“I believe that all medical studies are flawed if they do not consider the emotional factor.” Dr. John Sarno
I’ve often felt that I was born in the wrong era. On the one hand, I probably would not have survived childbirth had I lived in a past century, but on the other hand, I wouldn’t have to wrestle with computer portals, passwords, updates, and wifi. Rather than scribing letters with a goose feather quill like a Jane Austen character, I’m forced to confront my fears and anxieties about technology on a daily basis. With the rise of AI and ChatGPT, the distinction between biological and informational programming, human brains and silicon chips, analog and digital, real and fake, are becoming increasingly blurred. What are the implications (for society and our inner selves), of rendering imperfections, idiosyncrasies, complexities, deviations, and the wondrous weirdness of humans, obsolete?
While science fiction is not a genre towards which I typically gravitate, the 1982 film “Blade Runner” grapples with these very questions. Set in a 2019, neon drenched, rain soaked, cluttered, dystopian, Los Angeles, it could more accurately be described as a contemporary commentary. At the heart of its neo noir narrative, lies the philosophical conundrum of whether bio engineered beings with enhanced capabilities, can truly be considered human. What constitutes consciousness, and does it require our biology as a place to inhabit, or is it a property that emerges from a processing system? The ostensibly human, protagonist Rick Deckard, is tasked with hunting down and “retiring” escaped replicants. As his studies of the replicants deepen, so does his questioning of the morality of his assignment. A pivotal plot device is the fictional “Voight-Kampff test”, an empathy test designed to distinguish between the humans and their artificial counterparts. This psychological interrogation method raises more questions than it does answers, and highlights the impossibility of measuring consciousness. Some emotions like fear and anger manifest in infancy, whereas others require time and certain conditions to flourish. Since the replicants only have a life span of 4 years, they lack the benefit of memory, an upbringing, a mother and father, and their level empathy would vary, based on the experiences they could pack into their brief lives. The test presents various hypothetical scenarios that are ambiguous and highly subjective, even for ordinary people. Therein lies the critique of the hypocrisy of empathy. After all, how do we determine who is worthy of it, in what situations and why? How could an instrument that gages pupil dilation, pulse rate, and reaction time, possibly capture empathy, assign value to it, or measure its depth and direction? The film brilliantly exposes the flaw in the so called, scientific logic…the fact that the deepest emotional experiences do not need to be measured and quantified in order for us to know they exist.
“To perceive is to suffer.” Aristotle
The assumption that empathy = humanity, is shattered by the human characters in “Blade Runner”… whose cynicism, indifference, blunted affect, alcohol fueled escapism, dehumanization of the replicants, and overall disassociation, is contrasted by the way the androids create precious memories within a compacted time frame. They even grieve, love, rage, fear death, and mourn one another. The Tyrell corporation’s slogan, “More human than human!” is devastating in its irony. The replicants feel intensely, form deep bonds, fear loss, and seek meaning. Like the replicants, most TMS’ers would fail an empathy test – not because they lack feeling, but because they have too much of it! By adopting the perspective, and absorbing the emotional weather of others too much, the end result is often self abandonment and doubt. They find themselves under the same kind of scrutiny as the replicant characters, but rarely protected from emotional overload and exhaustion. It is this pressure and lack of self empathy that actually gets in the way of our own healing and emotional well being. For many chronic pain sufferers, empathy was initially employed in early childhood as a survival strategy. By attuning to others (anticipating moods, suppressing their own needs, becoming highly adaptive) it ensured safety and connection. The “empath’s curse” follows the goodist, Type T personality (as coined by Dr. Sarno), into adulthood, in countless forms… from feeling guilty about setting boundaries, replaying conversations, apologizing unnecessarily, fear of abandonment, to feeling responsible for the comfort of others over themselves. True empathy doesn’t require self erasure, but unfortunately at some point, empathy stopped flowing inward and it morphed into a reflex aimed outward. When we lose the ability to self empathize, the body will step in our place…feeling what cannot be consciously felt, sometimes protesting and protecting, often demanding acknowledgment, and always waiting to be witnessed.
“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.” Roy Batty (leader of the Nexus 6 replicants) in “Blade Runner”
Our symptoms are often a communication, pleading with us to bear witness to our past traumas and current suffering. In “Blade Runner” what humanizes the replicants isn’t passing a “test”, it’s being seen in their suffering. As author Steve Ozanich wrote, “Science doesn’t reveal Truth, it often distorts it.” In the climactic rooftop scene, Roy transcends his artificial programming, by making the conscious choice to spare Deckard’s life. What renders this scene so memorable and poignant, is the our realization that the replicant Roy doesn’t want to die alone. The iconic monologue he delivers, lays bear the oh so human, desire to be seen and to matter. His life, though brief, had meaning… “I’ve seen things you wouldn’t believe, attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, I watched C beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate …All those moments will be lost in time … like tears in rain.” The tears and raindrops are as indistinguishable as the replicants and the humans. What was at risk of being lost…his memories and humanity, is finally witnessed. Our body is the most empathic entity we have, and therefore symptoms are not a betrayal, they are an act of self loyalty.
The key to healing is self empathy and embracing the fullness of our trauma. Like tears in rain, our suffering doesn’t need to be proven to anyone (living or dead) – because we know how we suffered. It only needs to be witnessed, grieved, and transmuted, to power and inner peace. When we do that, our soul no longer needs to cry out through our body to be heard. What was once at risk of being lost in time or banished to our unconscious, is finally allowed to exist, the version of our true selves with needs, limits, and preferences.
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