assorted mood-altering drugs as a proxy for human behavior and subjective pick up of the world marks the major(ip) religious characteristic of the post WWT world in BR. In this universe, which so many human beings have abandoned, the remaining human beings have abandoned the radical freedom of random experience in favor of certainty of mood, whatever the situation.
Turning the knobs and dials of the empathy niche takes on the flavor of a religious ritual that culminates in the individual's having empathy with, vicariously sharing, or more precisely fusing (Dick 20-21) with, the ultimate importation of Wilbur Mercer's cosmic suffering. That experience always takes the form of Mercer's treading uphill and being hit pummeled with rocks and other objects. The pain is set out of the process, in its noble-minded form the experience of "encompassing every other live thing" (21). Such connectedness is what is missing from post-WWT Earth, a dystopia in which most animals have become extinct and in which human beings cannot always tell whether other human beings are part android--and so potentially dangerous, since they may try to kill overflowing humans and so altogether supplant humanity in the cosmos.
But the fact that reliance on technology is a key characteristic of religious essentialism for human beings in BR makes human religious experience the worst enemy of itself. The empathy machine is a crutch that provides a profound disconnect between mankind and God, or perhaps adds a layer of consciousness that prevents a direct experience of the ambiguity or awesome unknowableness of God. To be sure, the technology-driven structure of Mercerism per se can be likened to religion as readers of BR may know it--a crutc
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