No religion comes out unscathed from Dick’s satire of spiritual belief. Judaism, Catholicism, various Protestant sects, Pentecostalism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, all share his ire and his pointed wit. He has created a fundamentalist’s dream come true - a society united by faith in its rigid beliefs, in which science and religion are merged into the quest for the most efficient channel of communication to God. The universe itself is biblical (or rather Bablical in reference to the dominant Faith of the Second Bab). The Earth is the centre of the cosmos and sits over a vast fiery mining camp called Hell. The whole is surveyed from above by an enormous eye, which has very little insight into the human condition but which (who?) responds well but not always reliably to human obsequiousness. No one works for wages but for salvation credits that are determined by one’s rank in society. One’s living is provided (or not) based on the the results of prayer. The key to life is “to get inside with the Lord.” God Himself (or more properly and respectfully: Tetragrammaton) preaches on Sundays via network television hookup. Righteous racism and militarism are, naturally, de riguer. But this is only one of the fantasy worlds contained in Eye in the Sky. There is a distinctive one for each of the victims of an industrial accident in an experimental physics lab. Each has their own view of reality and the proper mores to which human beings should adhere. Given the chance, these become tactics of power. After the accident they “keep getting into each other’s heads” in highly directive and annoying ways. Dick has an interesting idea for a multiple worlds hypothesis based on quantum theory (first formulated by the physicist Hugh Everett in 1957, the same year as Dick published his story. Who, one might ask, inspired whom?). Dick’s suggestion is that the possibility of parallel worlds is based on an entirely subjective experience which can be projected into the consciousness of others. This is not incompatible with the 17th century philosopher Leibniz’s concept of the monadic (and therefore strictly subjective) structure of the universe which is coordinated by... well, by a big Eye in the Sky!’ In such a Leibnizian universe we are all “distorted figments of somebody’s fantasy world,” just as Dick says. Under normal circumstances no one notices because we are “unaware that every aspect of their existence is being manipulated by an invisible presence.” But if no one, particularly no God, is ensuring that the fantasies link up in a coherent way, life becomes not just chaotic but potentially lethal, with even the fundamental laws of physics mutating around us. Dick’s target is not religion but power. What he has done in this incredible tale, therefore, is to use an atheistic satire about religion to suggest the logical necessity of God in order to counter the desire of human beings for power over one another. Certainly not the God of any of the religions he pillories, but some hidden, abstract force or intelligence that somehow maintains reasonably civil behaviour, despite the power-hungry crazies that exist among us. What this entity might be called is open to discussion, but not to dogmatisation. So why not simply the Eye in the Sky?

Gökteki GözPhilip K. Dick · Alfa Yayıncılık · 2015206 okunma

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