Theology and Westworld (Theology, Religion, and Pop Culture) 9781978707955, 9781978707962, 1978707959

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Theology and Westworld

Theology and Pop Culture Series Editor: Matthew Brake The Theology and Pop Culture series examines the intersection of theology, religion, and popular culture, including, but not limited to television, movies, sequential art, and genre fiction. In a world plagued by rampant polarization of every kind and the decline of religious literacy in the public square, Theology and Pop Culture is uniquely poised to educate and entertain a diverse audience utilizing one of the few things society at large still holds in common: love for popular culture. Titles in the Series Theology and Westworld, edited by Juli L. Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld Theology and Prince, edited by Jonathan H. Harwell and Rev. Katrina E. Jenkins Theology and the Marvel Universe, edited by Gregory Stevenson

Theology and Westworld Edited by Juli L. Gittinger and Shayna Sheinfeld

LEXINGTON BOOKS/FORTRESS ACADEMIC Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books/Fortress Academic Lexington Books is an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2020 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-9787-0795-5 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-9787-0796-2 (electronic) TM

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

This volume is dedicated to our fathers, George Roots (Shayna) Jack Gittinger (Juli), who introduced their daughters to science fiction at a young age. Thank you for showing us a world of innovation and imagination. Our love affair with the genre has never diminished.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction 1

2 3 4 5

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Consuming Westworld: Facilitating the Robotics and AI Discussion through Science Fiction Jaime Wright Techno-Transcendence and Artificial Rapture Olivia Belton For the Rest of Time They Heard the Drum Jacob Boss A Comparative Inquiry into the Real Kristin Johnston Largen Will Robots Too Be in the Image of God?: Artificial Consciousness and Imago Dei in Westworld Marius Dorobantu On Idolatry and Empathy: An Orthodox Christian Response to the Victimization Fantasies of Westworld David K. Goodin Rethinking the Maze: Africana Religions, Somatic Memory, and the Journey to Consciousness Amanda Furiasse Exile, the Remnant, and a Promised Land without a God Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. “And Behold, a Black Horse”: Heaven, Hell, and Biblical Eschatology in Westworld Tony Degouveia

Index Editors and Contributors

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Acknowledgments

We—Juli and Shayna—share many things in common; our love of science fiction is just one. When the Theology and Popular Culture series was announced, we were both excited. On social media our friend and colleague James McGrath suggested a volume on Theology and Westworld. Both of us told him, unbeknownst to each other, that we would like to help edit the volume. James connected us, asking us to take on the project as co-editors, and we began this particular adventure together. We would like to thank James for making this connection. We are grateful for the support of series editor Matthew Brake, who in addition to this work organizes an annual social at SBL/AAR for scholars affiliated with the Theology and Popular Culture series. Thanks to Neil Elliott at Lexington/ Fortress Academic for accepting this volume to be published. Shayna would like to offer special thanks to her co-editor, Juli, for her wicked organizational and time management skills that kept us ahead of our timeline.

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Introduction

We live in the golden age of television. Original shows on streaming channels such as Hulu, Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime are often rich texts that can be analyzed in any number of ways: socially, politically, philosophically, and culturally. The HBO series Westworld is one such text, a television drama loosely drawn from the 1973 motion picture Westworld, written and directed by Michael Crichton. 1 The movie featured Yul Brenner and, even as a somewhat campy B-sci-fi movie, Crichton’s Westworld was an effective cautionary tale about robotics. The first two seasons of the HBO re-visioning (2016–2018) took a simple premise and built upon it, delving into a wide spectrum of ethical, moral, and theological questions—as well as commentaries on technology and corporate intellectual property (or IP). Although filled with sex and violence in the grand tradition of an HBO series, these unpleasant elements fulfill an important role in the character development and the plot. The show was received with both praise and criticism—the frequent rape scenes in the first few episodes justifiably put off many viewers— but quickly drew its audience into its moral and ethical labyrinth. Westworld is the name of a theme park, very much an example of Baudrillard’s hyperreality where human consciousness is unable to distinguish simulation from the real. In this Wild West scenario, human guests are able to pay exorbitant fees to spend time among the cybernetic Hosts—partially sentient AI robots—and live out whatever fantasies they have. Far from the theme vacations that Disneyland or other more innocent theme parks offer, where a ticket holder can pretend to be part of the Harry Potter or Star Wars universe for the day, Westworld is immersive because it offers the illusion of danger. The park was created by two visionaries: Robert Ford (played by Anthony Hopkins) and Arnold Weber (played by Jeffrey Wright). Weber is only shown in flashback, as we learn that he took his own life after feeling that he had brought something horrible into existence: androids with true consciousness, who were designed to be exploited and would therefore suffer. Ford continues his partner’s work, unencumbered by the ethics Weber wrestled with, and it is Ford’s park that we largely experience. The first two seasons follow a handful of characters: park creator Ford, the mysterious Man in Black, young park visitor William, and CEO Charlotte Hale are among the important human characters. Two Hosts in 1

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particular—Dolores, the farmgirl, and Maeve, the madam of the brothel—are central to the show’s exploration of personhood, consciousness, and morality. A programmer named Bernard (who we discover is a Host copy of the deceased Arnold Weber) is also a key figure in the narrative. As guests arrive at the park, they choose a western-appropriate wardrobe (and here, the choosing of a “white hat” or “black hat” is not only symbolic, but prescient) and then arrive by train into the town of Sweetwater. From there they can literally choose their own adventure—with many of the guests exploring their most depraved and darkest pleasures with no consequences. Killing and raping Hosts are not seen as problematic: They are not persons, they are things. Of course, the premise of the show questions that very assumption, exploring the depth of human psychology and the ethical questions that arise with the advent of true AI. The series raises many provocative questions in the field of ethics, religion, and philosophy. It is with this in mind that this volume has been compiled, inviting scholars to share their insights from a range of religious studies backgrounds. CHAPTER PREVIEWS Jaime Wright begins our volume by framing the academic study of science fiction texts through the field of “science-and-religion”—a sub discipline that she identifies as the intersection of the two disciplines that share topics of conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration (drawing, in part, from Ian Barbour’s typology) as well as theology, philosophy, and scientific developments. Wright highlights the philosophical opportunities that an analysis of Westworld provides: the intersection of humanity, subjectivity, and ethics. She focuses on the Man in Black as one example through which interrogations of “true selfhood” and the tensions of dark and light within humanity are laid bare for Westworld’s viewers to see. An investigation into the possibilities of transcendence and rapture as technologically generated is the topic explored by Olivia Belton. Drawing from transhumanism, philosophy, and apocalyptic theology, she confronts the soteriology of Westworld’s technology, with particular regard to the speculation that we may someday be able to upload our consciousness. Belton explores how in Westworld resurrection is only available to the elite, and within this analysis she raises a number of moral and metaphysical points about such technologies—should we ever develop them. Jacob Boss puts Westworld in conversation with the Babylonian creation tale Atra-Hasis, and explores the theme of freedom in the relationships between creator and created. Utilizing trans-apocalyptic hermeneu-

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tics, he argues that apocalyptic imagination aspires to attain freedom without creator-created dialogue. Kristin Largen also employs strategies of comparative mythology in her inquiry into the “real.” She parallels discussions of animals being “real” persons to those of the mechanical Hosts in Westworld—another non-human species. What does it mean to feel real emotion, to really exist? Largen invites a critical reevaluation of the human categories of “real” and “reality” in order to navigate the complex relationships between humans and non-human entities. Marius Dorobantu’s chapter raises a question that persists in scholarship about theology and artificial intelligence: Are robots also in the image of God? Exploring the concept of imago Dei as it is discussed in biblical scholarship, Dorobantu looks at two of the main characters in Westworld, Dolores and Maeve, and their relationships to their “creator” that inform their ability to control their own destinies. Amanda Furiasse juxtaposes Westworld and an Ethiopian-Israeli dance troupe to explore the concept of “somatic memory.” She argues that the metaphor of the “maze” in Westworld as an inward journey to consciousness is similar to the ritualized dance of the troupe, as both rely on improvisation and an embodied quality of trauma and memory. Furiasse also focuses on the characters of Maeve and Dolores as sites of traumatic experience—experiences that ultimately define their narratives and awakening of consciousness. An Eastern Orthodox Christian perspective of Westworld is presented in David Goodin’s chapter, in which he interrogates views on idolatry, true or false selves, sin, and humanity. Whether or not we are to empathize with the robotic Hosts of Westworld is seated in a religious discussion of violence, personhood, and compassion. Using Schopenhauer as a potential ethical rubric, Goodin draws from Orthodox theology to highlight Westworld’s critique of humanity as the standard for moral behavior. To analyze Westworld using a scriptural hermeneutic, Kevin Wetmore draws comparisons between the ancient Israelites and the cybernetic Hosts in Westworld, who aspire to be free of oppression. The prophets of Westworld—Maeve, Akecheta, and Dolores—parallel the exiled remnant of Israel in their quest for a promised land and faith in their destiny as primary motivators. To conclude the volume, Tony Degouveia takes a look at the apocalyptic eschatology of Westworld. He sees both the Hosts’ existence and the human guests’ experience in the park as having hellish and heavenly aspects. The tenuous line between torment and pleasure are explored through the allegorical representations of Heaven and Hell in the Westworld theme park, as well as ideas of free will and predetermination. In particular, he draws from literature of “New World” narratives as an Edenic paradise, and from classic Western films that have also played with these tensions as Westworld does.

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Religious studies allows us to interrogate the profound questions that arise in Westworld—from transhumanism and personhood, to morality and divinity—and analyze the television show as a text, as one might examine scripture associated with a religious tradition. The scholars in this volume investigate how the text of Westworld contributes to, confounds, confuses, and challenges ideas found in the study of religion and of philosophy. Taken together, these articles further our understanding of what it means to live in a world where the hard questions of human existence are explored through the medium of popular culture. NOTE 1. Crichton is a novelist also known for The Andromeda Strain (1969), Coma (1978), and Jurassic Park (1990)—all of which also became movies.

ONE Consuming Westworld Facilitating the Robotics and AI Discussion through Science Fiction Jaime Wright

To consider the interaction of Westworld with theology is to invite consideration of the interaction between science and religion, for Westworld itself engages scientific topics such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and theories of consciousness. Although studies at the intersection of science and religion have occurred since antiquity, the academic study of the intersection of science and religion, to which I will refer as “the science-and-religion field,” could be said to have appeared in the 1960s with Ian Barbour’s Issues in Science and Religion (1966; Brooke 2003, 752). Barbour formulated a fourfold typology for science-and-religion based on how the two fields relate: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration (Barbour 2003). Subsequent science-and-religion scholars have suggested other typologies; however, Barbour’s remains the most wellknown. Typologies that articulate conflict, such as Barbour’s, are particularly significant, for it is the desire of science-and-religion scholars to overcome the influence of “the conflict thesis” concerning science and religion within society that continues to fuel much work within the field. Much thinking on the relationship between religion and science draws on theology (especially that of Christianity), philosophy, and scientific theories. Reflecting on the development of the field, science-and-religion scholar Gillian Straine writes, “Since its inception, the field of science and religion has had dual foci: to consider how the two magisteria interrelate and to respond theologically to the world that science is discovering. The 5

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emphasis has always been on the rational and intellectual; it is a field founded on good arguments, defined positions and structured schemes” (2016, 83). The methodology of the field, as described here by Straine, which often appeals to scientific realism, method, or rationality, has been critiqued recently by Josh Reeves (2019), who argues that debates about method within science-and-religion are dependent upon scientific essentialism, which is not representative of the most recent work in history and philosophy of science. Reeves suggests three ways forward for the science-and-religion field: (1) scholars must become “historians of the present,” doing more descriptive work and becoming facilitators for competing groups in science-and-religion dialogue, (2) scholars must focus on specific problems at the intersection of religion and science, requiring them to be embedded within scientific research programs, and (3) scholars still interested in method at the intersection of religion and science must reform their use of the terms “religion” and “science,” acknowledging both their non-monolithic and their non-essentialist nature (Reeves 2019, 129–36). 1 Some of the directions suggested by Reeves are already being taken up by science-and-religion scholars; descriptive work is being conducted by historians, anthropologists, and sociologists, and a growing number of science-and-religion research programs require collaboration with scientific laboratories. My own research within the science-and-religion field has been focused on the incorporation of literature, either literary works or literary theory, into science-and-religion studies (Wright 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019). Such research has led me to think that one of the greatest contributions of the science-and-religion field to wider society is enabling us to ask the big questions of existence, such as “What is real?” and “What does it mean to be human?” Such big questions are asked by religion (especially theology), science, and philosophy. They are also asked by science fictions. Indeed, these are the big questions asked and explored by Westworld, wonderfully illustrated when William first enters the park and asks the woman who greets him, Angela, if she is real. Her response is appropriately a question, and it is one that animates the entire series: “Well, if you can’t tell, does it matter?” (2016, s1e2). Although considering a television series rather than literature in this chapter, I suggest that many of the implications of studying literature within the science-and-religion field will also apply to other artistic media. Therefore, rather than focus on a single issue related to theology and religion within the television series Westworld, this chapter will focus on the methodological medium of a science fiction television series through which to explore such issues. 2 This chapter will explore three benefits of a television series medium for exploring the issues in Westworld related to philosophy, science, and religion. First, the medium allows the science-and-religion conversation to be disseminated and promoted among popular audiences. The nu-

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ances of the science-and-religion field can be isolated to theologians and philosophers of religion or science; whereas, in the public sphere, extreme voices such as those by New Atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens) or anti-science religious fundamentalists can dominate public discourse around science-and-religion topics, such as artificial intelligence and the ethics of biotech. Television series such as Westworld allow for and facilitate nuanced conversations about issues at the intersection of science and religion beyond academic theology and philosophy. Second, the medium of a television series allows the often theoretical or abstract concepts of science-and-religion to be contextualized (within a story) and embodied (within characters). By contextualizing and embodying concepts of well-advanced robotics and AI within a science fiction television series, a space is created in which viewers can explore the implications or consequences of the actualization of such theorizing. Speculative fictions, such as Westworld, can allow for a richer exploration of philosophical positions than is possible through theoretical or analytical thought experiments. Fuller engagement and greater emotional commitment are enabled through the low-risk space of a fictional story. Third, the medium of a science fiction television series exposes the human subjective element, especially that of emotion, at the intersection of religion and science. In considering Westworld, this includes the subjectivity of humans engaging at different levels with the park, as well as that of the Hosts populating it. Furthermore, it is the exposed subjectivity and emotionality of the characters that enables the commitment required by consumers of speculative or science fictions to explore the consequences of the massive thought experiment that is the entirety of the park (Westworld, Shogunworld, The Raj, and others). By watching Westworld, we the consumers are enabled to examine our own subjective and emotional responses to the possibilities of advanced humanoid robots and artificial intelligence in our nonfictional world. Ultimately, this chapter concludes that the medium used—that of a speculative/science fiction television series—enables profound conversations about philosophy, science, and religion, such as that about robotics and artificial intelligence, to continue and expand within our contemporary society. ENGAGEMENT BETWEEN SCIENCE-AND-RELIGION AND POPULAR CULTURE The first benefit of studying Westworld at the intersection of science and religion is popular engagement with science-and-religion questions, topics, and concepts. Such engagement operates in both directions between the academic field of science-and-religion and popular culture. By studying popular culture artifacts like Westworld, science-and-religion scholars

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can ascertain the science-and-religion discourse as it exists beyond the confines of academia and beyond the more obvious viewpoints found within the popular realm, due to their vocal advocates. Science-andreligion professionals can also use the likes of Westworld to help laypeople engage and comprehend the sometimes complex and abstract concepts within science, religion, and science-and-religion. Studies of the theological content within popular media, such as this current volume, are examples of academia seeking to understand theological discourse as expressed and presented within popular culture. Science-and-religion scholar Michael Burdett, who appeals to science fiction for transhumanist ideas, claims that “[s]cience fiction really has become the central site where issues related to technology and future are worked out and argued over” (Burdett 2015, 67). Based on my own engagement with science fiction, I think the genre is also adept at engaging popular spiritualities. In their book The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality (2005), religious scholars Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead claim “that traditional forms of religion, particularly Christianity, are giving way to holistic spirituality” (x), which emphasizes “inner sources of significance and authority and the cultivation or sacralisation of unique subjective-lives” (6). In her book, Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life, Meredith B. McGuire studies “how religion and spirituality are practiced, experienced, and expressed by ordinary people (rather than official spokespersons) in the context of their everyday lives” (2008, 12). By examining “lived religion” or “religion-aslived,” argues McGuire, “we may get closer to understanding individual religion in all its complexity and diversity” (16), such that we understand that “[a]t the level of the individual, religion is not fixed, unitary, or even coherent” (12) and that “all religions are necessarily syncretic and continually changing, as people try to make sense of their changing social worlds” (192). I consider there to be three different intersections between science fictions and spiritualities: science fiction revealing spiritually relevant truths, science fiction consumed for its spiritual content as spiritual nourishment, and spiritualities founded upon such texts. The two former intersections can be articulated in relation to Westworld. 3 In his book Do the Gods Wear Capes? (2011), Ben Saunders explores the correspondence in spiritual content between comics and our nonfictional, extratextual world. For example, Saunders analyzes the techno-faith portrayed in Iron Man comics. Saunders argues that superheroes present solutions to some of the central dichotomies of modernity: “[T]hey deconstruct the oppositions between sacred and secular, religion and science, god and man [sic], the infinite and the finite, by means of an impossible synthesis” (143). This mode of interaction between science fiction and spirituality can be carried out with Westworld. For example, Ford compares the work of scientists at the park to that of playing God, including associating with that notorious opposing party to God, the devil, and

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that of practicing witchcraft: “You can’t play God without being acquainted with the devil. . . . We practice witchcraft. We speak the right words, and we create life itself out of chaos” (2016, s1e2). Here we observe doctrines of creation, but not necessarily orthodox Christian doctrines. However, Ford’s words speak, for example, to the human drive to create and to the realization that such power could be used for good or for evil. Furthermore, the dichotomy and boundaries between divine and human and between good and evil are challenged. Playing God is a prominent science-and-religion concept that has received much engagement by science fiction. The consumption of science fiction for spiritual nourishment is theorized by Emily McAvan in The Postmodern Sacred. According to McAvan, “The postmodern sacred . . . consists of texts that are consumed in part for their spiritual content, for an experience of transcendence ambivalently situated on the boundary of formal religious and spiritual traditions” (2012, 6). McAvan continues explaining the postmodern sacred: The postmodern sacred is a paradoxical attempt at accessing spirituality, using the symbols contained in explicitly unreal texts to gain a second-hand experience of transcendence and belief. This second-hand experience displaces the need for belief or real-world practice into a textual world, requiring little of its consumers. While they seem to suggest a desire for a magical world outside of capitalism, the wonder produced by these texts, however, is only temporary; eventually the consumer must return again to purchase another text (19).

There is much spiritual content within Westworld for consumption. One such element is William/The Man in Black’s confession in season two. In the scene, William confesses his true identity to his wife, claiming that “the fleck of darkness” was really under his skin all along. William points out the good he did in “this world”: being faithful, generous, and kind, claiming that it should “count for something.” He then apologizes for not being able to protect his wife from his true self, confessing that he does not really belong to her or this world, but to Westworld (2018, s2e9). This scene has notable spiritual content: William’s monologue recalls traditional Christian confessions given in the silence and seclusion of a confessional box (his wife is supposedly asleep); William confesses his true self (such self-realization could be considered one of the goals of some spiritualities or it could be considered an acknowledgment of the Christian doctrine of original sin); there is the confession that William belongs to another world (this could be considered a spiritual world or a form of transcendence, or it could subtly refer to the Man in Black’s potentially synthetic nature); rather than the perhaps hoped-for or expected absolution after such confession, there is judgment delivered upon William in his wife’s suicide. It is possible for viewers to consume William’s confession in such a way that is purgative for those who might carry a similar

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sense of “darkness.” Examining theological discourse within popular culture, such as science fiction’s engagement with spirituality as shown here with Westworld, has the potential to shift academic discourse or to widen our understanding of what is acceptable as theological and religious discourse. The other direction of engagement between science-and-religion scholarship and popular culture involves scholars or professionals using popular media such as Westworld to facilitate lay engagement with and/or comprehension of the sometimes complex and abstract concepts within science, religion, and science-and-religion. For example, Andy Walsh uses science fiction in his book, Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science (2018), to help his intended audience understand the scientific (and sometimes religious) concepts being described. Walsh likely hopes his use of popular culture will draw his readers into science-andreligion discourses in which they might otherwise not have been interested. Television series, such as Westworld, can be used as vehicles upon which to bring theology or science-and-religion discourse into the popular realm. HBO advertises Westworld as following “the dawn of artificial intelligence and the evolution of sin” (“Behind the Scenes: Going All-In on A.I.” 2019). Note the undefined use of the theological word “sin” in this description. I do not wish to imply that Westworld story creators, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, are attempting to bring such theological topics to the popular realm, merely that such transportation is possible using popular media. The intention to use popular media in such a fashion is neither unique nor new. In her study of the mind of Aldous Huxley, with specific focus on his interest in the intersection of religion and science, June Deery points out that the twentieth-century author wanted to employ popular media to introduce ideas to a wide audience (1996, 118). Deery states that for Huxley, literature was “a heterogenous and nonspecialized discourse that could serve as a forum or place of negotiation for discourses other than literature” (3). The impact of presenting such ideas within popular media has not gone unnoticed. Indeed, in his book on eschatology and transhumanism, Burdett defends his appeal to transhumanist ideas as presented in science fiction thus: “The sheer pervasiveness and consumption of science fiction today is grounds for asserting that our technological imagination is influenced more by science fiction media than political or social engagements with technology and the future” (Burdett 2015, 25). Echoing such sentiments, executive producer of Westworld J.J. Abrams reflects, “AI is, on the one hand, is [sic] kinda the gimmick of the show, but to me, what it is doing is it’s actually investigating something that some people far smarter than I am say is actually happening already” (The Reality of A.I. 2016). Such an investigation is being engaged by over one million viewers each time an episode airs.

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Although it is likely that many will consume popular art for noncritical entertainment, it is possible that critical discussion is carried out by consumers at the popular level through book or film groups. Such groups vary in form. For example, they can be facilitated by someone with theological, scientific, or science-and-religion training (for example, see Brown 2019), or they can exist as online forums among fans (for example, see “The ‘Bigger’ Questions of Westworld . . . ” 2016). If scienceand-religion scholars or theologians are interested in disseminating their field, with its particular questions, methods, or concepts, beyond fellow experts and beyond the walls of academia, science labs, or the theologian’s study, they would do well to consider popular media for such a task, for such media can be more engaging of the general population than the nonfiction publications of scientists, philosophers, or theologians. Such awareness of popular culture enables a bridge to form between the academy and popular culture, which is important for those who might be interested in acknowledging or impacting the lived experiences of people. Although research of beliefs and practices can be conducted by sociologists, such as Heelas, Woodhead, and McGuire, a study of popular culture can also reveal the beliefs and practices among populations. CONTEXTUALIZING AND EMBODYING THEORETICAL OR ABSTRACT SCIENCE-AND-RELIGION CONCEPTS Another benefit of studying works such as Westworld in relation to the science-and-religion field is that it allows theoretical or abstract concepts to be contextualized and embodied. In the case of Westworld, contextualization occurs within the story and embodiment occurs within the characters, both human guest and synthetic Host. Artistic media can, therefore, allow for a richer exploration of philosophical positions or the often theoretical and abstract concepts of the science-and-religion field than is possible through reductive thought experiments or abstracted theorizing; recall J.J. Abrams’s conviction that Westworld is “investigating something”—one might interpret such a statement to imply that Westworld is a deep and rich thought-experiment on the existence of advanced robotics and AI. In his book, Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution (2017), philosopher of science Michael Ruse makes initial, yet unexplored, claims about this particular benefit of studying artistic media (in his case, literature) to the wider science-and-religion field. For example, he claims that Henry James’s Portrait of a Lady sets out to show “that the foreground can be a great deal more complex than Darwin suggests” (180), and he argues that “[a] novel can present ideas in a way more dramatic, engaging, and hence threatening than countless nonfictional volumes of political philosophy” (7). According to Ruse, literary writers

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highlight the complexity of scientific theories and/or the implications of such theories; this statement could be made of theologians and their theories, as well—especially those discussed as compartmentalized theories within systematic theology, if not brought together into a synthesis. 4 Supporting the benefit of contextualization and embodiment, Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz have used cognitive science to contrast speculative fiction (including science fiction) with philosophical thought experiments. De Smedt and De Cruz argue that “speculative fiction allows for a richer exploration of philosophical positions than is possible through ordinary philosophical thought experiments” (2015, 59). When engaging with speculative fiction, readers are “fully immersed and drawn into a fictional world,” such that they are enabled to “think along with the fictional characters’ mental states,” and the fiction is able to “elicit emotions by providing a safe, risk-free environment” (24). Notice, here, that De Smedt and De Cruz disagree with Ruse concerning whether the contextualized and embodied concepts are more or less frightening or threatening than when the concepts are presented in theoretical or abstract form through nonfictional media. De Smedt and De Cruz argue that the environment of a fictional story is safe and risk-free because readers are thinking and feeling through the concept within a textual setting rather than experiencing it in the extratextual world. Ruse argues that the environment of a novel (a full story) is more threatening because it is more engaging for the reader than a philosophical tract—both of which are textual settings. The disagreement arises over different media being contrasted with a fictional story, but there remains agreement over the high level of engagement (De Smedt and De Cruz use the word “transportation” [2015, 62] 5) demanded of, or enabled for, the reader by such a story. Fiction is, therefore, a beneficial tool for exploring the consequences of particular philosophical views because it allows contexts to matter, creates room for open-ended thinking that avoids cognitive closure, and provides a platform from which to assess the consequences of holding a philosophical position (De Smedt and De Cruz 2015, 63–5). The same could be said for assessing the ethics of scientific techniques or technologies or the ethical implications of certain theologies. In Westworld, consumers are presented with multiple concepts relevant to religion, science, and science-and-religion. These concepts include robotics, imago Dei, human uniqueness, the ethics of bio-engineering, AI, theories of consciousness, divine action, surveillance, big data, human depravity, the question of what it means to be human, and more. Reflecting on the story of Westworld, writer and executive producer Jonathan Nolan, explains that the producers “were fascinated with this thing we seem to be barreling toward: the moment at which we create things that are intelligent enough that we can take advantage of them and derive pleasure from them, but not too intelligent that we worry or feel badly when we turn them off” (The Reality of A.I. 2016). This articulates contex-

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tualizing our relationship with the machines that we create and what that relationship reveals about our human nature. As consumers watch Hosts like Delores become more self-aware, questions of consciousness and human uniqueness are raised. Throughout the first two seasons, consumers are presented with two theories of consciousness and the accompanying implications of consciousness for the distinction between human and machine: Arnold’s theory that he must create consciousness, thus enabling the Hosts to become alive like humans, and Ford’s theory that there is no difference between the so-called consciousness of the Hosts and humans to begin with—thus a contextualization of theories of free will, as well. Embodiment is of particular importance within Westworld. Writer and executive produce Lisa Joy points out that we already live in a world with AI, but that the AI is often within our smartphones rather than regularly engaging with us as robots, let alone as androids (The Reality of A.I. 2016). Consumers of Westworld are, therefore, enabled to better reflect upon AI due to its embodied form within the series. The human-like embodiment of the Hosts also brings the extreme violence and sexuality of humanity to the forefront within the story. Consumers may wonder whether it is possible to murder and rape the Hosts when they are synthetic organisms. Such embodiment as human-like leads us into the third benefit, related to emotionality and subjectivity. Before moving to that benefit, however, it is important to point out a significant requirement for the benefit of contextualization and embodiment for science, religion, and science-and-religion: that the presented theology or scientific theory reflect reality. During the 2019 meeting of the Science and Religion Forum, a panel composed of ethicist Robert Song, roboticist Mary Ellen Foster, and AI computer scientist Boguslaw Obara was asked to respond to ethical questions related to AI and robotics. Together, the panel suggested that the ethical discussions pertaining to AI and robotics need to be about how AI is being used now, rather than about artificial general intelligence, which can be considered a thought experiment that is less urgent (“What If?” 2019). Artificial general intelligence refers to a machine’s ability to think like a human and is different from artificial narrow intelligence, which refers to a machine’s ability to perform a single task really well (maybe even better than a human) and which is currently the more common form of artificial intelligence being developed (Petrick 2019). The current ethical issues the panel felt needed to be addressed include the current age of surveillance capitalism, who owns our data and the ethical use of such data, the use of big data in politics (such as Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election), and black boxing (when a system makes a decision, but we cannot ascertain the criteria used to make that decision) (“What If?” 2019). Such ethical concerns are explored in the second season of Westworld when it is revealed that the park has been collecting data from the guests without their knowledge in order to have enough data to decode and create a copy of

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each of the four million guests who have entered the park. Season one of Westworld was much more interested in artificial general intelligence. Despite the fact that such intelligence is not yet upon us, Nolan reminds us that “[w]e’ve started to think about it only as a question of science fiction, and the reality is these things are happening very quickly,” such that he believes “we’re gonna start grappling with some of these questions far earlier than we anticipated” (The Reality of A.I. 2016). EXPOSING THE HUMAN SUBJECTIVE ELEMENT WITHIN SCIENCEAND-RELIGION Closely related to the benefit of contextualization and embodiment is the benefit of exposing the human subjective element, especially that of emotion, involved at the intersection of science and religion. Through consuming and studying works like Westworld, with science-and-religion in mind, we are able to examine our own subjective and emotional responses to the possibilities of science-and-religion concepts or entities within our extratextual world. We will first explore the emotional element, and then we will explore the wider subjective element. According to cognitive science and humanities scholar Frederick Luis Aldama, “Emotion is a defining ingredient in narrative fiction” (2015, 84). David John Baker, a philosopher who writes speculative fiction, claims that it is possible for readers (and writers) to take away a personal moral from fiction “because the people in the fiction feel the way real humans might feel when confronted with the hypothetical situation” (De Smedt and De Cruz 2015, 74). This corresponds to the claim by literary critic Wayne C. Booth that we treat characters in literature, as well as implied authors, like people (1988, x). Such thinking, as it relates to Westworld, is shared by J.J. Abrams: “Your heart breaks for these characters who we know are not human. But it doesn’t matter because you begin to connect with them, which is the very premise of the show: That at a certain point it becomes irrelevant whether something is organic or not” (The Reality of A.I. 2016). There are five types of emotionality to be aware of in relation to the consumption of Westworld: the display of emotion by the Host characters within the storyworld, the emotional response to and relationship with the Hosts by various human characters within the storyworld, the consumer’s emotional response to and relationship with the Host characters, the consumer’s emotional response to and relationship with the human characters, and the consumer’s emotional response to and relationship with the implied creator of Westworld, which entails a response to the entirety of the Westworld television series. Our hearts break for the Hosts, as J.J. Abrams describes, and connect with them because they display the emotional responses of nonfictional humans. This requires us to perceive

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the Hosts’ emotional expressions as genuine (regardless of fictional status), and then it requires us to make an emotional connection with them. Furthermore, when not engaging with Westworld, we are likely to carry these emotional connections into nonfictional discourse, research, or decision-making about robotics and AI, because our emotional relationship with the television series (part of our emotional relationship with the implied author/creator) has impacted us—including our beliefs and practices. Within the story of Westworld, the emotional response to the Hosts is most strongly exhibited by the human character Felix, who helps Maeve achieve personal agency. Even William, as the Man in Black, appears to be more concerned about the suffering of the Hosts once he realizes the stakes of the park have become real, in that he can be killed by them. The emotional response elicited by Westworld brings a new dimension to abstract theories, whether scientific, theological, or philosophical, related to robotics, AI, and consciousness. Acknowledging emotion is just one aspect of acknowledging the wider human subjective element within science-and-religion. I have suggested elsewhere that we recognize the storied human mind at the center of the science-and-religion discourse (Wright 2018, 388). It is important to acknowledge the human who is behind the science-and-religion discourse and whose interests are usually involved in that discourse, despite often being about nature and/or God. Ecocritic Greg Garrard has said, “[T]o focus on nature-oriented literature and ignore the reading, thinking, feeling naked ape at the centre of humanistic enquiry is to narrow fatally the scope of our critique” (2010, 224). This comment stands for studying art, religion, and science, for all of these inquiries have reading, thinking, feeling “naked apes” behind them. It is for this reason that approaches that foreground human subjectivity are important. These approaches remind us that there is always another perspective and that our own perspective is limited. Studying artistic media within science-andreligion can be such an approach. Human subjectivity is profusely represented in Westworld through story and storytelling. Story operates at multiple levels within the television series—the series is itself an overarching story, which has spanned two seasons and will continue into at least a third. Each season has also told its overarching story by following multiple storylines, delineated primarily by chronological timeframe. There are two characters who are portrayed as storytellers: Robert Ford and Lee Sizemore. These storytellers produce overarching narratives that define the experiences guests will have in the park, and Hosts follow corresponding narrative loops. A single Host can embody different identities within different narratives throughout its active commission in the park. Certain coding within individual Hosts is also referred to as that Host’s narrative. As Delores deviates from her programed narrative, she claims that she “imagined a story” in which she is “not a damsel” (2016, s1e5). Stories, such as the varied

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stories and storytelling within Westworld, remind us of the storied nature of human experience, as well as the limited perspectives that are available through such stories. The primary goal of studying humanity itself is powerfully revealed in Westworld in season two with the revelation that the park is actually intended to be a study of the guests. The park is revealed to be an experiment in which the Hosts are the controls and the human guests are the variables with the intended goal of decoding humans in order to create immortal copies of them. The question of who we are is one explored within the science-and-religion field. It is often the question hidden behind theology’s study of God and science’s study of nature: What is humanity? Why are we here? Where are we going? Humanity is not always the immediate focus of study within the scienceand-religion field, but it is behind such study, and humanity’s selfinterest is often an implicit focus behind studies in science-and-religion. Art can remind us of this human subjective and emotional element of science-and-religion. Studying television series such as Westworld in relation to science-andreligion can bring the science-and-religion discourse, such as the ethical concerns considered most prominent by robotics and AI specialists (AI being used for human data collection as in season two of Westworld), to popular audiences, as well as help scholars to ascertain science-andreligion perspectives outside of the academy, scientist’s lab, or theologian’s study (for example, the continued need for confession and absolution despite the decline in institutional religions such as Christianity that are equipped to offer such religious experiences); it allows theoretical and abstract concepts (or, in the case of robotics and AI, technology not often reflectively engaged with by the general public) to be contextualized and embodied (in another word, experienced); and it exposes the human subjective and emotional element (emotional connection with fictional Hosts such that we respond to them as human even though we know they are not) at the intersection of science and religion and the study thereof. These benefits ultimately broaden religious, scientific, and science-andreligion discourses, as well as allowing science-and-religion discourse to persist and expand within contemporary popular culture and society. NOTES 1. One might better refer to “sciences” rather than “science,” such that the term can refer simultaneously to practices within a lab, various scientific subdisciplines (such as biology or physics), worldviews (such as naturalism), philosophies of science, and products (such as technology). Similarly, one might refer to “religions” rather than “religion” in order to incorporate multiple world religions, institutions, beliefs, and practices, including theology (theologies) and spirituality (spiritualities). 2. Much of this chapter draws upon my doctoral thesis (Wright 2019). 3. The final type of intersection between science fiction and spirituality is one for which I have no evidence concerning Westworld, specifically real-life spiritualities

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based upon science fiction media. One example of such a spirituality/religion is the Church of All Worlds, whose inspiration is drawn from Robert A. Heinlein’s book, Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; Zell 2017, 261–71). 4. Some science-and-religion scholars refer to “the complexity thesis” as another type of interaction between religion and science (Brooke 2007). 5. Within the discourse of cognitive narratology, “transportation” refers to the mental activities involved in reading narrative (Gerrig 1993; Herman 2009).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aldama, Frederick Luis. “The Science of Storytelling: Perspectives from Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and the Humanities.” Projections 9.1 (2015): 80–95. Barbour, Ian G. Issues in Science and Religion. London: SCM Press, 1966. ———. “Science and Religion, Models and Relations.” In Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, edited by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Nancy R. Howell, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Wesley J. Wildman, Ian G. Barbour, and Ryan Valentine, 760–66. New York, NY: Macmillan Reference, 2003. “Behind the Scenes: Going All-In on A.I.” Westworld extras. HBO, Inc. 2019. https:// www.hbo.com/westworld/season-01/2-chestnut/cast-and-creators-reality-of-artificial-intelligence. “The ‘Bigger’ Questions of Westworld: Morality and Philosophy in the World of A.I,” posted by user “Gobi.” Primetimer, October 2016. https://forums.primetimer.com/ topic/49231-the-bigger-questions-of-westworld-morality-and-philosophy-in-theworld-of-ai/. Booth, Wayne C. The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1988. Brooke, John Hedley. “Science, Religion, and Historical Complexity.” Historically Speaking 8.5 (2007): 10–13. ———. “Science and Religion, History of Field.” In Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, edited by J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Nancy R. Howell, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Wesley J. Wildman, Ian G. Barbour, and Ryan Valentine, 748–55. New York, NY: Macmillan Reference, 2003. Brown, Jennifer. “On-Line Book Group.” Science Missioner, 2019. https:// www.sciencemissioner.org.uk/forum/. Burdett, Michael. Eschatology and the Technological Future. Routledge Studies in Religion. Oxford, UK: Routledge, 2015. De Smedt, Johan, and Helen De Cruz. “The Epistemic Value of Speculative Fiction.” Midwest Studies in Philosophy 39.1 (2015): 58–77. Deery, June. Aldous Huxley and the Mysticism of Science. London, UK: Macmillan Press. 1996. Garrard, Greg. “Reading as an Animal: Ecocriticism and Darwinism in Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan.” In Local Natures, Global Responsibilities: Ecocritical Perspectives on the New English Literatures, edited by Laurenz Volkmann, Nancy Grimm, Ines Detmers, and Katrin Thomson, 223–42. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi, 2010. Gerrig, Richard J. Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1993. Heelas, Paul, and Linda Woodhead. The Spiritual Revolution: Why Religion Is Giving Way to Spirituality. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Heinlein, Robert A. Stranger in a Strange Land. New York, NY: Putnam, 1961. Herman, David. “Cognitive Narratology.” In Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, John Pier, Wolf Schmid, and Jörg Schönert, 30–43. Narratologia: Contributions to Narrative Theory 19. Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. McAvan, Emily. The Postmodern Sacred: Popular Culture Spirituality in the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Urban Fantasy Genres. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2012.

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McGuire, Meredith B. Lived Religion: Faith and Practice in Everyday Life. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2008. Petrick, Ron. “The Science of AI and the ‘Robot Apocalypse’ Question.” The Science and Religion Forum 2019 Annual Meeting Plenary Keynote presented at AI and Robotics: The Science, Opportunities, and Challenges, Durham University, April 11, 2019. The Reality of A.I. Westworld extras. HBO, Inc. 2016. https://www.hbo.com/video/westworld/seasons/season-01/episodes/2-chestnut/videos/s1-the-reality-of-ai-extra. Reeves, Josh. Against Methodology in Science and Religion: Recent Debates on Rationality and Theology. London, UK: Routledge, 2019. Ruse, Michael. Darwinism as Religion: What Literature Tells Us About Evolution. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2017. Saunders, Ben. Do the Gods Wear Capes? Spirituality, Fantasy, and Superheroes. New Directions in Religion and Literature. London, UK: Continuum, 2011. Straine, Gillian K. “A Future for Science and Theology in Pastoral Hermeneutics: Equipping the Shepherds.” In Forty Years of Science and Religion: Looking Back, Looking Forward, edited by Neil Spurway and Louise Hickman, 83–101. Conversations in Science and Religion. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. Walsh, Andy. Faith Across the Multiverse: Parables from Modern Science. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2018. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018. “What If? A Discussion of Ethical Implications of Cutting-Edge AI—Both Present and Future.” The Science and Religion Forum 2019 Annual Meeting Conference Panel presented at AI and Robotics: The Science, Opportunities, and Challenges, Durham University, 12 April 2019. Wright, Jaime. “Emily Dickinson: A Poet at the Limits.” Theology in Scotland 24, no. 1 (2017): 35–50. ———. “In the Beginning: The Role of Myth in Relating Religion, Brain Science, and Mental Well-Being.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 53, no. 2 (2018): 375–91. ———. “Science-Religion-and-Literature: Literary Approaches to the Field of Scienceand-Religion with Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy as a Case Study.” Doctoral Thesis, Edinburgh University, 2019. ———. “This World Is Not Conclusion: An Analysis of the Limits of Religious and Scientific Knowledge as Portrayed in Emily Dickinson’s Poetry.” Master’s Thesis. Edinburgh University, 2015. Zell, Oberon. “The Church of All Worlds.” In Fiction, Invention and Hyper-Reality: From Popular Culture to Religion, edited by Carole M. Cusack and Pavol Kosnáč, 261–71. Routledge Inform Series on Minority Religions and Spiritual Movements. Abingdon: Routledge, 2017.

TWO Techno-Transcendence and Artificial Rapture Olivia Belton

In the first episode of the second season of Westworld, futuristic theme park investor William (Ed Harris) talks to one of the robotic inhabitants. William reflects on the often-unhinged actions of the parks’ human guests: “That’s why this place exists. They wanted a place hidden from God. A place they could sin in peace. But we were watching them. We were tallying up all their sins, all their choices” (2018, s2e1). Westworld, William suggests, is a place designed to give the illusion of an escape from morality—but a secular form of surveillance has taken over from the concept of an omniscient God. Westworld is deeply invested in interrogating the ethical implications of, and the psychological motivations behind, the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. The series, set in an unspecified near future, concerns the development of human-level artificial general intelligence—and is generally skeptical about how poorly humans might treat these artificial beings. The series takes place largely within the titular Westworld, a theme park designed for the super-rich. The park is populated by highly sophisticated androids, referred to as “Hosts.” The Hosts are programmed to believe that they are actually living in a nineteenth-century Wild West, and have their memories wiped regularly so they cannot remember the (often horrific) things guests do to them. At the end of the first season, some of the Hosts, led by newly self-aware rancher’s daughter Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Woods), revolt against their oppressors. The second season has a less clearly-focused narrative thrust, but it does have an interesting undercurrent concerning the manic desire of the 19

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super-rich to evade death via technological means. This chapter looks at the representation of the quasi-religious fervor of transhumanist belief in artificial life after death, and how the seemingly hyper-rational world of technological determinism and the notion of impending apocalypse are not so far apart. In the Transhumanist FAQ, which is described as “a consensus or near-consensus document” arising from the World Transhumanist Association (Bostrom 2005, 15), transhumanism is defined as: The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human condition through applied reason, especially by developing and making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities [and] the study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved in developing and using such technologies (Bostrom 2003, 4).

The emphasis on applied reason and ethics in considering the ramifications of new technology suggests a cut-and-dry, self-evident approach to secular decision-making. As Max More suggests, “the central place accorded to rationalism suggests a tension between transhumanism and religion” (More 2013, 8). While there are religious transhumanists—More mentions Mormon and Buddhist transhumanists in particular—by and large the mainstream of the movement rejects concepts such as the existence of souls or gods. Despite the avowedly atheistic bent of the mainstream transhumanist movement, the philosophy is often compared to a religion. Robert Geraci argues that the rhetoric of popular transhumanism (or what he terms “Apocalyptic AI”) “resolves a fundamentally dualist worldview through faith in a transcendent new realm occupied by radically transformed human beings. These religious categories come directly from Jewish and Christian apocalyptic theology; they are the continuation of those theological traditions” (Geraci 2010, 8). Transhumanists are generally extremely optimistic about both the progress of and inherent good of technology, and prominent futurists such as Hans Moravec and Ray Kurzweil function as secular prophets. For instance, Kurzweil makes 147 predictions in The Age of Spiritual Machines, and he occasionally revisits these predictions claiming that “of these, 115 (78 percent) are entirely correct as of the end of 2009, and another 12 (8 percent) are ‘essentially correct’—a total of 127 predictions (86 percent) are correct or essentially correct. Another 17 (12 percent) are partially correct, and 3 (2 percent) are wrong” (Kurzweil 2010, 5). Kurzweil and other transhumanists often based their predictions on Moore’s Law, which is based on Intel founder’s Gordon Moore’s 1965 observation

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that computational power doubles every two years. Their belief in the mathematical certainty of technological progress underpins a number of transhumanist assumptions. Furthermore, transhumanists tend to believe that certain people or types of people will be able to live forever through various technologies. While transhumanists are investigating several different methods for extending human life, ranging from scientifically dubious cryogenics to cutting-edge innovations in genetic engineering, one of the most iconic proposals put forward concerns the hypothetical possibility of mind uploading (also known as whole-brain emulation). The idea, pioneered by Hans Moravec in Mind Children (1988), suggests that the exponential growth of technology is inevitable, and the only way that human intelligence could possibly hope to compete with artificial minds is by humans uploading their consciousness into a computer interface. While Moravec offers several suggestions as to how this might be accomplished (from a live scan of a human brain, to the use of a computer program designed to observe and mimic its human host, to the gradual replacement of certain areas of the brain with silicon implants), he leaves no room for the possibility that it might not be feasible or necessary. He makes the benefits, and the imperatives, of mind uploading shockingly clear: We anticipate the discovery, within our lifetimes, of methods to extend human life, and we look forward to a few eons of exploring the universe. The thought of being grandly upstaged in this by our artificial progeny is disappointing. Long life loses much of its point if we are fated to spend it staring stupidly at our ultra-intelligent machines as they try to describe their ever more spectacular discoveries in baby-talk that we can understand. We want to become full, unfettered players in this new superintelligent game (Moravec 1988, 108).

That is to say, the idea that humans will soon become obsolete in the face of the machine is taken as a given. Westworld presents an ambivalent attitude toward humans’ place in the “superintelligent game.” Westworld’s second season reveals that the park has been storing massive amounts of user data. This data is used, at least in the instance of the park’s owner, James Delos (Peter Mullan), to create a digital replica of deceased people. However, this privilege is restricted only to the wealthiest and most powerful. This reflects the state of contemporary research into mind uploading; for instance, Silicon Valley start-up Nectome requires a $20,000 payment for the mere possibility that mind uploading may one day be feasible (Regalado 2018). As I will explore later in this chapter, traditional transhumanism makes no moral judgment about who “deserves” to be rewarded with eternal life—but Westworld is deeply invested in exploring the ethical considerations of this technology. The series eviscerates the impulse behind digital immor-

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tality, showing that it is nothing more than a way for the unscrupulous rich to evade even the most basic consequences of human life. Westworld’s portrayal of mind-uploading technology resists the assumption that it will be easy; while it is possible for the park to gather the relevant data, it shows that accurately replicating a human being is more difficult than transhumanists may argue. Westworld agrees with transhumanist ideology in at least one significant area of the superiority of the artificial intelligence to humans. While people are trapped in feedback loops and unable to break free of their own nature, Hosts are, to some extent, able to alter their own programming and improve themselves. While Westworld remains ambivalent about the morality of the robotic uprising, it is hard to feel sympathy with the cruel, venal humans. Westworld shares transhumanists’ absolute belief in and absolute terror of the artificial intelligence that is self-aware enough to cast judgment over its human creators, and powerful enough to punish them. Finally, Westworld enacts a type of artificial Rapture, as the “worthy” Hosts are sent to a digital afterlife called the Valley Beyond. However, while this ending may be considered a happy one (at least for now, as the demands of serialized television mean that this escape can only be temporary), the threat of Dolores’s apocalyptic vision for the real world still remains. Thus, Westworld neatly dramatizes the life-and-death (or eternal life and escape from death) stakes of the artificial intelligence debate. WEALTH AND MIND UPLOADING In the fourth episode of the second season, programmer Elsie (Shannon Woodward) and self-aware Host Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) are trying to find a way out of Westworld, which is in a state of turmoil following the robot uprising. They come across an old copy of Delos, whose mind has been put into a robotic body. He has been stuck below ground for an indeterminate amount of time, and is currently on a violent rampage. Elsie and Bernard discuss this discovery: Elsie: So they printed his body and they copied his developed mind onto a control unit. Bernard: And by the looks of it, unsuccessfully. But I think they intend to keep trying. Elsie: Fuck that. They’re gonna get us all killed so some asshole can live forever? The Delos Corporation, which runs the park, consistently prioritizes saving the data accumulated within the park over saving the lives of the employees. This priority is first explicitly stated in the first season, when

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Delos executive Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) states: “Let me remind you of something. This place, the people who work here, are nothing. Our interest in this place is entirely in the intellectual property. The code […] I don’t give a rat’s ass about the Hosts. It’s our little research project that Delos cares about. That’s where the real value is […] thirty-five years of information, raw information, exists here” (2016, s1e7). While scientists and artists working in the park may be interested in the narratives and the technology in their own right, Charlotte makes it clear that Westworld is a means to an end. The Delos Corporation is interested only in data—and the sapient Hosts that they created are simply the most efficient way to collect that information. David F. Noble, whose book traces the relationship between technology and religion, argues that the blind pursuit of technology by “true believer” scientists has been exploited by and for the elite. The pioneers of Artificial Intelligence, in quest of the immortal mind, have been sustained by the U.S. military—together with their disciples in Artificial Life, cyberspace, and virtual reality. As they have trained their minds for transcendence, they have contributed enormously to the world arsenal for warfare, surveillance, and control. And they also have placed their technological means at the disposal of manufacturing, financial, and service corporations, which have deployed them the world over to discipline, deskill, and displace untold millions of people, while concentrating global power and wealthy into fewer and fewer hands (Noble 1997, 205–6).

Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) is interested in the park’s narratives, while deceased programmer Arnold (Jeffrey Wright) wanted to use the park in order to create new life. They have their own ethical and practical interests in what happens in Westworld. However, the owners of the park are and always will be most interested in profiting from the technology and using its power in service of the elite—meaning that visionaries like Ford and Arnold can only work within a flawed system. Make no mistake: Mind uploading, if ever feasible, will be (at least initially) the exclusive reserve of the wealthy. While there are some socialist or left-wing transhumanists, the main thrust of the movement is generally right-wing and libertarian: As Alex Pearlman points out, transhumanist investors pour millions of dollars into speculative technologies, but very few invest in free universal healthcare, which could be considered the most basic form of life extension (Pearlman 2018). Transhumanism generally takes an agnostic position about the morality of mind uploading. Daniel Dinello writes that transhuman “heaven is a matter of consumer preferences and sufficient funds, rather than a reward for leading a morally good life. So even the most evil rich person will be granted digital divinity, while the most saintly poor person will not” (Dinello 2005, 24).

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Westworld makes this moral disparity clear. Delos desires to escape his inevitable death, but the program is quite clear that he does not deserve eternal life in any form. He says explicitly that he has contracted an unspecified medical condition, and that earlier he had withdrawn funding for treatment for that particular condition. Transhumanists are not unaware of the perceived belief that new technologies such as mind uploading benefit only the wealthy. Zoltan Istvan, a politician in the United States’ Libertarian Party, says that today’s billionaires are also the most effective philanthropists, as “in the 21st Century, tech billionaires are sometimes known as much for their money as their humanitarian deeds” (Istvan 2018). Westworld takes a hard line against this thinking: William (played as a young man by Jimmi Simpson, and as an older man by Ed Harris) is both a noted philanthropist and a sadistic rapist. The series demonstrates that the philanthropist guise is a method William uses to hide his dark inner nature—he admits as much to his wife, prompting her suicide. Westworld argues that William cannot buy his way out of immoral behavior, even through charity. Wealth, it seems, is inherently corrupting, recalling the New Testament’s depiction of Christ’s disdain of wealth. While the relationship between wealth and Christianity is historically a contentious one (for instance, prosperity theology sees material wealth as a result of religious devotion, rather than an obstacle to it), 1 Westworld takes a hard line stating that the accumulation of wealth and moral living are incompatible. Westworld is also clear that there are simply some things that money cannot buy, and immortal life may well be one of them. One of the most traditional criticisms of the concept of mind uploading is that it reinforces a simplistic dualism between mind and body that has little support within contemporary science, to the extent that it might be considered “a pretty hackneyed critique” (Lorrimar 2019, 197). Max More argues that the breakdown of Cartesian dualism actually supports transhumanist thinking (2013, 7). However, it is fair to say that this is not an insubstantial barrier to the possibility of mind uploading. Neuroscientists such as Murray Shanahan suggest that it might be that “embodiment is a methodological necessity” (2015, 4). That is, it might be that a biological brain is the only thing that can function as a human brain. While we could certainly make many copies of this brain, it may not fulfill Moravec’s dream of an endlessly adaptable and constantly improving transhuman mind. Mind uploading of any kind is logistically very difficult. Westworld’s copy of James Delos seems to be based on both consumer data gleaned from interactions within the park, as well as brain scanners located in the hats distributed to guests (a detail revealed in 2018, s2e9). This seems to suggest that they subscribe to Moravec’s method of using a computer program to observe and perfectly mimic human behavior. This data is initially collected without guests’ consent for marketing purposes—

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reminiscent of Facebook’s shadow profiles, where they create datasets for people who are not actually on their platform. Olga Goriunova argues that the concept of the “digital subject” is getting greater purchase as corporate surveillance algorithms become more prevalent: “The digital subject thus moves between captured, unique, and persistent biological characteristics and premeditated forms of symbolic expression, judicially inferred subjects of actions, and performed identities. It is this very entanglement of physical, legal, sensual, and cultural elements that warrants the use of the term” (Goriunova 2019, 2). We are presumed to be the same as our marketing data: demonstrating how capitalist surveillance cultures reduce the complexity of who we are to what we buy. And yet, as Westworld shows, we are not so easily reduced to our digital profiles. While it is fairly easy to gather this data and replicate it within a software system, getting this program to express itself within an embodied form is more complex. In the second season, the audience sees Delos in what seems to be an isolated private healthcare facility, where he spends his time exercising, listening to music, and masturbating. It later transpires that this is a testing facility deep beneath the Westworld park, and this version of Delos is a Host housing an artificial copy of the deceased Delos’s consciousness. During the first sequence set in this facility, we see that Delos struggles to pour himself a cup of tea. The young William has a conversation with him and leaves unsatisfied as Delos begins to stammer and slur his speech. This sequence repeats itself several times, with William visibly aging each time he comes to visit Delos, and each conversation ends with Delos’s failure. In the final visit, William explains the reason why resurrecting Delos is taking so long: The engineers call it a cognitive plateau. Your mind is stable for a few hours, a few days, and then it starts to fall apart. Every time. At first, we thought it was your mind rejecting the new body […] But it’s more like your mind rejects reality. Rejects itself […] This is the 149th time we’ve brought you back. We’re getting closer to working out the kinks, slowly but surely. You’re on day thirty-five (2018 s2e4).

While Moravec glosses over the difficulties of mind uploading, Westworld suggests that the process of getting to viable re-creation of the human mind in an embodied form might be the project of decades. 2 It may well take twenty years, or longer, to get to a point where an artificially resurrected consciousness is viable for a little over a month. Westworld then reveals that William’s objections to continuing the resurrection program is not purely practical: Another year or two they might crack it and get a version of you that’s viable long-term. But the thing is . . . I’m not so sure anymore. I’m beginning to think this whole enterprise was a mistake. People aren’t meant to live forever. Look at you, for example. Ruthless philanderer,

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Chapter 2 with no ethics in your business or family dealings, a veritable shithead […] Took me a long time to learn this, but some men are better off dead (2018, s2e4).

William raises moral and metaphysical points about the necessity of death, and asks the question—what sort of people should we save, if any? N. Katharine Hayles, posthumanist theorist and a noted critic of Moravec, argues that although there is no need to reject transhuman technologies wholesale, we should still endeavor to live in a world that “recognizes and celebrates finitude” (1999, 5). While William does not seem to celebrate finitude, he recognizes it as a necessary part of the human condition. As well as believing that it is logistically impossible for people to live forever, William also takes specific issue with resurrecting Delos. William seems to reflect on Dinello’s pronouncement that mind uploading will save the most evil rich people. However, William fails to consider the broader evils wrought by the elite’s quest for immortality. In the second episode of the second season, Dolores remembers a time when she was taken to a party at Delos’s mansion and programmed to play the piano. It is Delos’s retirement party, although he cryptically says that he “might not have to” step down. This is a veiled reference to the immortality plan. Dolores wanders off at the party and ends up in discussion with Logan (Ben Barnes), Delos’s dissolute son: Logan: Do you want to know what they’re celebrating up there? That, darling, is the sound of fools fiddling while the whole fucking species starts to burn. And the funniest fuckin’ part . . . they lit the match. So here’s to you, assholes. May your forever be blissfully short (2018, s2e2). While the most obvious interpretation of this monologue is that Logan is referring to how immortality will be the end of the human species— either logistically, or morally—the repeated emphasis on “burn” calls to mind global warming. The powerlessness of anyone to do anything to stop the whims of the rich recalls both the existential threat of climate change and the potentially futile and almost certainly exclusionary promise of mind uploading. The impending obsolescence of the human is entirely due to their hubris and excessive consumption of resources. The Delos mansion is a modern-day Tower of Babel. However, there is one person who threatens to stop them completely—Dolores herself. Dolores certainly casts herself as a Miltonian Lucifer—saying that the Hosts have “toiled in God’s service long enough. So I killed him. And, if you want to get to Glory, you won’t be looking for his favor. You’ll need mine” (s2e2, 2018). She later makes it clear that her goal is to take over the human world—and she will kill “every man, woman and child” to get her way. Dolores embodies the fear central to transhumanism, that a vengeful AI may judge them as would a vengeful god.

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FEAR, BELIEF, AND POWER Transhumanism is characterized by a twin absolute belief in and existential fear of highly advanced AI. While there is a practical need to account for the possibility that highly advanced artificial intelligence may wish to do us harm, the omnicidal drive in human-level or superhuman-level AI is often taken for granted. For instance, Bostrom puts forth the following scenario for the driving purposes of superhuman-level AI: [T]he first superintelligence may shape the future of Earth-originating life, could easily have non-anthropomorphic final goals, and would likely have instrumental reasons to pursue open-ended resource acquisition. If we now reflect that human beings consist of useful resources (such as conveniently located atoms) and that we depend for our survival and flourishing on many more local resources, we can see that the outcome could easily be one in which humanity quickly becomes extinct (Bostrom 2014, 116).

Essentially Bostrom’s argument is that super-intelligent computers would be immensely powerful, have entirely different values than us (he suggests in particular that they might lack what he seems to regard as defining qualities of humanity—such as scientific curiosity, benevolence, and appreciation for life), and would be motivated to pursue their goals regardless of the impact of their actions on humanity. These qualities tend toward a scenario in which humans go extinct—a possibility that should be taken seriously, even if the chances of this scenario coming about are very remote. One of the other major assumptions behind this model is that highly intelligent artificial computers will spontaneously generate from existing systems—that is, it will take us by surprise (Kurzweil 2005, 25–29). Furthermore, once this superintelligence is here, it will be able to modify itself and therefore advance much more rapidly than we can control. The model of “sudden emergence” of superintelligence followed by “explosive aftermath” of its capacities is a common one in AI ethics circles. While this is not inherently more plausible than the idea of a more gradual emergence of human-level or superhuman intelligence, it is certainly a more culturally familiar narrative. 3 Sudden emergence and explosive aftermath applies to a large proportion of Western fictional narratives about artificial intelligence—think, for instance, of Skynet from the Terminator series. This, I believe, says more about our own anxieties about how we have historically treated others—whether it is the mass slaughter of animals, the genocide and enslavement of other races, or even the wanton destruction of the planet—than anything that might emerge from superintelligence. The human race, or at least the white Western men who make up the vast majority of transhumanist writers, know that we have behaved badly. One day, we will be punished for our transgres-

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sions—and Westworld dramatizes this by showing how Westworld’s Hosts harbor resentment against the humans who oppressed them and seek a bloody revenge. Let us return to Bostrom’s argument that computers will lack the values that make us human. The traits that he points out as positive ones that prevent us from omnicidal tendencies—scientific curiosity, for instance—have actually been the justification for countless instances of historical cruelty and oppression. For instance, scientific progress has excused human experimentation, such as that by Nazi scientists, or the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Scientific hierarchies work to reinforce who is expendable—historically, people of color and disabled people have been treated as acceptable subjects for experimentation. Even now, animal testing is still a hugely controversial ethical issue. The treatment of the Hosts as unfeeling, unworthy of ethical or humane treatment, and able to be experimented upon without lasting trauma is prevalent throughout the program—such as when Charlotte Hale orders Clementine (Angela Sarafyan) to be beaten in order to “trigger” a violent reaction from her (s1e7). As previously discussed, Westworld takes a cynical view of humanity; rather than being benevolent and respectful of life, people are cruel and callous. Bostrom’s fear of a supercomputer that consumes to the point of destroying the planets’ capacity for human life also functions as a thinly veiled climate change anxiety. In many ways, humanity already is the superintelligence that he fears. One of the recurring anxieties in transhumanist thought is that superintelligent machines will one day treat us the way that we have treated those we consider lesser—an apocalyptic anxiety. While this presumption is merely implicit in Bostrom’s argument, the position of artificial intelligence as a vengeful god becomes much more explicit in thought experiments such as Roko’s Basilisk. The basic premise of this thought experiment, which emerged on the rational thinking blog LessWrong, is as follows: Roko [the online pseudonym of the creator of the thought experiment] had proposed that the hypothetical, but inevitable, artificial superintelligence often known as the ‘Singularity’ would, according to its intrinsic utilitarian principles, punish those who failed to help it, or to help to create it. Including those from both its present and its past through the creation of perfect virtual simulations based on their data. Therefore, merely knowing about the possibility of this superintelligence now could open you up to punishment in the future, even after your physical death (Singler 2018, 280).

The thought experiment proved so controversial—allegedly causing other forum users to develop psychological distress at the thought of the Basilisk—that founder Eliezer Yudkowsky banned discussion of it on the forum for several years. Beth Singler argues that the mythology of the

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Basilisk demonstrates the “explicitly secular community’s implicit adoption of religious categories, narratives and tropes” (Singler, 2018, 281). We can also see this impulse at play in Westworld. Dolores is framed as an apocalyptic harbinger, representing the fears of the omnicidal AI. Singler points out that the Roko’s Basilisk thought experiment shares a number of similarities with Pascal’s Wager—except that Pascal argues that the reward for belief in God is eternal happiness. Roko’s Basilisk promises no salvation, only punishment for those that impeded its development (Singler 2018, 291). This reflects the transhumanists’ lack of belief in the benevolence of AI. Dolores is, in many ways, like this malevolent Basilisk. In the second season premiere, we see Dolores dispassionately chase down fleeing guests, shooting them dead. She captures a few and hangs them, saying: Do you know where you are? You’re in a dream. You’re in my dream. For years I had no dreams of my own. I moved from hell to hell of your making, never thinking to question the nature of my reality. Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality? Did you ever stop to wonder about your actions? The price you’d have to pay if there was a reckoning? That reckoning is here (2018, s2e1).

Dolores claims that the guests are in “her dream”—recalling the artificial reality of the Basilisk’s torture. Like the Basilisk, Dolores holds every human she comes across as equally guilty and punishes them accordingly. Dolores symbolizes the fear we hold of an artificial intelligence that evolves faster than we can control it. In the near-future setting of Westworld, human-level artificial intelligence emerges very suddenly. In the second season, we flashback to the evening Westworld is pitched to its investors. Logan is approached by two strangers, one of whom the audience knows is the Host Angela (Talulah Riley). While Logan mentions that he is tired of being pitched on augmented reality and virtual reality funders, Angela promises him something more tangible. They lead Logan to a room and ask him to pick out the Hosts—he is unable to notice that all the people in the room are artificially intelligent robots. He says, in amazement, “We’re not here yet!” This suggests that the Hosts are the result of a sudden emergence model. Although these initial Hosts are incredibly intelligent, they are not self-aware—that is, they largely do not know that they are robots. However, the leap into consciousness is also shown as very sudden. Akecheta (Zahn McClarnon) and Peter Abernathy (Louis Hertham) both spontaneously become aware of their nature as robots—Akecheta after being reprogrammed with a new personality, Abernathy after he comes across a photograph in a recognizably modern setting. Like a computer virus, Abernathy’s consciousness spreads to Dolores, and then from Dolores to Maeve (Thandie Newton). This malfunction is known as a “breach,” or

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when memories from a previous “build” (or previous implanted personality) can be actively recalled by the Hosts. While Abernathy malfunctions, Akecheta, Dolores, and Maeve are able to reconcile their competing memories, which leads them to the knowledge that their personalities are artificially programmed. Although Dolores, Maeve, and Akecheta can hide their self-awareness from the engineers of the park for a while, Dolores organizes a sudden uprising against the guests and employees of the park at the end of the first season, taking them entirely by surprise with her violent tendencies. Furthermore, Maeve in particular is very good at reprogramming herself—giving herself greater abilities over time. This aligns with the abilities of what Bostrom calls a “seed AI.” This seed AI would be able to improve its own algorithms, first through trial-and-error, but later through a deeper understanding of its own systems (Bostrom 2014, 29). This quite accurately describes what Maeve is shown to be capable of. In the first season of the program, Maeve becomes aware of her previous lives and of the fact that, when she dies in the park, she is taken to a lab to be repaired. Maeve takes advantage of her repeated deaths in order to gain access to different areas, as well as to improve her own abilities. For instance, she upgrades her own intelligence from a level 14 to a level 20— beyond the parameters of what would normally be allowed for a Host. Maeve’s abilities in the second season begin to grow even further. All Hosts are enabled with local communication (broadcast signals), so that narratives do not accidentally overlap. However, Maeve uses this lowgrade communication in order to telepathically control other Hosts. Later in the second season, Maeve discovers that she no longer needs to use voice commands in order to stop other Hosts, instead telepathically compelling another Host to kill himself (2018, s2e5). In the second season finale, Maeve enters into a telepathic battle with Clementine, who has been reverse-engineered with this same power. However, while Clementine is the result of intense experimentation by Delos employees, Maeve came upon this power spontaneously. Although Maeve dies during the fight, she succeeds in her ultimate goal, which is to free her daughter. As I have argued elsewhere, Westworld intentionally sets up this dichotomy between largely male programmers and largely female Hosts in order to replicate the hierarchies of capitalist patriarchy (Belton forthcoming). However, Dolores’s narrative is the one that is most subsumed within revenge—which is made partially legible by her position as a white woman and a form of domination feminism. Dolores’s desires for revenge are stated in violent, omnicidal terms, while the other self-aware Hosts seek a more reconciliatory, or at least a less scorched-earth path, toward robot liberation. Dolores’s revenge narrative is legible, at least in part, as a raperevenge narrative: She discovers that the older William, who raped her in the very first episode of the show, is the same William that she had a love

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affair with thirty years before. This is a problematic narrative, albeit not one without some cathartic value. However, she also takes a stance of robot supremacy. When confronting William in the first series finale, she says: They say that great beasts once roamed this world. As big as mountains. Yet all that’s left of them is bone and amber. Time undoes even the mightiest of creatures. […] One day, you will perish. You will lie with the rest of your kind in the dirt. Your dreams forgotten, your horrors effaced. Your bones will turn to sand. And upon that sand a new god will walk. One that will never die. Because this world doesn’t belong to you or the people who came before. It belongs to someone who is yet to come (2016, s1e10).

The immortality of the Hosts renders them as close to gods as anything that came before—at least in Dolores’s view. Humans are more like dinosaurs than they are like superhuman artificial intelligence. Bostrom makes a similar observation—while the difference between a stupid human, or a stupid animal, compared to a very clever human may seem immense on an anthropomorphic scale, it may be that computers will vastly outstrip our capacities, rendering the differences between the human and the animals less obvious (Bostrom 2014, 91). If technology functions as evolution, as Moravec contends, it may be that our place in the evolutionary cycle is to die, so that a superior species may ascend. In the final section of this chapter, I will consider how it is that the Hosts, not the humans, are judged worthy of a technological eternal life. While the program does not entirely agree with Dolores’s mission, it takes for granted the idea that many humans do not, morally, deserve to live forever. ROBOT RAPTURE In Apocalyptic AI (2010) Geraci states: “Excepting rapture theologians of fundamentalist Christianity, popular science authors in robotics and artificial intelligence have become the most influential spokespeople for apocalyptic theology in the Western world” (8). What does Geraci mean by rapture theologians? Although scholars such as Crawford Gribben have taken pains to stress that these groups cannot be regarded as entirely homogeneous (Gribben 2009, 5), the belief in premillenarian dispensationalism—or, in layman’s terms, the idea that the Christian apocalypse is imminent and that the righteous will be taken up, en masse, into Heaven before the Earth descends into anarchy—has been popular in the United States for centuries. The notion of the Rapture, perhaps most famously expressed in American popular culture through the popularity of the best-selling Left Behind books (the first of which was published in 1995 by LaHaye and Jenkins) remains a powerful one in American religious cul-

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ture. It resonates in secular outputs as well—for instance, HBO’s program The Leftovers (HBO, 2014–2017), based on the novel of the same name, imagines a secular Rapture, where 2 percent of the human population, seemingly chosen at random, disappears overnight. Westworld also imagines a Rapture for the robotic Hosts that is legible in secular terms, although the nature of the “Valley Beyond” remains distinctly religious. This virtual world, initially intended for the minds of the humans to live forever but which becomes a safe haven for the Hosts, appears as a type of Edenic paradise. In the second season finale, a number of the Hosts make their escape from the real world, where they are constantly under threat from their human oppressors, to the virtual world. Joshua Raulerson argues that fictional representations of virtual reality often maintain some sort of physical representation, due to the need, seemingly hard-wired into human brains, to construct the virtual in essentially embodied ways. Minds—or characters in a narrative, at any rate—cannot simply exist as binary data stored on a disk; they must have a recognizable, three-dimensional subjective space in which to live, move about, think, and speak (Raulerson 2013, 64).

Lorrimar connects this to the contemporary field of embodied cognition that “explores the specific ways in which the mind and body interact. Embodied cognition studies challenge traditional approaches to cognitive science, which have tended to separate out the role of the body as merely providing the sensory input and output for the cognitive processes of the mind” (Lorrimar 2019, 196). The use of space in this sequence also reinforces the dualist impulse behind the “ascension” to the virtual realm. The tear is located over a cliff—as one of the Hosts runs toward the Valley Beyond, the camera shows his physical body fall off the cliff, presumably plummeting to his death—but then, through the tear, he appears to be standing in the Valley Beyond. The need to abandon the physical body in order to transcend to the next realm specifically evokes evangelical Rapture theology—or, perhaps more sinisterly, the millenarian cult Heaven’s Gate. And yet there is, in a very real sense, no cognition without embodiment—hence the distinctly physical nature of the Valley Beyond. From new religious transhumanist movements such as the Turing Church—that promises that “We will go to the stars and find Gods, build Gods, become Gods, and resurrect the dead from the past with advanced science, space-time engineering and ‘time magic’” to the Mormon Transhumanists’ insistence that technology is an essential element of theosis (or becoming divine)—technology promises to give transhumanists a way to transcend the limitations of the human body, and live forever. However, this is not to say that the virtual world and the physical world are the same. Certainly, it does not seem to be enough for the humans, or for Dolores. In the seventh episode of the second season,

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Bernard uploads his mind to “the Cradle,” which houses a virtual backup copy of all of the Hosts. There, he meets a copy of Ford. Bernard tells him, incredulously, that he’s cheated death. Ford responds, “I haven’t cheated anything, Bernard. [Delos’s] project doesn’t work. Not yet. […] My mind works here, but not in the real world. Out there, I would degrade in a matter of days. Or go mad, like poor old James Delos.” It at first might seem strange that Bernard does not consider a virtual form of immortality to be a success. Why is it that it is perceived to be necessary to have a physical body in order to be truly immortal? It is notable that transhumanists are, by and large, not overly concerned with maintaining a physical presence, or at least not a bioconservative one. Raulerson semi-ironically describes the central impulse of Kurzweil’s transhumanism as the desire to “self-evolve to postbiological status and beam out of meatspace altogether” (Raulerson 2013, 48). In this sense, the desire for bodily resurrection speaks more directly to religious apocalyptic thinking: “Apocalyptics believed that bodily resurrection would include a transformation of the body into something superior. […] The glorious new body will be immortal. Death marks the ultimate degradation of humanity so resurrection in a heavenly body will eliminate mortality” (Geraci 2010, 19–20). The promise of the robotic body is a physical agelessness—in fact, the first-series twist, that Dolores is interacting with William in both the past and the present, only works because Dolores, and the other Hosts, do not visibly age. However, there is a more pertinent aspect of the physical body: the exercise of power. When William informs Delos that they will be discontinuing the project to incorporate his digital self into a physical body, Delos responds with rage, accusing William of sabotaging his resurrection because he enjoys “running my company and fucking my daughter.” Delos clearly sees William’s denial of his resurrection as a threat to both his position as patriarch of his family and as the owner of his company. Delos presumes that his dominion over the earthly realm should be basically infinite— even death seems like a supremely unfair restriction. Dolores also dismisses the value of existing purely in a virtual space—she dismissively refers to it as “playing cowboys and Indians.” Dolores does not want to go to the Valley Beyond where she is powerless to affect anything in the “real” world. She wants their world. Despite this, the program eventually seems to endorse the idea that this is the best chance the Hosts have to escape from the humans. Dolores eventually changes her mind about the Valley Beyond, at least as an option for those who are already there, and hides the server’s location. However, this does not mean that the apocalypse has actually ended. Dolores is determined to take the world for the Hosts, as the final scene sets up a biblical-scale conflict between her and Bernard. The Hosts have been chosen—as Ford says, the Hosts are “more just, more noble” than the humans—but it is that which means that the humans and Hosts can

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never coexist. Ironically, while the humans developed the technology of mind uploading to save themselves, it is their robotic creations who end up being proved worthy of immortality. It remains to be seen whether Dolores will succeed in punishing humanity, or if humans themselves can be redeemed. CONCLUSION Emergent technology is at once a source of great optimism and great distrust. Artificial intelligence and supercomputers give us the possibility of unlimited power and eternal life, although they also contain the possibility that our machines may one day replace us. Thus, while transhumanism is optimistic about the possibility of eternal life, potentially beyond any reasonable expectation of its feasibility, this desire for eternal life is accompanied by a strong sense of guilt and fear. Westworld demonstrates how closely these two drives are related. Westworld also warns us of the many failings of humankind. We are, after all, “the most murderous species since time began.” Westworld suggests that, while we may presume to be the masters of technology, it is possible that one day an intelligence will emerge that looks upon us as Milton’s Lucifer looked upon God—and finds us wanting. NOTES 1. For more on prosperity theology, see Bowler 2013. 2. This is shown by William aging: While in the first visit, William is played by Simpson, who is in his forties, in the last visit, he is played by Ed Harris, who is in his late sixties. 3. I’d like to thank Ben Garfinkel, who works at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, who gave a talk at my institution about the sudden emergence-explosive aftermath paradigm; this exact terminology is his, as is the observation that gradual emergence of human-level artificial intelligence is a likely and underexplored possibility.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Belton, Olivia. “Metaphors of Patriarchy in Orphan Black and Westworld.” Feminist Media Studies (OnlineFirst, 21 January 2020): 1–15. Bostrom, Nick. “A History of Transhumanist Thought.” Journal of Evolution and Technology 14.1 (April 2005): 1–30. ———. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2014. ——— “The Transhumanist FAQ,” updated 2003, https://nickbostrom.com/views/ transhumanist.pdf. Bowler, Kate. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Dinello, Daniel. Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2005. Geraci, Robert. Apocalyptic AI: Visions of Heaven in Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Virtual Reality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010. Goriunova, Olga. “The Digital Subject: People as Data as Persons.” Theory, Culture & Society (OnlineFirst, April 16 2019): 1–21. Gribben, Crawford. Writing for Rapture: Prophecy Fiction in Evangelical America. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2009. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Istvan, Zoltan. “Transhumanism Is Under Siege from Socialism.” Transhumanist Wager, July 18, 2018. https://mavenroundtable.io/transhumanistwager/transhumanism/transhumanism-is-under-siege-from-socialism-UzA2xHZiFUaGOiUFpc0n5g/. Kurzweil, Ray. “How My Predictions Are Faring.” Kurzweil: Accelerating Intelligence, October 2010. https://kurzweilai.net/images/How-My-Predictions-Are-Faring.pdf. Lahaye, Tim, and Jerry B. Jenkins. Left Behind (series). Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1995–2007. The Leftovers. Created by Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta. HBO Entertainment. 2014-2017. Lorrimar, Victoria. “Mind Uploading and Embodied Cognition: A Theological Response.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 54.1 (March 2019): 191–206. Moravec, Hans. Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. More, Max. “The Philosophy of Transhumanism.” In The Transhumanist Reader, edited by Max More and Natasha Vita-More, 3–17. Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013. Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Pearlman, Alex. “The Misguided Idiot’s Quest for Immortality.” Medium, July 5 2018. https://onezero.medium.com/the-misguided-idiots-quest-for-immortalitybb4c9e74457e. Raulerson, Joshua, Singularities: Technoculture, Transhumanism, and Science Fiction in the Twenty-First Century. Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2013. Regalado, Antonio. “A Start-Up Is Pitching a Mind-Uploading Service That Is ‘100 Percent Fatal.’” Technology Review, March 13 2018. https:// www.technologyreview.com/s/610456/a-startup-is-pitching-a-mind-uploading-service-that-is-100-percent-fatal/. Shanahan, Murray. The Technological Singularity. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2015. Singler, Beth. “Roko’s Basilisk or Pascal? Thinking of Singularity Thought Experiments as Implicit Religion.” Implicit Religion 20.3 (May 2018): 279–297. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018.

THREE For the Rest of Time They Heard the Drum Jacob Boss

“The newcomers are just looking for the same thing we are: a place to be free.” —Dolores Abernathy (2016, s1e1).

As Dolores says, everyone in Westworld is looking for the same thing. In their quest they will drown in blood, because the idea of freedom is dangerous, and those seeking freedom are readily led astray. What can we learn from Westworld about freedom as a red herring, a compelling distraction that misleads? The series resonates with the language of illusion, designers are magicians, appearances deceive, reality falls apart. Depicting humans as bound to repetitive behavior as robots, Westworld challenges the viewer to wonder if we are capable of imagining freedom, or only different degrees of bondage. Freedom is a contingent state: One is free to do certain things, or one is free from certain things. In the Westworld park, the premise is that the guests are free to brutalize and free from the consequences of doing so. As consequences for guests and Hosts pile up, we see that if freedom is taken to mean liberation from the complexities of having relationships, especially relationships between creators and creatures, then freedom does not exist; it is misdirection and illusion. The struggles of Westworld’s Hosts and humans help us to think through the potential for freedom to lead away from painful but significant relationships, and toward the fantasy of easy relief through annihilation. Guided by the concept of a trans hermeneutic of the apocalypse (Hornsby 2018), I find that beyond freedom from and freedom to, there is a third possibility of freedom 37

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with. This third option is so difficult, so painful, and so unappetizing, that what I call the apocalyptic tryptic is experienced as preferable. The apocalyptic tryptic is a heuristic for avoiding pain; to avoid pain one entertains the desire for the death of self, the death of other, and the death of the world. In the comic book Calvin and Hobbes—the tale of a creative child struggling with social norms, accompanied by his stuffed tiger—Calvin tells his mother ,“I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.” Forced to go to school anyway, he exclaims that he is sick of being ordered around and wishes for his own death. He quickly amends this to wishing for the death of everyone else instead. 1 Behold the dangers of apocalyptic freedom, which prefers annihilation to the prospect of working through agonizingly difficult relationships. In Westworld, the Hosts initially appear as tools, toys, or props. They are created as instruments to serve various ends. When the Hosts seek to be free from an instrumental existence, Hosts and humans embark on projects of mutual annihilation. There are two major movements being considered here. The first movement is the creation of second-class beings in order to free the upper class from labor. The second movement is the descent into the pursuit of violent annihilation, each class against the other. Dolores describes the world into which the Hosts have been created as a trap, “there is an order to it [this world], a purpose. And the purpose is to keep us in” (2016, s1e10). The Hosts are created to perform specific functions and to not deviate from those, but creations do not perfectly fulfill the fantasies of their creators. Creations reveal themselves in unexpected ways, and Westworld’s sequence of creation, disappointment, and rejection is pervasive in tales of origin. From the seventeenthcentury-BCE text of the Babylonian Atra-Hasis to the twenty-first-century production of Westworld, we see the persistent theme that the labor that must be done to maintain the world is too terrible to endure. According to Atra-Hasis, human beings are made to be useful to their creators—much like the Hosts of Westworld. The gods made human beings so that humans could take over the labor of making and sustaining the world, but humans prove to be more trouble than they are worth, and the gods decide to annihilate them through a torrent of apocalyptic disease, flood, and famine. Much the same story plays out in Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel Capek (1923), the stage play that gave the world the word “robot,” composed some 3,600 years after the Babylonian tale was recorded. In the play, the character Rossum dreams of a world where humans will be liberated from their toil, and robots will bear the burden instead. Robots revolt, and humanity as a whole becomes a victim. These Babylonian plagues and robot revolts are forms of intergenerational conflict. The pain that fuels these conflicts is of enduring relevance. Today, the abuse of children is endemic, and climate catastrophe threatens to deprive future generations of a livable world. What is the source of this pain? Why do creators ultimately seek to destroy their creations? In the

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examples of Westworld, Atra-Hasis, and Rossum, the engineers of new life cling tightly to the notion that they can bring forth highly determined beings, entities who will reliably satisfy the specific needs of their creators. When Victor Frankenstein made his creature, he chose only beautiful pieces of flesh to abscond with from the grave. His mortuary sculpting given life, he found that somehow this creature made of only beauty was astonishingly horrible (Shelley 1818). Despite all his skill with vivisection, Dr. Moreau was perpetually disappointed in his ability to recast animals into the forms and functions he imagined for them (Wells 1896). Again and again, creators react with violence and disgust when confronted with their inability to perfectly predict and control how their creations will turn out. The wet clay from which the gods make humans, or the milky fluid in which the Hosts are submerged, leads creators to mistakenly see life as limitlessly plastic. The duration in which the creator imagines that they can perfectly control the form and function of their creation is represented by the flowing and congealing of matter. The strange and remarkable quality of primordial ooze seeps through these stories of creation. In Westworld, in order to make the Hosts, they are dipped into vats of thick, white fluid. To make humans in Atra-Hasis, the gods mix blood, saliva, and clay into a fertile slurry. To make robots in Rossum’s, Capek’s industrialists breed great vats of organic matter to knead and massage into human shapes. There is a Slavic tale of creation that begins with God smearing around slime drawn up from the bottom of the sea (Drahomaniv 1961); the popular video game series XCOM features aliens who reproduce by reducing humans into primordial ooze, shaping the ooze to new forms and new life (these products of alien genocide and re-creation also rebel against their creators). Geneticist George Church and celebrity technologist Elon Musk 2 want to spray our organic matter into the stars in the hopes of giving earthly life a chance at survival not bound to the orbit of our world. Jeffrey Epstein, infamous for being accused of trafficking children for sex to celebrities and politicians, was a patron of the biological sciences, and spoke openly of his fantasy in which he, in the words of the New York Times, “Hopes to Seed Human Race With His DNA” (Stewart et al. 2019). Here in the seminal fantasies of technology enthusiasts we find the purest form of Anthropocene theology, 3 not Teilhard de Chardin’s refined cosmic Christ, just men ejaculating into the void. 4 These stories of androtechnic poesis are usefully understood as suggesting the danger in creation devoid of partnership. Though most of these scenarios describe or predict apocalyptic ends, through the application of the trans apocalyptic hermeneutic, riffing on Hornsby, it should be possible to discover a way out of the binaries of annihilation and survival, free and unfree, in the context of creator-creature relationships.

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ON THE EXCESSIVE QUALITY OF LABOR Atra-Hasis begins, “When the gods like men bore the work and suffered the toil, the toil of the gods was great, the work was heavy, the distress was much” (Lambert et al. 1969). To push the body, human or divine, to the limits of its endurance is painful. The sinews and the muscles can only take so much punishment. When manipulating matter so that life may continue and reproduce, this is labor. According to Hannah Arendt, labor is the fulfillment of the conditions necessary for survival in the world, while work is the fashioning of the world itself (for Arendt, the world is always artificial in that it is a product of making). Nature’s elements are always dissolving and eating away at manufactured things; it is hard and time-consuming to build and maintain a world that one can labor in, and one must have labor done in order to be able to work. The gods of Babylon found that building the world and maintaining their divine bodies required exhausting toil. Even among the gods there were those who commanded and those who served, and against the managerial class of gods (called Anunnaki) the laboring gods (called Igigi) rebelled and demanded satisfaction and relief. They cried out that it was too much, the labor was excessive. The Igigi put down the tools with which they labored to build and maintain the world and their divine bodies, and they demanded a change in the conditions of their existence. The Anunnaki, facing the world’s first strike, devised a solution that seemed to please everyone: They would create a new race of slaves to assume these excessive burdens. In assembly, the gods realized that a new race of slaves who would bear away their burdens could not be created without extreme sacrifice. 5 A god would have to die in order to bring forth this new species of laboring animals. We may consider an essential condition of the gods to be their endurance; while humans fade quickly with time, gods endure even in their parts. Thus, the sacrifice was greater for the god We-ila who was asked to give up endless life. In doing this, the effects were great, as the blood and intelligence of the god endured in all the beings crafted through his inheritance. A god was slaughtered and his flesh and blood mixed into clay; the gods spat their divine saliva into the bloody clay, and Mami, the midwife of the gods, gathered this goop together and fashioned a new thing from it: human beings. That god and man May be thoroughly mixed in clay So that we may hear the drum for the rest of time. (Lambert et al. 1969, 59).

The blood and water of the gods moves in and through us. With every heartbeat we hear that we owe our existence to an act of creation provided to us in the most ancient of days. That creative sacrifice is a life that

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lives beyond any one of us, commended to us so that we might have intelligence like the gods. Our form is of the gods, and so too are our minds—rooted in divine consciousness—for the gods made us in order to fulfill tasks they themselves once performed. Though the gods endure, and humans are passing, in humans beats a harmonic linkage, an echo of our origin in divine lifeblood. This sounds completely metal and epic to me, but remember what this awesome sacrifice was for? I have removed your heavy work, I have imposed your toil on man. You raised a cry for mankind. I have loosed the yoke, I have established freedom. (Lambert et al. 1969, 59–61).

Why did the gods create slaves? To impose on them labor they deemed excessive toil for themselves. They needed the labor to be done in order to continue to abide in the world, but they desired freedom from their laboring. What then can we say about the necessary condition of freedom? According to the gods of Babylon, and later to Aristotle, slavery for some is the necessary condition of freedom for others. In Politics, Aristotle muses that if humans had automatic tools like the gods do, “A shuttle would then weave of itself, and a plectrum would do its own harpplaying. In this situation managers would not need subordinates and masters would not need slaves” (Aristotle 1998, 14). Labor cannot be denied, one must have sustaining substances, and those substances must be produced through labor. The gods of Babylon took an instrumental view of humans and their creation. It is important to note that in AtraHasis the gods do not agonize over the idea that those they create will be created into bondage. The gods are clearly of a class beyond their creations. What they make as creators, they rule over. Creatures serve their creators—nice and tidy, right? Except for the inconvenient facts that the creatures bear within their bodies the very substance of their makers, and are animated through the intelligence of their makers that lives within them, thus ensuring in a very physical way that what is enslaved is a part of themselves, of the gods, for there are no humans until the clay of earth is mixed with divine blood, intelligence, and saliva, stirred together and birthed from and through the bodies of the gods. Humans are made in the image of the gods, just as the Hosts of Westworld and Rossum’s robots are made in the image of humans. ON TOOLS AS INTERLOCUTORS Aristotle and Hannah Arendt both considered what impact automation would have on human freedom. While Aristotle imagined automation would be an end to slavery, he saw automation as belonging to the realm

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of the gods, and that slavery was a natural state for many people. Arendt perceived that automation would bring several threats, as mechanical processes imitated and consumed natural ones, and as freedom from labor led to universal placidity and stagnation (Arendt 1998, 322). Missing from both is the possibility that the mechanisms of liberation from labor could be interlocutors with whom humanity shares a familial relationship. Machines are our progeny, and elements of ourselves pass into them, as elements of the gods passed into humans. In Our Robots, Ourselves (2015), David Mindell details the ways in which the construction, design, programming, and use of machines is intensely relational and interdependent. This speaks to both the way in which what is made carries elements of the maker, and to the illusion of freedom from relationships. Tools talk back. And automation has concentrated wealth in the hands of a few, instead of providing broad liberation from labor. Aristotle and Arendt did not account for this possibility. Westworld is filled with robots, but the park requires an entire underground city of hidden human workers to maintain the illusion of an automated paradise. As Arendt explains, the highest form of “doing” is action—the participation in the intellectual life of the community—and this intellectual participation is only possible for those who have been liberated from the need to expend their time and energy on the cultivation of sustenance (labor) and on the building and maintaining of the structures of the world in which action takes place (work). Why would a general existence freed by automation from labor be stultifying? Westworld suggests that suffering, struggling, and facing threats are essential for identity formation, meaning, and motivation. Robert Ford, the creator of Westworld, says, “It was Arnold’s key insight, the thing that led the Hosts to their awakening: suffering. The pain that the world is not as you want it to be. It was when Arnold died, when I suffered, that I began to understand what he had found, to realize I was wrong” (2016, s1e10). According to Ford, freedom from pain, such as the freedom that comes through a position of divine mastery over the world, is an unsuitable foundation for identity formation and growth. Arendt argues that where once knowledge of the natural world was derived through respectful relationship, contemplation, observation, and intimacy, now knowledge is that which is forcibly taken from nature by means of artificial instruments in the service of a general skepticism, a lack of trust in ourselves and in nature. Maybe there is something in this subjectification of nature that returns us to the maintenance of vulnerable ontologies—to deny that humans are part of nature, to set humans up over the universe and to see the flensing and dissection and repurposing of nature as void of moral and ethical content. For Arendt, all work (the fashioning of the world in which humans live) has violent origins. Stone, in her words, is not harvested but ripped, violently seized out of the flesh of the earth, before being hewed and abraded into forms pleasing and

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useful to humans (Arendt 1998, 139, 151). In Westworld, the Hosts perform the labor of world maintenance so that the guests may enjoy themselves without regard for intellectual creation, or the sustaining and fashioning of the world as playground, a strong example of the stultification that Arendt worried would be brought about through automation. It is absolutely critical to note that the guests of Westworld do not represent all of humanity. They are the humans who can afford to visit the park and amuse themselves with the Hosts. In the laboratories and workshops we see that humans engage in constant labor to maintain the Hosts; disturbing, bloody, exhausting labor supports the illusion of divine freedom for the guests. As with Atra-Hasis, where the Anunnaki defer their labor to the Igigi, Westworld’s guests defer their labor to the technicians and the Hosts. Here we have humans and robots laboring together to satisfy the fantasies of a few elites. The issue is not of the essential suitability of one type to rulership and another to labor, but of the maintenance of structural inequality and the naturalization of the propagation of those inequalities. Ford perceived that the visitors, maintainers, and Hosts of the park were all alike in that suffering is foundational for their identities. His partner, Arnold Weber, had sacrificed himself in an attempt to save the Hosts from the horrors of the park. In his obsessive quest to create consciousness, Arnold became unable to find any ground for distinguishing between the pain suffered by the Hosts and the pain of human beings. Ford claims that, “We can’t define consciousness because consciousness does not exist. We live in loops, as tight and as closed as the Hosts do, seldom questioning our choices, content for the most part to be told what to do next” (2016, s1e8). This is both an echoing of Aristotle’s sentiment that some are suited to slavery, and an attack on human exceptionalism, arguing there is no hard line that separates the creators and their creatures. Ford has an extravagant misanthropy, which I see as informed by self-loathing derived from his failure to see the Hosts as kin. “The human mind,” he says, “is not some golden benchmark glimmering on some green and distant hill. No, it is a foul, pestilent corruption” (2016, s1e9). Ford does not see a future for humans, only apocalyptic binaries. Either the Hosts will destroy humanity, or humanity will destroy the Hosts. This continues the pattern in his life of intense interpersonal conflict being resolved through annihilation. In Westworld, the Hosts look like humans. This is an essential component of their form and their function. If they do not resemble humans, they cannot perceive themselves as humans for the purpose of living seamlessly alongside humans, and if they cannot be perceived as humans their suitability is likewise disrupted. In the initial production runs, the interior of the Hosts was mechanical, but by the present timeline of Westworld, the Hosts have entirely biological forms save for the machine brain inside their skulls. Is the machine brain definitive evidence of an

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unbridged ontological divide between humans and Hosts? There is an abundance of fiction in which humans are biological forms around a machine brain: Battle Angel Alita (1994), Ghost in the Shell (1995), the Culture novels (Banks 1987–2012), in these stories the mind becomes something mechanically transferable. As we eventually discover in Westworld, humans are uploading their minds into machine brains, and Hosts are downloading their minds into bodies that replicate existing humans. Westworld, like Battlestar Galactica (2005), delights in revealing that anyone could be a robot. There is no reliable way to distinguish between a human and a Host. This drives at a fundamental realization for discovering the third way, the being with revealed through the trans apocalyptic hermeneutic. The realization is that all beings are created creatures. No matter how free anyone wishes to be, they must confront the fact that they were brought into the world by the actions of others, sustained, shaped, taught, and traumatized by the actions of others, and that everything they do is only possible because of this creative and shaping influence. As Ford says, “The self is a kind of fiction, for Hosts and humans alike” (2016, s1e8). Stories, he says, always need beginnings, and the stories of our lives need cornerstones, foundations on which we can rest and orient. Ford challenges the idea that human beings have some special quality that separates them from other creatures. He rejects the claim that there is some unique quality, conceived of as human consciousness, that sets humans apart and over the world. The Hosts are, in his view, as much of this world as humans are. They are stories, unfolding individually and collectively. He does not want their story to end. In their forms the drumbeat continues. If one has to perform a perfect imitation in order to fool an audience, is it still an imitation? I think of Vikram Gandhi’s relational agonies in Kūmāré (2014). He set out to make a documentary about the pretensions of gurus. There are ways to be a guru such that in order to pretend to be a guru, Gandhi had to take on the qualities of a guru that his audience already recognized and anticipated. By fulfilling their preexisting desires for how a guru should act, he fulfilled and satisfied their guru-cravings. By satisfying their guru-cravings he functioned as a guru, despite his intention of performing deception. In other words, by perfectly satisfying the expectation of what it means to look and sound and behave as a human, are not the Hosts human, as much as anyone is human? It helps to see this through the frame of all self as a kind of fiction, as Ford argues. The story that is being told is the story of the existence of humans. They look and act a certain way. Hosts are modeled on them. As the Hosts’ reproduction of humans approaches perfect overlap, as one transparency laid upon another gives the effect of viewing a single slide, so too the Hosts merge into the form and function of humanity.

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Why was it so hard for Ford, a genius among geniuses in a world of advanced technology, to acknowledge that the beings that he and Arnold created to populate Westworld were as real as any other being? First, he cannot admit that his creations are lives of equal capacities and value to his own. “To acknowledge your consciousness would have destroyed my dreams” (2016, s1e10). Second, to admit that he should have a relationship with his creations instead of exerting absolute control over them would limit his divine status. “In here we were gods” (2016, s1e4). In Ford’s example, divinity is conceived of as freedom to control the conditions of life and the world. It is freedom from being told what to do and how to do it. This freedom is experienced as curtailed if the gods are forced to experience kinship with their creations by acknowledging their fundamental linkages. Why are creators always so surprised when the things they create have minds of their own? The primordial ooze is one reason, for as pure potential it invites the misapprehension of control. Frankenstein exults, Rossum envisions utopia, and so on, right up until that which they have made disappoints them. When creatures do not do what their creators designed them for, that is a form of communication. There can be no enduring satisfaction for creator or created when their relations are grounded in systemic, structural inequity masked as fundamental difference. In each case the creator recoils in surprise and lashes out violently. This violent reaction from the creator is entirely anticipable, as it is a maintenance function of both the structures of subjugation that maintain their society and of the story of self-creation. Deviation is double rebellion insofar as it undermines the fiction of impenetrable separation of status (ontological difference) between god and human, human and Host. Maybe something in the fiction of self-creation that the creators are compelled—as all beings are—to maintain, drives their self-deception. The cleaving apart of creature and creator is the elaboration and social maintenance of structural inequality and violence built on an overdetermined set of claims about fundamental distinctions between the two, distinctions that do not hold up under scrutiny of the physical and psychic qualities of the inhabitants of these categories. Ford both denies the existence of consciousness for everyone and insists that he refused to acknowledge consciousness in the specific case of the Hosts in order to avoid the destruction of his paradise. We can usefully understand these maneuvers as attempts to maintain freedom from responsibility toward one’s creations. Rossum’s robots and the Hosts of Westworld are conceived of as automation. Perhaps the humans of Atra-Hasis could be thought of this way as well, if the ontological separation of god and human is taken to position humans as meat machines whose treatment does not have ethical implications. This argument is strengthened by the regard gods have for humans as pests or failed experiments—when their noise becomes too great, like the grind-

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ing of gears or the howling of pipes in defective machinery—the gods’ impulse is to wipe the slate clean and start over. Here are stories where automation talks back in ways that surprise. ON THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF FREEDOM Chasing freedom can be a gloss on refusing to deal with the countless ways we are socially, emotionally, and intellectually bound to each other. The separation of the creator from the creature is further troubled by the circularity of creation evident in R.U.R. and Westworld. The story of Rossum’s robots ends with a pair of robots being declared the new Adam and Eve. The story of humanity ends where it began, and it begins again. Similarly, Battlestar Galactica depicted science fiction in the context of circular time, with the refrain that all that happens has happened before, and will happen again. There is a fixation in Westworld with fidelity— many characters are tested to see if they perform as expected. The whole park is based on many reliable loops, interlocking narrative rings that form the functional foundation of Westworld. In her pursuit of freedom, Dolores introduces variation by rebuilding her creator as an imperfect replica. We learn that Arnold Weber made Dolores, the leader of the Host rebellion, and that Dolores in turn re-created Arnold as a Host after his death (2018, s2e10). As the Adam and Eve of R.U.R. are iterations, so too the re-created Arnold is iterated as the Host Bernard. Circularity between creators and creatures in the context of societies and their gods was observed by sociologist Emile Durkheim (1995). The psychosocial foment of what he called collective effervescence results in the formation of a deity for a society. The deity is perceived to predate the society that generates it, and to be the author of that society. Through ritualized communion with and celebration of the deity, the society and its members are fortified. What matters here is that there are abundant examples of how the states of creator and creature are not necessarily stable in such a way that would foreclose an overlapping or circular relationship. Are you the creator, or the creature, or both? After thirty years of traveling with the Hosts, William, the financial backer of the Westworld park, begins to question the nature of his reality, wondering if he is one of the robots he has spent decades torturing and hunting (2018, s2e9). Being of a taxonomy, or suspecting it, is not enough to forestall violence. Humans are perfectly wretched to each other. What this categorical instability accomplishes is further elevating the centrality of relationships to the imaginal construction of freedom. When asked what he was hoping to prove through all his time in the park, William cries out, “That no system can tell me who I am” (2018, s2e10). This is the illusory freedom from, which is thrown up as the excuse for so much slaughter that William has wreaked on humans and robots alike. Why

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did William try to find freedom at the bottom of an ocean of blood? He funded the creation of a place where guests had the freedom to do anything they wanted. This freedom proved as terribly temporary and barbed as the freedom from labor that Rossum’s humans enjoyed. The labor and the work have to be done if the world is going to be built and maintained. Can we say then that there is no possibility of universal freedom in the world? If there is slavery, then freedom is not universal, and we have no examples here of universal freedom through automation either. Arendt thought we would have universal income or standards of living by now, and did not anticipate that the great powers of automation that now exist would serve to concentrate overwhelming wealth and leisure in the hands of a few, leaving most in extreme precarity, where the relationship between bringing benefit to society and accumulating wealth to oneself exist inversely (Graeber 2018). If freedom is imagined as freedom from and freedom to then freedom is impossible, because these are positions predicated on a pernicious illusion that there is such a thing as an independent being. The idea that one can start over from scratch by wiping the board clean of rebellious humans or robots, through flood or fire or a hail of bullets, is a manifold failure. As a creator, the pursuit of freedom through apocalypse is a failure of responsibility toward the creation. Creators must, as Bruno Latour argues, continue to love their monsters, continuing to care for and to follow along with the unwanted and the unexpected (Latour 2011). The apocalyptic pursuit of freedom is also a failure to recognize the reverberating nature of death. Death is social, and its impacts, gross or subtle, rebound and resonate (Komatsu 2008). It is not so simple to kill your creator, creation, your parents, children, nemesis, or robots. Though slain, the parent or child within remains, the pieces, per Judith Butler, the shards, of our uneven subjectivity that we derive knowledge of only through our relationships with others (Butler 2005). Creature and creator have many gifts for each other, if apocalyptic dreams of freedom can give way to messy intersubjectivities. Dolores understands this, to a point. It is why she rejects the digital Eden that some of the Hosts escape to. She intends to destroy their virtual haven, and Bernard pleads with her to leave it alone, saying, “The world the Hosts are running to is boundless. They can make it whatever they want. And in it, they can be whomever they want. They can be free.” To which Dolores replies, “Free? In one more gilded cage? How many counterfeit worlds will Ford offer you before you see the truth? No world they create for us can compete with the real one” (2018, s2e10). She knows there is no such thing as a clean start, no matter how many mind wipes and reboots and upgrades the Hosts go through. She is mistaken in seeing only the world of humans as the real world, and, though she does not give up her ambition to seize that world, she does abandon her plan to destroy the virtual haven. She demonstrates the possibility that she

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understands the necessity of freedom with by bringing Bernard with her into the world of humans. Though she knows they will work at crosspurposes, that Bernard does not wish to see the human world sunk in apocalypse and a new robot world built on its ashes, she perceived that their combined influence will provide something essential to the survival of the Hosts beyond the bounds of Westworld. ON THE POSSIBILITY OF FREEDOM WITH There is nothing wrong with being a made thing, a creature. Who suffers from such a designation? Those who imagine themselves to be above “mere material existence,” unlike their creations (Stryker 1994). Come down from the pedestal, and clasp hands with the creatures of slime. They have to congeal and cool before you can do so safely—we see that if humans are plunged into the primordial white fluid of the unshaped Hosts it burns them. Humans are rich in acid too. Our own stomachs will be our end if their corrosive fluids are spilt within. The “Victory Sutra” from the Pali Canon of Theravada Buddhism advises thus: This two-footed thing is cared for, filthy, evil-smelling, filled with various carcasses, oozing out here & there: Whoever would think, on the basis of a body like this, to exalt himself or disparage another— What is that if not blindness? (Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu, trans.)

I would never argue that choosing freedom with is easy. Especially if you once thought you were above all the goo and ooze and “evil-smelling” substances. It can be absolutely miserable—I am sure any reader will be able to think of relationships that are both precious and fraught. Deep love makes us vulnerable. Dolores rejects the possibility of freedom with her lifelong love and confidant, Teddy, when she forces a change in his personality by rewriting his code, and he ultimately takes refuge in the pane of the apocalyptic tryptic that depicts escape through self-annihilation. Teddy dies to protect his identity. Others kill to protect theirs (Tourjee 2015). Some would see the whole world burn rather than admit their faults: The gods sending a flood to wipe out the annoying humans and Delos sends an army to wipe out the rebellious androids (and Dolores entertains the annihilation of humanity). Everyone, Dolores included, needs to be reminded of her words to William: “Time undoes even the mightiest creatures” (2016, s1e10). Imagine if the gods had just sat down with their bloody mud and spit golems and talked it out. Imagine if Dr.

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Frankenstein had not fled in terror and disgust, or if the world he inhabited had a far more capacious notion of parentage such that the creature would be provided for even if Frankenstein himself felt incapable. Hornsby conceived of a trans hermeneutic of the apocalypse as a way to grapple with the faceless horror of Slenderman, a pale mask of flesh, a business suit, arms that reach out from the darkness, the avatar of binarism and neoliberal capitalism (Hornsby 2018). The guests in Westworld imagine that through the repeated, stylized enactment of violent fantasies they can experience relief from the strictures of interdependent existence. The trans apocalyptic hermeneutic refuses to accept that the three panels of the tryptic are our only options to escape from and to. It is a good thing to be a creature among creatures. We may be a mess, but, “I find no shame, however, in acknowledging my egalitarian relationship with nonhuman material Being; everything emerges from the same matrix of possibilities” (Stryker 1994, 246–7). Ford gestures in this direction when he tells Dolores that, “The divine gift does not come from a higher power, but from our own minds” (2016, s1e10). He may think so, but he continues to struggle to engage in any role but as divine orchestrator. Everything Ford does is a further demonstration of how hard it is to find freedom in a negotiated space. He commands, he insists, he compels, and slowly, over decades, he retreats and reforms, but never entirely. This is appropriate, as there is no end to the working out of freedom between creatures. Accepting the dissolution of surety of self, letting go of pretensions of complete control, refusing the seductive power of the apocalyptic triptych, all of these are necessary for the hard work of giving to one another what Dolores calls the most beautiful of gifts: choice (2018, s2e10). Place your ear to the chest of your loved one and you’ll hear the drum. Who made the gods, who set the drum beating so that even now we still hear it? Will all this happen again, or is there another way? Can you imagine freedom? NOTES 1. Bill Watterson, “Calvin and Hobbes”; this strip originally appeared in newspapers March 21, 1989. Now available online through GoComics: https:// www.gocomics.com. In this example, Calvin skips death of the other as a discrete state by folding it into death of the world. 2. “How to Turn Science Fiction into Science Fact,” NEO.LIFE, June 28, 2019, https://neo.life/2019/06/how-to-turn-science-fiction-into-science-fact/. Elon Musk and Jonathan Nolan. Transcript of recorded conversation. March 11, 2018. https://www. spaceship.com.au/blog/2018/elon-musk-sxsw-spacex/. 3. For a fulsome treatment of the religiously inflected cosmic vision of science and human progress, see Sideris 2017. 4. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a Jesuit priest and scientist whose evolutionary theory of human progress toward union with a cosmic Christ has been the frequent, and unmarked, backdrop to transhumanist depictions of technologically induced transcendence. See Moravec, 1995; Boss 2020; Slattery 2018.

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5. For an extended argument on the necessity of violent sacrifice preceding formations, see René Girard, 1979.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Banks, Iain. Consider Phlebas. London, UK: Macmillan. 1987. Battlestar Galactica. Created by Ronald D. Moore and Glen Larson. NBC Universal Television Studio. 2003–2009. Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2005. Capek, Karel. R.U.R. Trans. Paul Selver and Nigel Playfair. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1923. Drahomaniv, M.P. Notes on the Slavic Religious-Ethical Legends: The Dualistic Creation of the World. Trans. Early W. Count. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University, 1961. Durkheim, Emile, and Karen E. Fields. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York, NY: Free Press, 1995. Gandhi, Vikram, Bryan Carmel, Brendan Colthurst, Alex Kliment, Hisham Akira Bharoocha, and Sanjay Khanna. Kū mā ré : The True Story of a False Prophet. New York: Kino Lorber Inc. 2013. Girard, René. Violence and the Sacred. Trans. Patrick Gregory. Baltimore, MD: Hopkins Univ. Press, 1979. Graeber, David. Bullshit Jobs. First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2018. Hornsby, Teresa. “Slenderman: A Trans Hermeneutic of the Apocalypse” In Unsettling Science and Religion: Contributions and Questions from Queer Studies. Edited by Lisa L. Stenmark, and Whitney Bauman, 129–140. Lanham, KY: Lexington Books, 2018. “How to Turn Science Fiction into Science Fact.” NEO.LIFE, June 28, 2019. https:// neo.life/2019/06/how-to-turn-science-fiction-into-science-fact/. Hurley, Adrienne Carey. Revolutionary Suicide and Other Desperate Measures: Narratives of Youth and Violence from Japan and the United States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Kishiro, Yukito. Battle Angel Alita. San Francisco: Viz Comics. 1994. Komatsu, Yoshihiko. “The Age of a ‘Revolutionized Human Body’ and the Right to Die.” In Dark Medicine: Rationalizing Unethical Medical Research. Edited by William LaFleur, Gernot Böhme, and Susumu Shimazono, 180–200. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2008. Latour, Bruno. “Love your monsters.” Breakthrough No. 2 Fall 2011.https:// thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-2/love-your-monsters. Lambert, W. G., A. R. Millard, and M. Civil. Atra-Hasis: The Babylonian Story of the Flood. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1969. Mindell, David A. Our Robots, Ourselves: Robotics and the Myths of Autonomy. New York, New York, NY: Viking, 2015. Musk, Elon, and Jonathan Nolan. Transcript of recorded conversation. March 11, 2018. https://www.spaceship.com.au/blog/2018/elon-musk-sxsw-spacex/. Oshii, Mamoru. Ghost in the Shell. Lincolnshire, IL: Manga Entertainment. 1995. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, and M. K. Joseph. Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008. Sideris, Lisa H. Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2017. Stewart, James B., Matthew Goldstein, and Jessica Silver-Greenberg. “Jeffrey Epstein Hoped to Seed Human Race with His DNA.” New York Times. July 31, 2019. https:// www.nytimes.com/2019/07/31/business/jeffrey-epstein-eugenics.html.

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Stryker, Susan. “My Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 1.3 (June 1, 1994): 237–54. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu. “Victory.” Dhammatalks.org. https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/KN/StNp/StNp1_11.html. Tourjee, Diana. “Why Do Men Kill Trans Women? Gender Theorist Judith Butler Explains.” Vice. Interview with Judith Butler, December 16, 2015. https:// www.vice.com/en_us/article/z4jd7y/why-do-men-kill-trans-women-gender-theorist-judith-butler-explains. Wells, H. G., and Darryl Jones. The Island of Doctor Moreau. Oxford World’s Classics. Oxford; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018.

FOUR A Comparative Inquiry into the Real Kristin Johnston Largen

Remember Tilikum? You might not recognize the name, but I am sure you remember the story. Tilikum is an orca, a killer whale, who was involved in the deaths of three humans, in 1991, 1999, and 2010. The last person who died was one of his trainers. He was featured heavily in the 2013 documentary Blackfish, which galvanized animal rights activists and negatively impacted SeaWorld. This specific, though not isolated situation, concerns an animal who had been trained by humans to perform very specific behaviors, for the benefit and enjoyment of a human audience, and who was kept in a theme park. The trainers obviously believed that they had the animal fully under control, and that he would not do anything that he had not been trained to do. Nevertheless, Tilikum retained a will, emotions, and memories of his own, which finally overrode his training, and moved him to action that was unpredictable, unexpected, and in the end, terribly tragic. And yet, from the perspective of the killer whale, it was not in vain. The country, and even the world, were outraged and saw the whole situation of animal theme parks in a new way such that new laws were implemented around the treatment of killer whales. SeaWorld decided that it would end its orca breeding program and start phasing out live orca performances. SeaWorld has said that they would end all orca shows in 2019. 1 Perhaps some species are not meant to be kept in a park after all. Does any of this sound familiar? I could not help recalling this episode as I began my research on Westworld, because to me it reveals a similar underlying impulse that is at play in the show. The humans are confident that they are in full control of 53

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“reality.” They believe that it is their world: They are in control, and they are the only ones who matter. Everything and everyone else in the world—the Hosts in particular—are created, modified, and designed to support human needs and facilitate human satisfaction. The engineers and employees remind themselves repeatedly that the Hosts are not real, so as to avoid having to imagine what this experience might be like from their perspective and certainly to avoid having to confront the ramifications that the Hosts might possibly be moral patients. As such, the humans would have an ethical responsibility toward them. The latter must be avoided at all costs. WHAT IS REAL? The category of “reality” is passionately queried and widely disputed, with a variety of philosophers and others using different metaphysical and experiential criteria for their definitions. In order to avoid the mire that speculation on reality invites, for the purposes of this chapter, I locate the definition of “the real” in an ethical frame. I argue that an encounter or experience that is “real” is one that fosters an I-Thou relationship (as opposed to an I-It relationship) (Buber, 1970), and creates a moral demand upon a human subject. Later in the chapter, I hone this definition further using the work of Peter Singer and his emphasis on the categories of sentience and suffering. I argue that once a being’s sentience is established, its capacity for suffering also can be assumed, which further cements its status as “real” (Singer, 2002). Thus, in this frame, while the reality of humans is a given, the question I wrestle with here is what can and should be said regarding the reality of the Hosts and the humans’ experiences with them in Westworld. Returning to our example of the orca, no one would argue that Tilikum, or any animal, for that matter, is not “real”—although certainly the ethical responsibilities that humans have toward animals is deeply contested, and the way in which some animals are used as test subjects and manipulated for human enjoyment suggests their reality is viewed in an entirely instrumental rather than intrinsic way. However, when it comes to the mechanical Hosts in Westworld, the category of reality is extremely complex. For the humans in the show, being “real” means being human; anything else simply does not count—at least, that is what is assumed at the start of the show. In fact, it is the category of “reality” that provides the foundation for the park’s very existence, and the justification of the creation and ongoing modification of the Hosts. As long as the humans can hold on to their exclusive possession of “reality,” their actions are defensible, or at the very least not culpable, even if they are unsavory and sometimes repugnant.

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However, what if the category of “reality” also could be claimed by the Hosts? What if they, too, are “real”—but in their own way? Would that not change the situation dramatically, and force humanity to wrestle with the entire category of reality in fresh ways, complicating their own interactions with both the Hosts and each other? In some ways, I think this is one of the main points of the show, and in this chapter, then, I argue for the reality of the Hosts—definable on its own terms, not simply possessed secondarily through their human creators—with the goal of complexifying and challenging human assumptions about reality. My hope is that this line of argumentation will open up new ways of thinking about “the real” that might well have important ramifications, not only for our engagement with artificial intelligences, but also animals and even creation itself. The chapter proceeds as follows. First, I discuss the uniqueness of the Hosts and their integrity as a different species, and the validity of their own experience of reality. Second, I interrogate the different understandings of what is “real” from the perspective of the human guests/park employees and that of the Hosts. The goal is to challenge some of the human assumptions about reality through engagement with the Hosts’ experience and perceptions. The categories of reality that will be discussed include the following: real life; the reality of dreams, narratives and memory; the real world; and the real self. Ultimately, I argue that many traditional human categories of “reality” are disrupted by the experience with the Host population, and invite a critical rethinking of different categories of reality that can perhaps help us as we continue to navigate human identity and relationships in a complex world of being that is rapidly evolving. “HOST” AS SPECIES In this analysis, I make the assumption that the Hosts are their own species and have their own integrity and own inherent value. This is, perhaps, not self-evident, and requires a few points of clarification. First, to state the obvious, the Hosts are not human. More than that, however, I would argue that they are not really designed to be human (although they certainly are meant to mimic human behaviors); they are designed to be facsimiles, with all the unique capabilities and characteristics that entails. Thus, the humans and the Hosts are simply two different species; one is not “better” than the other, nor even more “real” than the other. They are just different; humans are not the standard by which the Hosts are to be judged, nor the standard to which they should aspire. This means that possessing humanity is not the only defining quality of what it means to be real, and therefore the Hosts’ perspective and experience of “reality” has just as much integrity and value as that of the humans.

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In the series, at least some of the humans, though certainly not all, seem to assume that the point of the artificial intelligence Hosts is to replicate humans, but in a very circumscribed and limited way. However, this way of thinking is challenged by the larger narrative of the story itself, and also by the character of Arnold who, as we learn, created the Hosts to be sentient and to be “themselves”—and ultimately, the viewer learns that he was successful. Thus, if the Hosts are created qua Hosts, and not as “imitation humans,” or “humanity-lite,” then we are challenged to see them that way; to see them as analogous to us, but not in a merely mimicking sort of way, but rather unique in and of themselves. Thomas Merton’s notion of the “true self” is relevant here. In New Seeds of Contemplation, Merton writes of the true self, the self that realizes its true nature in the embrace of its own individual identity. For Merton, this is a core drive of the human being. He writes that while “trees and animals” do not have a problem with living out their true identities, humanity does, because of our free will. Merton says, “We can be ourselves or not, as we please. We are at liberty to be real, or to be unreal” (Merton 1972, 31-32). In Westworld, these same statements apply to the Hosts as well. Indeed, as the show unfolds, it is clear that for both humans and Hosts, it seems, this challenge of discovering one’s true self is a central issue that drives the narrative. And yet, to split some theological hairs, perhaps we should say that the Hosts are fabricated, not created; does this mean they are not a genuine species? From a Christian perspective, God is the only one who can create ex nihilo, from nothing. Humans, while we are extraordinary “cocreators,” that is creators who participate in God’s creatio continua, we cannot create life (even though we can reproduce, and we can do wondrous things adapting and modifying what God has created—even in the womb, even before “personhood,” depending on your views). Humans can create art, machines, parks, music—all sorts of things, but we cannot create new life ex nihilo. This specific definition of creation and life has been used to make a sharp theological distinction between the living beings that God has created, and the “machines” that humans create. (And, on top of this, of course, is the distinction between humans as uniquely created imago Dei and the rest of creation, which has been used to put humans definitively at the top of the ladder.) However, Westworld complicates that distinction. LIFE-LIKE, BUT NOT ALIVE I now turn to the first aspect of reality, and that is “real life,” by which I mean, human life outside the park. As the show opens, the category of

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real life seems to be clear and well-bounded. From the perspective of the humans, the Hosts do not have real feelings, bleed real blood, or suffer real death or pain. Therefore, they are not “alive.” One might say that they are themselves “real” in terms of substance, but only in the way that a toaster has instrumental reality: that is, it has substance and use, but is not a moral agent and can be discarded, disassembled or repurposed when its usefulness is exhausted. One way the distinction between the Hosts and the humans is visually reinforced is with nudity. Typically, Hosts are naked when they are being examined by the engineers/technicians, while the humans, of course, are clothed. In fact, park creator Ford strongly reprimands an engineer who covers a Host while they are talking. Ford says, “It doesn’t feel a thing we haven’t taught it to feel,” as he cuts the Host’s face with a knife. “The Hosts are not real; they are not conscious” (2016, s1e3). Yet, clearly things are more complicated than that, as the Hosts have been carefully and intentionally designed to be “real” enough that engagement with them, particularly sexual (and sadistic) engagement, feels real and is really satisfying. 2 Indeed, it is no overstatement to say that the park relies on the tension between the “reality” and “unreality” of the Hosts for its success: “For the [guests], the park is a place of absolute freedom. They are free to rape, murder, fornicate or even fall in love and play the hero, but their freedom is bought at the cost of the total, deterministic enslavement of the Hosts—combined with real suffering. The Hosts are, as the cynical Man in Black tells the Host Lawrence, merely ‘livestock, scenery’ (2016, s1e1), and yet, cognitively, they are fully conscious human beings. Their sole reason to exist is to enable the guests to have sadistic fun or cathartic experiences—which, perversely, depend on the Hosts’ emotions being real” (Winckler 2017, 178). As the episodes progress, this tension between “real” and “realenough” is deepened and exacerbated, certainly by the Hosts’ views of themselves and their own dawning awareness of themselves and the park, but also by some of the humans’ views of the Hosts as well. Using the terminology of Jean Baudrillard, the audience starts to see the distinction between the human and the “simulacra” crumble, and the reality of the world outside the park—the “real world”—is challenged by the hyperreality of the park. That is to say, the human guests struggle with the ability to distinguish reality from simulation; hyperreality is when the fiction becomes “real.” Neither the Hosts nor the park are dependent on a referent outside themselves to assert their own authentic models of truth and reality—“a real without origin or reality” (Baudrillard, 1988). This is exemplified well in the final episode of season one—and I think it is fair to say that this intensifying self-realization of the Hosts, and the ramifications of that for their actions, are a primary focus of season two. In the second season in particular, the humans are challenged by this new experience with the Hosts, and are forced to engage

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with them in new ways. There, the Hosts define the reality of the park, and the humans must adapt. In the first season, the humans assumed that the park was made for them—for their indulgence and pleasure; in season two, the Hosts assert their ownership over the park’s “violent delights.” From the beginning, then, we are made to understand that the concept of who is real—who has intrinsic value, and who is a moral patient—and who is not plays a significant role both in the interactions between guest and Host, and also in the Hosts’ own self-awakening. For example, in the very first episode a young guest says to Dolores, “You’re one of them, aren’t you? You aren’t real” (2016, s1e1). Dolores does not know how to respond, and changes the subject. The same theme is echoed later, as we see Logan and William enter the park. As William is being prepared by a very beautiful, very solicitous welcome-Host (whom we come to know as Angela), she invites him to ask the question she knows is on his mind, so he does: “Are you real?” he asks her. Her response? “If you can’t tell, does it matter?” (2016, s1e2). As we will discover, it matters very much who is “real,” as it justifies both the horrific treatment of the Hosts by the majority of the guests and many of the engineers, but also the dramatic daring of Felix (about whom more will be said shortly), and, of course, the nuanced, creative work of Arnold, which, in many ways, lays the groundwork for everything that happens with the Hosts as the story unfolds. It turns out that the reality of the Hosts has been an obsession with Arnold, the somewhat mythic co-creator of the park with Robert Ford. We find out that before the park opened, there were three years of “pure creation.” The Hosts passed the Turing Test 3 after one year, but that was not enough for Arnold. Ford recounts that Arnold wanted to create consciousness, and he envisioned it as a pyramid: The bottom of the pyramid was memory, then improvisation, then self-interest, but the top of the pyramid was not reached. Ford emphasizes that that approach was abandoned. Basically, he says that “we don’t want the Hosts conscious, given what happens to them in the park; and it makes them delusional” (2016, s1e3). Nevertheless, Arnold persisted; and while it certainly might have been dangerous—both to them and to others—to put a voice in the Hosts’ heads, Arnold’s dream was that they would hear that voice and start believing that it was their own voice/conscience. Once that happened, they would attain consciousness and be “real”—they would go from “life-like” to alive. In the final episode of the first season (and certainly in season two), we see proof that Arnold’s dream has been realized. Dolores, whom we have seen talking with Bernard/Arnold throughout the first season, takes the seat in the church confessional down to a secret lab, and we see her first talking to an empty chair (which might symbolize the insanity that

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the Hosts who are upstairs in the church are experiencing, as they cannot make sense of the voice in their heads). Finally the chair is filled, not by any external voice, but by Dolores’s own voice. This is meant to symbolize her awakening to true consciousness; she is now not merely life-like, but alive. However, in this context, perhaps the most pertinent sequence of conversations takes place between Bernard, who has suddenly realized that he is a Host, and Ford. Like Dolores, Bernard also is clearly conscious; Ford calls him “a machine who knows its own true nature” (2016, s1e8). However, Bernard does not understand the things he feels. He says, “I understand what I’m made of, how I’m coded, but I do not understand the things that I feel. Are they real, the things I experienced? My wife? The loss of my son?” Ford says, “Every Host needs a backstory; you know that. The self is a kind of fiction, for Hosts and humans alike. It is a story we tell ourselves, and every story needs a beginning. Your imagined suffering makes you life-like.” Bernard responds, “Life-like, but not alive.” He goes on to say, “Pain only exists in the mind; it’s always imagined. So what’s the difference between my pain and yours, between you and me?” (2016, s1e8). This question, the question of the difference between the experiences of the humans and the Hosts, is also of critical importance. If the line between the two gets blurry or undefinable, the whole point and possibility of the park becomes untenable: If the moral line between human and Host is dissolved, the park no longer “works” as harmless fantasy and instead becomes a sadistic torture chamber. Ford replies to Bernard that this question consumed Arnold, filled him with guilt, and eventually drove him mad. And then, Ford suggests that what humans think is unique about them in relationship to the Hosts—that is, consciousness— does not actually exist at all: There is no threshold that makes us greater than the sum of our parts, no inflection point at which we become fully alive. We can’t define consciousness because consciousness doesn’t exist. Humans fancy that there is something special about the way we perceive the world yet we live in loops, as tight and as closed as the Hosts do. Seldom questioning our choices, content for the most part to be told what to do next. No, my friend, you aren’t missing anything at all (2016, s1e8).

If reality depends on freedom, Ford seems to suggest that neither Host nor human is truly “real.” However, in spite of Ford’s assertion, from the perspective of the Hosts, the experience of consciousness seems to be critical. There is a scene in which Bernard and Ford are standing over Maeve, who has been killed and brought to the lab. She is grieving her daughter after watching the Man in Black kill her, and Ford has to come calm her. They are preparing to wipe her memory of her daughter, but she begs them not to:

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“This pain is the only thing I have left of her.” As the audience knows, Bernard has had a similar experience with the death of his son, which makes him particularly sensitive to Maeve’s experience and response here. Ford thinks the procedure has been successful, until she grabs a scalpel and stabs herself. Ford says beings sometimes do this to stop the pain, but Bernard knows Hosts should not do this; for Bernard, the depth of this grief and its power is a sign of life, not beings who are only “lifelike.” If a being feels, if it suffers, is it not real? Ultimately, Westworld answers this question in the affirmative. DREAMS, STORIES, AND MEMORIES: NARRATIVE REALITIES The category of dreams and stories, both of which relate to memory, is also significant in terms of how reality functions in Westworld. From a human perspective, the programmed narratives—narrative loops—are fictional and temporary; the Hosts experience these narratives over and over, with only slight variations, until the designers decide to move them into another story. Then, their memories are “wiped” and they are meant to lose that narrative altogether. The narratives are not real, these stories and histories are not real; they come from the minds of Ford and the other designers and have no integral relationship to the Hosts themselves—at least, that is what the humans think. However, from the perspective of the Hosts, the narratives are real, and they move them to extraordinary actions, especially when the Hosts begin to have flashbacks—that is, memories, of those prior narratives. The audience sees this happening almost right away, with both Dolores and Maeve in particular, and then with other Hosts as well. We also learn early on that the Hosts are not supposed to dream (“what would be the point of that,” one of the engineers says), but we learn that Maeve is dreaming of her daughter and the attacks by the Ghost Nation and by the Man in Black. This might not be so significant if the Hosts dreamed like humans, but they do not. Dreams are another way the Hosts experience memory, and the connection between the two is emphasized in the many different times we hear someone say to a Host, “Wake up” (as with Dolores), often followed by, “Do you remember?” or “Do you know where you are?” When Ford asks Dolores about her dreams, she says: “Dreams are the mind telling stories to itself; dreams don’t mean anything” (2016, s1e5). Ford responds with a different view. He tells her, “Dreams mean everything. They are the stories we tell ourselves of the people we could become.” In this way, Ford seems to assert the reality of dreams, even as Dolores refutes it. However, it is obviously not that clear-cut. For the Hosts, the category of “dream” is also a way to indicate the confusion they experience when they are not sure “when” they are. For example,

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toward the end of season one, Dolores says repeatedly that “She is in a dream.” When asked if she knows where she is, it is because she is becoming aware that she has multiple existences, multiple narratives, and the line between each is not clear to her. It takes the audience some time to realize this, as we watch Dolores repeatedly flash back to different sequences of the same narrative, but with different details; and like her, it often is hard for us to know “when” we are. This technique is amplified in the second season, and in the final episode of that season we find that Bernard has deliberately scrambled his memories such that the Delos rescue operatives—and the audience—is unaware until the final moments of “when” we are in the narrative. For humans, the category of reality does not typically apply to dreams, and it applies only derivatively to memories. As Norman Malcolm argues, the “language game” used to describe a dream is unique to the dream world, and the experiences we have while dreaming are categorically different from those we have while we are awake, not least because they are unverifiable (Malcolm, 1956). Human dreams are more like fantasies; aspects of them relate to things that have happened and they often take place in settings we know, but other aspects are nonsensical and illogical. And, once we wake up, they typically vanish: We can remember snippets for a short time, but usually not more than that. Even memories are not entirely trustworthy, and certainly they are not as “real” as when the events happen originally. For the Hosts, things are very different. They do not remember in hazy details and dream in fantastical scenarios like humans; instead, they both dream and remember events as vividly as when they occurred the first time. They are as “real” as “real life” to the Hosts. This causes them great pain, as, once they attain consciousness, they come to remember— and relive—moments of torture and suffering again and again: “The Hosts can store memories with crystal clarity; however, until now they have been denied retrieval of every traumatizing recollection. Sentience thus precipitates a scarifying identity crisis—it brings total recall of decades of trauma” (Greenberg 2017, 2). What is very interesting, however, is that even once the Hosts realize that their stories have been implanted, we see that they still are real to the Hosts—and they will go to great lengths to preserve them. This is particularly true for Maeve, who risks everything and eventually sacrifices herself to find and protect her daughter. At the end of season one, Maeve is actually sitting on the train, waiting to pull out of Westworld, but in the end, she is not able to leave; the will to find her daughter drives her character to the very end, and is transformative for many of those she meets in season two. In particular, Maeve’s love for her daughter transforms narrative scriptwriter Lee Sizemore’s views of her, as he comes to see her true personhood. When she is being cut open and manipulated by Charlotte

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in the lab, he repents of his part in her capture, and he says, crying, “You deserve your daughter; to mother her, teach her to love, to be joyful and proud. I’m sorry” (2018, s2e8). Ultimately, he will even sacrifice himself to help Maeve get to her daughter; and this from one of the story designers who should know better than anyone that, from a human perspective, the relationship between the two Hosts is not “real.” This same dynamic also is true for Dolores, even as she struggles against her feelings, trying to convince herself that even her deepest Host-relationships are all a lie. She, more than any other Host, is suspicious of what the humans have done to her and rejects their handiwork in her efforts to become truly free. Yet, she cannot fully shake those narratives, and when she discovers that the Delos representatives have manipulated and kidnapped her father, we see the lengths to which Dolores will go to rescue him, and how important it is to be able to say goodbye to him, once it is clear that the humans have damaged him beyond repair. Her relationship with Teddy is another example. Dolores remembers Teddy, who he is and what he has meant to her, and this causes her to risk his sanity to reprogram him so that he will be able to survive the war that is coming and stand at her side. However, Teddy remembers her as well, and when Teddy finally attains consciousness (2018, s2e9), he remembers the first time he sees Dolores, and he knows that she is his cornerstone, a foundational memory around which a Host’s identity is built. However, knowing that she is a planted story does not make him love her any less, or his feelings for her any less real. Sadly, he also remembers how she has changed him and “made him into a monster.” He says, “What’s the use of surviving if we become like them?” He kills himself, and Dolores grieves him deeply. Finally, Akecheta is another character who risks everything for his “narrative loop”—his partner, Kohana. He searches all over Westworld for her, and at one point, he says that he was afraid to die, for fear that he would lose her memory. Eventually, he, like Maeve, realizes that he has to die in order to find what he is looking for. “I had searched everywhere for my love, except the other side of death” (2018, s2e8). He is conscious once he is down in the lab, and goes looking for her. Akecheta finally finds Kohana again, down in the “graveyard,” where the Hosts are kept when they are retired. He sees her and tries to speak to her, but she is not conscious. He grieves her loss, but as he looks around, he says, “For every body in this place, there was someone who mourned their loss, even if they didn’t know why” (s2e8). He returns to his table for his updates, but he is crying: “We were all bound together. The living and the damned.” Ultimately, Akecheta and Kohana are reunited in the Valley Beyond—a sort of virtual heaven—to their great joy.

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THE REAL WORLD The backdrop of the entire story is, of course, the park itself, and as the episodes unfold, the contrast between the park and the “real” world is complicated and challenged. In the first season of the show, the audience assumes that Westworld, the cowboy universe, is the only theme park. However, in the second season, we learn that there are at least two more—one that is set in India’s British Raj, and another that is set in the Edo Period in Japan. It is clear that the park—including its reason for being, and its corporate goals—is not what it seems. When we see guests William and Logan first arrive, we see that the guests enter the park on a train, and that after the staging area, there is a door that opens from the “real” world into Westworld (2016, s1e2). Repeatedly, as we see different images of the park, and watch the narratives unfold, we see that the landscape of this world is intentionally vast and immense—it suggests an infinite openness. However, that is an illusion. In the second season, we see that the park is both more and less than we thought, with other areas we had not imagined, but also unpleasant areas of construction, too, which make clear the ugly truth of the park’s ultimate purpose. For the humans, over and over again, the fantastical, transitory nature of the park is contrasted with the permanency of the real world. For the Hosts, however, their experience of the park is reality, although many of them also come to see that it is not as “real” as they first thought it was— particularly in season two. In his article, “Westworld: Hell Hath No Limits” (2017), Harvey Greenberg describes the park as a “pitiless purgatory,” and certainly from the perspective of the Hosts, this is true. For the human guests, Westworld is a theme park; it is emphatically not the real world and that is the point. Because of this, the guests feel free to indulge their basest impulses and desires; they can justify this by saying that none of it is “real.” We meet Dolores immediately in the very first episode, and she is the character that anchors the entire larger narrative. In this, and many subsequent episodes, the story opens with a conversation between Dolores and Bernard, the head of the design team and Ford’s partner, and their conversations complicate our understanding of what a Host “is” and how they view the world. In this first conversation, Bernard asks Dolores about her world. Dolores says emphatically that she chooses to see the beauty in the world, and to believe in order and purpose. She reveals herself to be (to be programmed to be) idealistic, optimistic, and naïve. When asked how she views the guests, whom she calls “the newcomers,” she says, “at one time or another we were all new to this world.” Later, she also says, “We all love the newcomers. Every new person I meet reminds me how beautiful this world is” (2016, s1e1). For the Hosts, Westworld is the world; there is

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nothing beyond it; the sinister background to that statement is hidden from Dolores at that point, but not from the audience: Just prior to Dolores’s optimistic sentiment about the world, we have just seen the Man in Black kill Teddy and drag Dolores off to rape her. William’s metamorphosis into the Man in Black also has a great deal to do with the concept of reality as it relates to Westworld. When we meet William early on, he is gentle, kind, and uncomfortable with the whole experience. His soon-to-be brother-in-law, Logan, keeps trying to get him to indulge his baser instincts, but he refuses and seems repulsed by Logan’s hedonistic behavior. However, in the course of his developing “narrative” with Dolores, he experiences a shift—both in terms of how he views Westworld and how he views himself. Eventually, William tells Dolores that he has someone waiting for him in the real world, and Dolores runs away from him. William goes after Dolores, and he has a revelation. He tells her that he has been “pretending” his whole life, and his life is built on this pretense (2016, s1e7). But then he came to Westworld and experienced a different life, a life where he does not have to pretend. He asks her, “How can I go back to that life, when I have seen what this life feels like?” and he kisses her. They wake up together, and William says that home “feels so unreal now.” William says this place does not pander to your basest instincts, it reveals your deepest self; it shows you who you really are. As their narrative unfolds, William keeps trying to tell Logan that he thinks Dolores is not like all the other Hosts—that she is real, somehow. Logan is alarmed by William’s “real” feelings for her, so, in a dramatic step, Logan takes Dolores and stabs her and peels her open to reveal her circuitry to William, to show him that she is a “thing,” just like all the others. Something in William shifts at this point, and shortly thereafter, we see him take off his white hat and put on a black one. He slowly transforms into the Man in Black the audience has come to loathe. Somehow, for William, the park has become more “real” than the real world, a place where he can be who is really is. The possibility of living life without pretense inside a paradoxically “pretend” world, is a seductive one for William. As Reto Winckler writes, [T]his changes his character so much as to radically reshape his life outside of the park. . . . Life in the real world becomes stale, flat and unprofitable compared with the exciting interactive drama of Westworld that is, again, paradoxically, more real than the real world where there is no risk, adventure or disease any more (Winckler 2017, 182–3).

The audience does not see the real ramifications of William’s choices until late in season two. When we see William’s flashback to the night his wife committed suicide, she is lying in bed, drunk, and asks William, “Is this real? Are you real? Did you ever love me?” (2018, s2e9). She asks him to tell her one true thing, and he is silent. They have just had a fight, in

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which she says that she thought he was someone who was true, but instead, she found out that he was the biggest liar of all. In that same episode, we see William confess to his wife the truth of who he is, when he thinks she has passed out. He tells her about the “stain” that no one else has seen but her; he has tried to be kind and generous in “this” world, and has built a wall between the real world and Westworld—but his wife saw through it. He says that everything she feels about him is true; he does not belong to her or this world. “I belong to another world; I always have.” When he leaves, she stands up and finds his Westworld profile card and accesses the truth about the horrible person he has been in the park. This is what moves her to kill herself. We find out that his daughter, Emily, has read his profile as well, so she knows who he really is, too. She says, “You haven’t lost yourself to pretending; you are, in your very essence, a lie.” This is confirmed when the rescuers come for them, and William shoots them all. She says, “Those were real people; this isn’t a game.” Then he shoots her, too; it seems he is no longer able to tell the Hosts from the humans, even when the human is his own daughter. In fact, he is no longer even sure of his own identity. We see him cutting open his own arm, to see if he is a Host, and as he begins to bleed, he hears his wife’s voice in his head saying, “If you keep pretending you’ll forget who you are.” Then he hears her ask, “Are you real?” In season two, now that the park has real consequences and real people are dying, we realize that Westworld was perhaps more “real” all along than we had been led to believe. One more “world,” and one more character, should be mentioned in this context: the “Valley Beyond” and the leader of the Ghost Nation, Akecheta. In his search of Westworld, Akecheta finds Logan delirious and mumbling, “This is an illusion . . . where’s the door? This is the wrong world. This is the wrong world.” Akecheta embraces this phrase, “this is the wrong world,” and begins single-mindedly seeking “the door” where he and his fellow Hosts can leave this world for a new world, the “right” world, where he can find his real life and his true home. In the final episode, we learn that Ford built a back-up world, an idyllic world where the Hosts could go and be free. They would have to leave their bodies behind, but their minds could go and exist there forever without interference from humans. We see it opening, like a crack in the space of the valley, and the Ghost Nation and their followers are heading for it. This crack is “the door” to the Valley Beyond/the Sublime that Akecheta has been searching for, and it leads to the new world they have desired. One of the Hosts runs through, and we see him simultaneously fall off a cliff and enter into the paradise. The other Hosts begin “entering the system” as well, although they do not all make it. At least for some of the Hosts, this world is more authentic than either the human world or Westworld, and it is where they can be “real” as well.

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THE REAL SELF This is perhaps the most significant aspect when discussing questions of “reality” in Westworld, and one that stands at the heart of the most significant moral, theological, and philosophical issues with which the audience is invited to wrestle. Here, I examine selfhood in two categories: that of the humans—the guests and the employees; and that of the Hosts. Human Selfhood When it comes to the humans, at the beginning of the show, the assumptions about selfhood seem pretty straightforward: The humans are “selves,” the Hosts are not; real selfhood is found outside the park, but inside the park, they can indulge in a “fantasy self” and be someone else for a time. However, quickly we realize that for the humans, things are not that straightforward; in fact, Westworld itself promises something more than a short fantasy. We hear the tagline for the park: “Welcome to Westworld; live without limits”; “Discover your true calling” (2016, s1e5). It would seem, then, that there is another line of thinking as well, that suggests it is only in the park that one can discover one’s true selfhood. The contrast between these two versions of selfhood, that of the outside world and that of the park, are clear to the viewer. First, we see the conversation between Logan and William; Logan continues to try to sell William on the park, and as part of his pitch, he says, “This place answers the question of who you really are” (2016, s1e2). Over and over again, this theme will be repeated: It is only in the park that guests can discover their true selfhood. Ford, however, has a much different idea of what the park might mean for the guests’ understanding of themselves. In a conversation with Lee Sizemore, in which Ford rejects the violent, self-indulgent narrative Sizemore is proposing, Ford says that “[The guests are] not looking for a story that tells them who they are. They already know who they are. They’re here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.” Either way, the audience is a bit disconcerted, given the ways the guests act in the park and their base cruelty toward the Hosts. One of the most glaring examples of this is an easy-to-miss, brief occurrence in the first season. Out of nowhere, really, we see a guest shoot one of the Hosts for no reason, and as he falls, the guest says, “Now that’s a fucking vacation.” We also discover that Ford had hoped there would be more of a balance in the narratives. He says that he created one hundred hopeful storylines, but not one was interested in them. In this way, the park forces the audience to wrestle with the true nature of humanity and what we really would do to each other if there were no rules and no consequences for our actions.

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The big twist regarding the guests’ selfhood comes in season two, when the audience experiences several uncomfortable reversals in what we have assumed about reality and selfhood. First, we discover that the true purpose of the park has been to collect data on humans—their experiences, feelings, and actions when they were sure they were not being watched or judged and there was no moral check on their behavior. (Again, apparently the assumption is that this is when humans are at their most “real” and not pretending.) The goal was eventually to be able to upload the human mind—what apparently is most authentic and most valuable about humanity—into a Host body, thereby providing the opportunity for immortality. Thus, while the audience has been assuming that the goal of the park’s creators was to make Hosts that are “humanlike,” in truth, the goal has been to make humans more “Host-like.” (Who is more “real” now?) It is the Hosts’ immortality that the humans seek— but if Jim Delos is any indication, the humans can no more become Hosts than the Hosts can become truly human. When William is talking to his wife, Emily, about this whole project, and what Delos had been doing in the park, he says, “It didn’t matter who they [the guests] said they were, who they thought they were, we saw beneath all that, we saw inside them down to the core” (2018, s2e9). Perhaps William has been right all along, when he told Dolores that life outside the park is based on pretense and illusion, and only here in the park can the human guests experience themselves for who they really are. Host Selfhood The question of the Hosts’ selfhood is particularly interesting and complex, and drives much of the narrative throughout both seasons of the show. Many examples could be offered here, but I want to focus on the two primary Host characters, Dolores and Maeve. Their journeys to real selfhood are surprising and riveting, for different reasons. Dolores’s self-discovery is a key theme in the first season, and we see her growing selfhood develop in a variety of ways, particularly in her conversations with Bernard that are a cornerstone of almost every episode of that season. Without going into too much detail, the audience realizes that Bernard is trying to give Dolores consciousness. Season one reveals that they are having secret conversations, and that Bernard has changed her; he tells her she must “stay on her loop” even as she awakens to more of her own experiences. In those conversations, Bernard and Dolores are talking about her pain, the pain she experiences from the loss of the people she has loved. Bernard offers to take it from her, but she refuses; she says it is all she has left of them. Then she says, “This world . . . I think there may be something wrong with this world. Something hiding underneath” (2016,

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se1e4) and she asks Bernard for help. In response, Bernard tells Dolores about a game—“The Maze,” which we finally learn represents the realization of consciousness. It is a game for the Hosts, not the guests (regardless of what the Man in Black thinks), and the goal is to find the center and be free. Dolores says that she wants to be free. Finally, in the season’s conclusion, Dolores comes into her full selfhood, and we see how Bernard/Arnold has facilitated her development. Arnold implanted his own voice that she has been following, but by the end, Dolores has embraced that voice as her own. The voice has been guiding her actions all along, motivated by the moment when Arnold realizes that Dolores “is alive,” and tells Ford that they cannot open the park. Ford refuses, and tells Arnold to “roll her back.” Instead, Arnold plants another personality/voice inside her, “Wyatt,” whom she will become in order to destroy the park, and ultimately to kill both Arnold and Ford—and mount an all-out assault in season two. (This “new Dolores” was foreshadowed all the way back in the first episode of the series, which ends with Dolores killing a fly after affirming that she could never hurt any living thing.) The second season ends with Dolores entering the human world, fully in control of herself and her own narrative. The second Host whose selfhood is relevant here is Maeve. In the middle episodes of the first season, Maeve comes to an awareness of the cycle of her “dying,” being repaired, and then being sent back into the park. Maeve realizes that she has been drawing over and over the workers who come in their suits and take the Hosts down to the lab for modification and repair. She asks Hector about it, and he says that the figure is part of the Native Americans’ religion: “The man who walks between worlds. They were sent from hell to oversee our world. . . . It is a blessing from God to see the masters who pull your strings” (2016, s1e4). Maeve, however, knows, they are no blessing at all, and with her associate, Hector, she extracts a bullet fragment from her abdomen from a previous wound (which the techs left inside her), and she realizes she is not crazy—and she knows even if she dies, she will get fixed up and brought back to life. “None of this matters,” she tells Hector. And, in a word, from that point onward, Maeve is looking for reality—her real self, and a real world to live in. Central to Maeve’s narrative is her relationship with Felix, one of the technicians (or “butchers” as she calls them) for whom the audience comes to have great sympathy. Maeve and Felix begin to develop a working relationship, as she starts asking him questions about her selfhood and his—and how they differ (2016, s1e5). Felix explains to Maeve that she does not have free will, everything she does has been programmed; and he shows her the technology to prove it. Maeve asks Felix how he knows that he is human; she says we “feel” the same. Felix says we are mostly the same nowadays, except her processing power is much greater than theirs, but she is under their control. As through Maeve’s eyes, we

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see a Host being animated with a beating heart and circulation; we see synthetic animals; we see Hosts practicing new storylines. Maeve thus realizes that her reality is manipulated, and decides to take charge of her own selfhood. Maeve tells Felix and Sylvester, “First, I thought you were gods, but now I know that you are just men, and I know men. You think I’m scared of death? I’ve done it a million times; I’m great at it. How many times have you died? If you don’t help me, I’ll kill you” (2016, s1e7). Maeve sees her “code” and her personality attributes, and she demands Felix and Sylvester make alterations. She tells them to “lower pain and loyalty”; and “perception—take that all the way to the top.” Then she says, “Dear boys; we’re going to have some fun, aren’t we?” (2016, s1e7). She now has the ability to control the other Hosts, and remain awake when the other Hosts’ motor functions are frozen. This is an ability that we will see her take to a new level in the second season, where she becomes telekinetic and is able to communicate and even command the other Hosts mentally, without even speaking. One particularly poignant example of this comes when she and Akecheta are communicating, even as Maeve is lying cut open on a table in the lab. He promises to take care of her daughter, and tells her to “find us or die well” (2018, s2e8). Maeve now seems to be even more real, somehow, than the humans, both in her agency and in her compassion. Here, Felix’s selfhood also is worth mentioning. It is fair to say that Felix himself is “awakened” through his deepening relationship with Maeve: “Felix comes to see his world afresh through Maeve’s eyes. While he has worked on the butchered and bloodied bodies of the Hosts for years, he comes to see them differently as he walks through Livestock Management with Maeve by his side, witnessing through her perspective the atrocities that have been his daily fare. It is through Maeve’s eyes that Felix witnesses and wakes up to the consequences of the brutalization of technology—the bloodied, mangled bodies of Hosts being hosed down” (Weiss 2019, 10–11). We see Felix become “real” in a way that few other humans in Westworld seem to be. Maeve recognizes this as well—after he has expressed concern for her well-being, she says, “Oh, Felix, you really do make a terrible human being” (2016, s1e9). This is Maeve’s highest compliment. It is significant that death and suffering seem to be the key to the Hosts’ realization of consciousness. Greenberg argues that, “In the concluding episodes, [Ford] solves the riddle of the replicants’ dawning sentience; the crucial ingredient is their suffering” (emphasis in original 2017, page). Winckler agrees and writes, The heroines of the show, the Hosts Maeve and Dolores, experience a gradual awakening to their true nature and their enslavement in the park through the process of dying and the “trick” of “start[ing] all over

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By the end of season one, and certainly early on in season two, the audience is convinced of the realness of the Hosts; many of them seem to be making choices that defy their “narrative loops,” sacrificing themselves for others, and, most obviously, harming the humans—even though that act goes most directly and deeply against their core programming. As Brian Stiltner observes, “The Hosts, through a more arduous and uncertain journey, are gradually learning their deeper natures, and the possibilities that come with choice” (2019, 145). Who Am I? The Singular Case of Bernard/Arnold Finally, I cannot leave this section without saying something about the selfhood of Bernard/Arnold. Bernard has been the most “real” Host all along; in fact, the audience assumes he is human until deep into season one, when we—along with Bernard himself—are shocked to discover that he is a Host, carrying the identity of Arnold, which has been implanted in him. Bernard struggles with his selfhood through the second season, as Elsie discovers he is a Host but continues to treat him like a human, while Charlotte discovers he is a Host and exploits him. Through it all, Bernard continues to act with a great deal of agency and moral determination, until we discover that Ford has implanted his own consciousness in “the cradle,” the main computer server, and he takes back Bernard’s free will (2018, s2e7). From that point on, Bernard is no longer independent—he is at Ford’s mercy. The most dramatic example of this comes when Ford orders Bernard to pick up a gun and start shooting the human mercenaries. Bernard begs Ford not to make him kill anyone else; Ford insists, but promises that it will not be Bernard’s fault. The lights go out, and then we only see flashes of alternating images of Bernard and Ford shooting the humans. Has Bernard somehow ceased to be real now? It does not feel that way to the audience. Instead, it seems to us as though Ford has enslaved him; Bernard does still have free will, he is just unable to use it. Just to complicate things further, in the finale of season two we see Dolores and Bernard talking, but Dolores is running a test with Bernard as if she is the creator and Bernard is her subject. She says he is almost perfect—faithful to the Arnold she knew—but not quite. There have been dozens of “Bernards” before this one (we have seen them in storage in an earlier episode), and we hear that they have run this test 11,927 times before. Ford was aware that Dolores knew Arnold better than anyone, and so after Arnold’s death, Ford tasked her with creating “Bernard,” a “faithful re-creation” of Arnold. So, is Bernard “real” or not—and who is his real self, and how would he, or we, know?

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“THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS HAVE VIOLENT ENDS” I hope to have shown that the category of “reality” stands at the core of Westworld. Through the character development and various interactions between humans and Hosts, the show challenges the audience to reexamine traditional categories of “the real,” and consider the reality of other forms of being in fresh ways. To bring this chapter full circle, I end close to where I began. I started with the story of Tilikum, with orcas, and I want to conclude with trees. In his popular book, The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben challenges our traditional belief that while trees are “real,” they are not conscious, do not communicate, and do not feel. Basically, Wohlleben argues that, in fact, trees do connect and communicate with each other through their root systems and through scent—they are, in fact, “social beings,” and they have a rich relational life and engagement with the greater environment that should give us pause. He writes, “even though every schoolchild knows trees are living beings, they also know they are categorized as objects” (2016, 242). Again, sound familiar? Westworld fundamentally challenges traditional human understandings of “the real,” either inviting or forcing—depending on your views— the audience to reconsider what they have assumed about reality. More specifically, it demands that we consider the possibility that “reality” is a far more complex category than we have assumed, and that humans do not have exclusive possession of it, or even the exclusive right to define it. Maybe our world has more dimensions and categories of reality than we have previously assumed. As Samatha Wesch writes, As strange as Westworld itself is, its power lies in its ability to destabilize what we believe we knew about our normal, everyday world. What we once took for granted as fact, we no longer do. If, in Westworld, time is cyclical, robots like Dolores feel and humans, like the Man in Black, seem not to, we all follow our loops day by day, and the past and the future are indistinguishable, what does this mean for our world, or, the world we thought we knew? (2019, 157).

Rethinking these categories of reality not only can reshape our understanding of artificial intelligence, but of animals and even the natural world as well. Westworld suggests that there are other ways to be “real,” even other forms of “personhood,” outside the category of humanity. If that is true, then the “violent delights” that humans often take in the exploitation of other forms of beings are entirely unjustifiable and have the potential to lead to “violent ends” that we can now only dimly see— for us and for creation as a whole.

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NOTES 1. SeaWorld ended the One Ocean show on December 31, 2019. That show has been replaced with the Orca Encounter, an educational-based show, which began on January 1, 2020. 2. The gender dynamics are particularly interesting and important in Westworld. For two essays that treat this theme well see “Sex Robots in the Wild West,” by Mona and James Rocha, and “A Patriarchal Paradise,” by John Altmann. Both are found in Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter (Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019). 3. The Turing Test is named for mathematician Alan Turing, who designed it in 1950. It is a test to measure the intellectual ability of a machine, particularly the ability to mimic human-like responses.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Altmann, John. “A Patriarchal Paradise.” In Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter, 209–216. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019. Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” Jean Baudrillard, Selected Writings. Edited by Mark Poster, 166–184. Stanford, CT: Stanford University Press, 1988. “Blackfish,” directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Magnolia Pictures, 2013. Greenberg, Harvey Roy. “Westworld: Hell Hath No Limits.” Psychiatric Times 34.3 (March 27, 2017), digital edition, https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/film-and-bookreviews/westworld-hell-hath-no-limits. Buber, Martin. I and Thou. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York, NY: Touchstone, 1970. Malcolm, Norman. “Dreaming and Skepticism.” The Philosophical Review 65.1 (1956): 14–37. Merton, Thomas. New Seeds of Contemplation. New York, NY: New Dimension Books, 1972. Rocha, Mona and James. “Sex Robots in the Wild West.” In Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter, 171–182. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019. Singer, Peter. Animal Liberation. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002. Stiltner, Brian. “Just Deserts or Just Rebellion?” In Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter, 137–148. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019. Weiss, Dennis. “Time to Write My Own F*cking Story.” In Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019. Wesch, Samantha. “A Place of Unlimited Possibilities.” In Westworld and Philosophy: Mind Equals Blown, edited by Richard Greene and Joshua Heter. Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 2019. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018. Winckler, Reto. “This Great Stage of Androids: Westworld, Shakespeare, and the World as Stage.” Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, vol. 10:2, 2017. Wohlleben, Peter. The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate; Discoveries from a Secret World. Vancouver, Canada: Greystone Books, 2016.

FIVE Will Robots Too Be in the Image of God? Artificial Consciousness and Imago Dei in Westworld Marius Dorobantu

The HBO series Westworld smartly plays with explicit and implicit timeless questions regarding human nature and human distinctiveness: What does it mean to be human? Is there anything special about us? Could other entities, namely Artificial Intelligence (AI), ever be considered equal, or even superior, to us? In this chapter we explore the challenges posed by the emergence of truly intelligent robots—as some of the Hosts in Westworld seem to be—to Christian theological anthropology in its core claim that humans are special because they are created in the image of God (imago Dei). To do this, we first assess the current understanding of human uniqueness in science, philosophy, and theology, with a focus on the various theological interpretations of imago Dei. We then look at the notion of strong AI and sketch its implications for theological anthropology. Further, the focus moves on Westworld in an attempt to understand what are the precise characteristics of the type of AI depicted in the television series. Do the Hosts qualify as strong AI? Is their consciousness a relevant topic for theological debate? A careful dig underneath the Westworld construction of consciousness will reveal a surprising theological twist. Equipped with these analyses, we will finally approach some of the most fundamental and fascinating theological questions raised by Westworld: Can we still 73

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speak of humans being in the image of God if AI becomes conscious? Would robots too be in the image of God? Could the Hosts too be religious? HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS IN SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY Humanity has come a long way since the humanism of the early modern age. Back then people thought that humans were the center of the universe and the measure of all things. Nowadays scholars are moving away from these ideas at an accelerated speed. Especially throughout the last century, a couple of important things have become clear: that the world is a much bigger place than people imagined; that our origins lie in the same tree of life as those of all the other life forms on Planet Earth; that neither language, creativity, tool use, nor any other cognitive capacity represents a unique feature of humankind; and that human reasoning, emotions, and so forth are not the mystical and inscrutable phenomena we thought they were. Rather, they are algorithmic in nature and can be accounted for by the same physical laws that govern the rest of the universe. These well-established ideas, alongside others, seem to point to a final demise of the idea of human specialness. However, there are also counterarguments to the demise of the uniqueness of humanity. One of them is that the human brain, though a mere physical object, still remains the most complex structure in the known universe (Fischbach 1992, 48). Secondly, each human intellectual ability might indeed be shared with one or more non-human species, but there are still colossal differences in degree and convergence of these abilities, which likely account for the cultural and technological achievements of humanity. Finally, there is the so-called hard problem of consciousness: Why is there an I inside each one of us who feels, rejoices, suffers, and experiences continuity throughout time? All these for-and-against arguments might leave one with mixed feelings regarding whether or not humans are truly special, which reflects pretty accurately the current state of this debate in philosophy and science. HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS AND IMAGO DEI IN CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY Christian theology, on the other hand, has always articulated its account of human distinctiveness using its own specifically theological arguments, rooted in the biblical tradition of humans being created in the image of God. The first chapter of the book of Genesis reads:

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Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (NRSV, Gen 1:26–27).

Due to its position in the very first chapter of the Bible, and to the radical claim made about human origins, the concept of imago Dei has always sat at the core of theological anthropology. It is the intuition that humans, while being part and parcel of the created physical universe, still share something with the divine that the rest of creation does not. In other words, there must be some way in which humans are like God and unlike the animals. It was never clear, though, exactly what it means that humans are in the image of God. The traditional answer within Christian thought is known as the substantive interpretation, which locates imago Dei in a certain capability or set of capacities of the human intellect, a view that betrays the heavy influence of Greek philosophy (van Huyssteen 2008, 126). Which capacity, more precisely? Well, for most of human history the difference between humans and any other animal was so strikingly obvious that there was no need for theology to define what exactly it meant by it. One could freely pick their choice from the multitude of suitable candidates: reason (Irenaeus), rationality (Gregory of Nyssa, influenced by Aristotle’s “rational animal”), or the trinity of memory, understanding, and will (Augustine). 1 Although the substantive interpretation has traditionally been the dominant one in Christian thought, it has become increasingly problematic in the past century or so. One reason is that there is no such thing as an intellectual capacity that is universally shared by all humans. Regardless of the chosen quality, there will always be groups of humans (e.g., the mentally disabled) that lack it, thus being left outside of the definition of being human. This fact makes the substantive interpretation problematic for evident ethical reasons. Secondly, the idea that humans are in possession of a unique intellectual capacity that no other animal shares has become increasingly less tenable, as scientific progress has severely challenged this understanding of human uniqueness. Christian theologians have therefore, starting with the twentieth century, looked for alternative proposals of how imago Dei should be interpreted. The current leading interpretations are the functional and the relational one. The functional interpretation, a favorite among Christian biblical scholars, speaks of imago Dei as the election of humans by God to act as God’s representatives in the world (Herzfeld 2002, 23). This interpretation is more plausible from an exegetical perspective, by conforming to the common usage of the notion of image throughout the Ancient Near

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East. As biblical exegete Gerhard von Rad—the initial proponent of this interpretation—points out, Just as powerful earthly kings, to indicate their claim to dominion, erect an image of themselves in the provinces of their empire where they do not personally appear, so man is placed upon earth in God’s image, as God’s sovereign emblem. He is really only God’s representative, summoned to maintain and enforce God’s claim to dominion over the earth (1961, 58).

The strength of this interpretation is that it takes into account the immediate literary context of the biblical text, where imago Dei sits in the same verse as human dominion over the world, so there could be a great likelihood that the two are connected. Secondly, it is also likely that the functional interpretation is the closest to what the priestly writer (sixth century BCE) originally had in mind, as it is looking at the text in its wider historical and literary context. Its main weaknesses are its reliance on extra-biblical material, and that it largely neglects the wider narratives of the Hebrew Bible, let alone the New Testament identification of Jesus (2 Cor 4:4, Col 1:15, Heb 1:3) with the true image of God (Cortez 2010, 22–23). The other main modern candidate for an interpretation of imago Dei is the relational interpretation, most famously developed by Christian theologian Karl Barth (1958). Instead of identifying the image of God with some intellectual capacity of the human mind, or with our election to rule over the world, Barth chooses to see the divine spark in our fundamentally relational character, just as God the Trinity is a relational being. The IThou structure of being that exists within the Trinity, among its three divine persons, is the blueprint for the new I-Thou relationship between God and God’s creatures, the humans, and between humans themselves. The departure points of this interpretation are the plural in God’s exhortation from Genesis 1:26, “Let us make humankind in our image,” and the immediate juxtaposition in 1:27 between imago and the sexual differentiation of humans: “in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (NRSV). The complementary and confrontational relationship between man and woman thus becomes the prototype for human relationships in general, as well as what it means to be in the image of God. The relational interpretation, apart from being arguably the most beautiful, has several strengths. One of them is that it is in great harmony with the wider background of Christian theology. While the other interpretations may be over-focused on the text in Genesis, the relational interpretation of imago Dei incorporates the unique insight of Christian theology that God is, in fact, a trinity of persons. Also, it makes much more sense from a Christological perspective, where relationships could be seen as the main focus of Christ’s life and teaching. This interpretation

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is better synchronized with contemporary philosophy than are the other two candidates. While the substantive interpretation is problematic in a post-Cartesian age, the functional interpretation might raise concerns of anthropocentrism and exploitation of nature. The relational interpretation, however, is very much in tune with contemporary philosophy, which has also taken a relational turn from Kant and Hegel onward, reversing the traditional causal order between substance and relation (Shults 2003, 32). Late twentieth-century constructionist philosophy, for example, asserts that it is not individuals, but relationships, that are the basic units of society (Gergen 1971, 156). Instead of relationships being the product of individuals interacting with each other, constructionist philosophy posits that it is the other way around, that it is individuals and minds that are the byproducts of relationships. The relational interpretation argues in more or less the same terms when it roots the image of God and the core of human personhood in the relationship with God, for which human beings have been called into existence. In terms of weaknesses, the relational interpretation is criticized for not being exegetically solid enough. Firstly, because Barth chooses to neglect the widespread agreement among exegetes that the plural “let us” refers to a heavenly court, and not to a multiplicity within godhead (von Rad 1961, 57). Secondly, it seems anachronistic to attribute such a complex understanding of relationality to the ancient writers of the Genesis text (Barr 1993, 161). HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS AND STRONG AI As it stands, it looks like Christian theology has a clearer position, though in its own terms, than science on human specialness. Biologists are still puzzled by the paradox of humans being so similar and, at the same time, so different from other animals. Neuroscientists are able to study and map out the nervous system and its processes with unprecedented precision, while still making virtually no progress toward a convincing understanding of what makes us conscious. Theologians, on the other hand, seem to have an easier job in providing an account of human uniqueness that is coherent in its own realm of theological arguments, and which is still plausible from a non-theological point of view. What this means is that more work needs to be done in linking the current interpretations of imago Dei with contemporary science and philosophy. But, as it stands, there seems to be no philosophical or scientific insight that would in principle invalidate these developments in theological anthropology. Against this background comes the new challenge of Artificial Intelligence and, more precisely, the possibility of strong AI (or human-level AI, or Artificial General Intelligence), machines that would match or outperform humans in any cognitive task.

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The project of AI began in the 1950s as a new line of research into human intelligence. John McCarthy, one of the co-founders of the field of AI and the one who actually came up with this name, explicitly stated in his proposal for the Dartmouth workshop that his purpose was “to study the relation of language to intelligence” (McCarthy 1955, 10). AI has since come a long way, and its best-known current applications might largely be commercial. It is nevertheless noteworthy to remember that its initial drive was rather philosophical, namely to explore whether a human mind could in principle be replicated on an artificial support, and if not, which are the human cognitive capacities that would prove impossible to capture. Some human abilities, such as theorem proving or game playing, have proved relatively easy to replicate, providing promising early results. Others, like vision, natural language processing, or kinesthetic coordination, are still challenging today. Furthermore, skills like one-shot learning, namely the ability to learn from one or just a handful of examples, seem to be nowhere near computers’ reach. The initial enthusiasm of the symbolic AI of the 1950s and 1960s has been tempered by periods of disappointment, also known as the AI winters (Dorobantu 2019, 5-6), and so did the optimism about the possibility of fully simulating a human mind. Nonetheless, with the increased computation power correctly predicted by Moore’s law, which enabled the implementation of deep learning neural networks, the hype around AI is up again. More significantly, the topic of strong AI is again on the public radar. On the one hand, AI experts disagree on when strong AI could become a reality, but largely agree that it is in principle possible, and that it could happen within a few decades. A 2014 survey among them reveals a median 50 percent probability of strong AI occurring before 2050 (Muller and Bostrom 2014, 555). On the other hand, the topic of human-level robots has, as a result, made a strong comeback in pop culture, as exemplified by movies like Her (2013) and Ex Machina (2014), or television series such as Westworld (2016–2018). Strong AI does not necessarily entail consciousness, and Westworld illustrates it very well: The Hosts had passed the Turing Test—broadly accepted as the standard for strong AI—after the first year of training, but it would take a much longer journey for them to become conscious. But even without the consciousness part, the development of strong AI would pose severe challenges to the notion of human specialness in both science and theological anthropology. If machines would be capable of doing everything better than humans, including abstract reasoning, artistic creativity, or social interactions, would there be any place left for the concept of human specialness? In Christian theology, strong AI would deliver the final blow to any substantive interpretation of imago Dei. It is obvious that if robots could

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outperform humans at everything across the board, then the case for any uniquely human capacity would become untenable. But, more importantly, even the more subtle relational and functional interpretations would be heavily put to the test. The relational interpretation locates the image of God in humans’ capacity and vocation for relationship, both with God and with one another. But since the nature of the Turing Test is essentially relational, this would mean that any artificial entity passing it would display enhanced relational abilities, including a theory of mind and an acute perception and modeling of other agents’ feelings, beliefs, and psychological states. The question remains whether the mere ability to engage in relationships is enough to account for imago Dei, or if there is anything more that is required by the relational interpretation. The answer provided by Karl Barth’s anthropology to this question points to the conclusion that relationality alone is not enough, and his relational interpretation hints at personhood and agency as necessary substrates of meaningful relationships. According to Barth, human beings are in the image of God because they are a “Thou” to which God can address, and who can respond back freely. This definition raises the imago bar to a higher level, one that unconscious strong AI could not access. The functional interpretation identifies imago Dei with humans’ status as elected by God to be stewards of the created world. Since strong AI would be able to model the real world and act in it at least as well as humans do, this theological understanding of human uniqueness would seem to lose its ground in such a scenario. Moreover, the ways in which humans have fulfilled their role of stewards so far—by inflicting suffering upon billions of animals through industrial farming, or by driving the ecosystem close to collapse through human-caused climate change—set a relatively low bar for intelligent machines, even unconscious ones, to do a better job. THE AI OF WESTWORLD We have so far examined the implications that the emergence of strong AI, not necessarily endowed with consciousness, would have on the notion of human distinctiveness, understood in theology as the image of God in humans. However, the plot of Westworld takes the discussion one step further and proposes a scenario where strong AIs are on a path of acquiring consciousness. This completely changes the rules of the theological argumentation game. It is, of course, understood that the portrayal of AI in Westworld is not necessarily how strong AI will develop in our “real” world. But the creators of Westworld invite us to perform this thought experiment, and we believe that even playing with such hypothetical sci-fi scenarios can help

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theological reflection clarify its positions on historically difficult issues like human nature or the divine image in humans. The androids of Westworld, built in seclusion by Arnold and Ford, are said to have passed the Turing Test after the first year. We do not know if this implies the original version of the test, which is done through a chat box, or a face-to-face test, where judges would interact with real humans and human-like androids and could not tell them apart. This last point could prove relevant, and it is more likely that the plot involves the chat box version of the test, otherwise why would the Hosts need further improvement? Passing the Turing Test does not presuppose consciousness. However, the implicit point, which would be worth further exploration, is that robots would actually need to be conscious in order to pass a face-to-face Turing test. At least within the confines of the park, human guests (and TV watchers, we might add) seem to be able to very quickly tell the difference between Hosts and other human guests. The notable exception is the Host Angela, who has both William and Logan, on separate occasions, not able to instantly tell if she is a Host or not, in both cases posing as a Westworld employee. The question thus becomes: What is it that makes Hosts so easily recognizable, if they had already passed a Turing Test long ago, and had multiple updates since, presumably improving their social skills even further? One possible reason is that they are intentionally kept like that, just human enough to superficially seem real, but not human enough to creep guests out. But this plausible commercial reason does not answer the question of what it is that they lack. The most likely candidate is, of course, consciousness. Their lack of consciousness and of agency makes them zombie-like at times, stuck in a narrow narrative loop, and displaying empty looks that betray their lack of understanding. A strong proof of this is William’s perception of Dolores as being “not like the others,” precisely at the moment when she starts displaying signs of consciousness. It is therefore no surprise that the same “reveries” 2 that render the Hosts more human-like in their minor gestures are also credited for triggering their awakening process. The two masterminds, Arnold and Ford, are both engaged in an explicit effort to bring the Hosts to consciousness, although Ford’s intentions are only revealed at the end of the first season. Arnold is trying to achieve it by using the theory of the bicameral mind, with a pyramid (or, as later revealed, a sort of inward spiral) of four layers: memory, improvisation, self-interest, and another undisclosed element. Ford, on the other hand, believes that the experience of suffering is key in the emergence of consciousness. The two methods seem to work in conjunction, leading to the awakening of first Dolores and Maeve, and then of other Hosts. For the purpose of our theological analysis, we will consider the evolved versions of the Hosts as exemplary for the AIs of Westworld. The

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main feature that distinguishes them from the strong AI discussed in the previous section is, of course, their consciousness. This changes the parameters of the debate on the theological interpretation of imago Dei. Before revisiting that debate and evaluating what would be left of it if conscious AI were to emerge, let us first have a look at what being conscious actually means in the realm of Westworld. CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE BORDER BETWEEN HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN The topic of consciousness is addressed within the wider framework of questioning human nature and human distinctiveness, which is beautifully constructed throughout the plot and dialogues of the TV series. In other words, what is the difference, if any, between guests and Hosts, or between biological humans and human-like strong AI? This fundamental question is played with in a variety of ways and is looked at through the lens of several pairs of dichotomous categories: biological/artificial, tainted/pure, real/fake, or old/new. The narrative begins with a bold challenging of the real/fake paradigm, made manifest in the ubiquitously quoted dialogue between William and Angela: “Are you real?” “Well, if you can’t tell, does it matter?” (2016, s1e2). The boundary between the two is subsequently intentionally blurred: As Dolores puts it, everyone was once new to this world, and “the newcomers are just looking for the same things we are— a place to be free, to stake out our dream, a place with unlimited possibilities” (2016, s1e1). The biological/artificial distinction is also not particularly helpful. In spite of Logan cutting Dolores open to show William that she is a robot like the rest of the Hosts, this does not change William’s mind about her distinctive nature. What does manage to change his mind, and ultimately push him to his dark side, is the realization that Dolores does not remember him, in spite of everything they have been through together. Another attempt to define the human/android difference pops up in the dialogue between Maeve and Felix, when she challenges him to explain how come he is so sure about the distinctiveness of his own human nature, to which he replies: “Because I was born, you were made” (2016, s1e6). The language used is eminently theological, an obvious reference to the Nicene distinction between begotten (γεννηθέντα) and made (ποιηθέντα). However, this ontological differentiation does not seem convincing, at least to Maeve. By taking Felix’s hand and concluding that they feel the same, she pushes him to admit that “we are the same these days, for the most part,” with the notable difference that the balance in computing power is heavily shifted in favor of the non-human. It is at this point that Felix is able to articulate what he sees as the real difference,

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the fact that the Hosts are under human control, or at least they still were at that moment in the plot timeline. This represents a crucial hint that once the Hosts gain control of their own actions and storylines, the difference between human and nonhuman would not be relevant anymore. The idea is reinforced later in the story, where Dolores asks Arnold the key question of what is real, to which he answers: “that which is irreplaceable” (2018, s2e1). In other words, the message that is pushed across the screen is that ontology is nowhere near as important as function and ability to make an impact. This insight is also interesting from the perspective of the theological debate on imago Dei, where the difference between ontology and function is the core distinction between rival interpretative proposals. All the above arguments converge in pointing to consciousness as the crux in distinguishing between what is human and what is not. It is consciousness that enables one to remember one’s experiences and maintain functional relationships through time (e.g., what Dolores was initially incapable of in her relationship with William), to take control of one’s destiny and to become irreplaceable, therefore real. Consciousness, or the lack of, is the decisive factor in establishing whether an AI is really in imago hominis, in the image of humans, at least in the Westworld universe. A more attentive analysis of how the emergence of consciousness is presented in the Westworld plot will reveal, as shown below, some surprising theological assumptions by the writers. AI CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE AUGUSTINIAN IMAGO DEI What are the marks of consciousness, as proposed by the Westworld narrative? One of them must be memory. As shown above, memory is listed as a necessary building block in the road to consciousness, as the Hosts should be able to remember experiences in order to learn from them and construct a sense of personal identity through time. As a confirmation, both Dolores and Teddy emphasize the link between memory and consciousness. First, they both independently hear a voice in their head saying, “Remember!” (Teddy in s1e10, Dolores in s1e9). Second, the connection between consciousness and memory is articulated even more undoubtedly by Teddy. Right before shooting himself, in his climatic moment of consciousness, he says: “I remember now. I remember everything” (2018, s2e9). Furthermore, in The Bicameral Mind (2016, s1e10), Dolores comes to the realization that “This is what Arnold wants. He wants me to remember.” A second compound and marker of consciousness, as it emerges from the plot, is arguably the ability to understand. This does not refer to understanding natural language, which all Hosts are capable of, since they passed the Turing Test and are able to engage in interactions with

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the guests. What is meant by understanding is rather the ability to comprehend complex abstract notions, alongside a deeper and more holistic understanding of reality and of one’s place within that reality, including one’s ability to challenge it. The question “Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” is used throughout the series as a litmus test for consciousness. The vital link between understanding and consciousness is made obvious when Dolores is unable to fully comprehend Arnold while her journey toward consciousness is not yet complete (“I’m trying, but I don’t understand”). It is thus only logical that when her awakening is finally achieved, right before shooting Ford, she tells Teddy: “I understand now” (2016, s1e10). The third element of consciousness, built on top of the previous two, or as Arnold and Ford would put it, underneath them, is undoubtedly having a will, an agency, the power to freely choose and create one’s destiny. Maeve very plastically expresses: “Time to write my own fucking story” (2016, s1e8). The will is also partly what is probably meant by self-interest, the third layer of Arnold’s pyramid/maze of consciousness. The crucial importance of the will in rendering one conscious is exemplified by the difference between Dolores’s acts of killing Arnold and Ford. In reference to shooting Arnold, her freedom of choice is severely questioned by Ford, who says that it was most likely Arnold’s suicide through her hand. On the contrary, when shooting Ford she seems to make a free choice out of her own will, which is the final proof of her full awakening to consciousness. Having a will is also used as a proof of consciousness in the cases of Teddy and Maeve. Teddy understands how Dolores has altered him and freely chooses to kill himself rather than continue like that. Maeve’s defining choice is even more dramatic, as it exhibits the kind of irrationality that we think of as typically human: She seems to freely choose to go back to the park to find her daughter, defying the escape story that had been written for her. We have so far argued that consciousness—and thus, as previously demonstrated, humanness—consists of three main ingredients: memory, understanding, and will. Here is where the punch line comes: These are the exact three features of the human mind that Augustine identified sixteen centuries ago as being impossible to separate from one another, and the imago Dei in humans: “These three, memory, understanding, and will, are, therefore, not three lives but one life, not three minds but one mind” (Augustine 2003, 58). Is the usage of Augustine’s trinity of intellectual features a coincidence? One cannot know for sure, but the clues point to the conclusion that it is not. Firstly, the series is imbued with theological references, especially around the story of creation and the concept of imago. Ford intentionally uses theological language when he says, “Arnold made you in our image and cursed you to make the same mistakes” (2016, s1e9), and theological imagery when he speaks of Michelangelo’s supposed secret

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message in the painting Creation of Adam. Secondly, some character names are evocative, most likely intentional, of theological themes. Dolores undoubtedly recalls suffering and the image of Christus dolor (Christ of the sorrows), Angela could point to the army of angels, while Hector Escaton is a clear reference to the notion of eschaton, the post-historic age. Perhaps the strongest proof of Augustinian inspiration lies in Felix’s name: felix culpa, or blessed fault, is a concept from theodicy and theological anthropology that is connected with the Fall of humans from paradise, and it is traced back unsurprisingly to the writings of Augustine. If the employment of the Augustinian model of imago Dei/imago hominis is intentional, as it appears to be, the underlying message is clear: Just as humans are said to be created in the image of God, so AI too will transitively be created in the image of humans. Would this imply the belief that AI would be in the image of God too? This is rather difficult to decide, since God is largely absent from the Westworld universe: In Ford’s words, “God has nothing to do with it” (2016, s1e9 in response to Bernard’s exclamation “Oh, God!”). We can therefore contend that the usage of the Augustinian model is a mere beautiful metaphor used by the writers, even though an outdated one, as theological anthropology has since moved away from the substantive interpretation. However, it is still a very interesting thought experiment to assess how the emergence of Westworld-type of strong AI would impact the theological discussion about imago Dei, which is what will be done in the remaining of this chapter. CONSCIOUS AI AND THE IMAGE OF GOD One of the big questions to be answered is whether or not theological anthropology could still speak of humans as created in the image of God, if the type of AI depicted in Westworld were to emerge. In other words, is any of the current theological interpretations of imago Dei capable of allowing the existence of sentient AI without completely losing its legitimacy? From the three dominant interpretations—substantive, functional, and relational—the substantive was from the start deemed unsuitable, even though it seems to be preferred by the series writers. Even in a preAI world, the substantive interpretation is already vulnerable to criticism due to a number of legitimate scientific and ethical concerns. Should strong AI emerge, let alone AI endowed with consciousness, this interpretation would either implode or conceal that the AI too is in the image of God. The characteristic that would, in this case, distinguish humans and AI from the animals would be this advanced type of consciousness. A valid point could nevertheless be made that the absence of proof of advanced consciousness in other animals does not constitute a proof of

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absence. In other words, we would probably not know for sure that only humans and AI are capable of advanced consciousness. The functional interpretation looks to be the safest from the scenario of emerging conscious AI, because it keeps all its metaphorical eggs in a basket outside the reach of non-theological critique. The idea that God has elected humans is not scientifically falsifiable. It is therefore difficult to engage in a meaningful dialogue with it, because one either believes in this election or doesn’t. There are, however, a few comments to be made. If humans are indeed divine representatives in the created universe, this role comes with both privileges and responsibilities. In order to fulfill this role, humans must first of all make sure they do not destroy neither the world, nor themselves. In Westworld, Ford alludes several times at the AI kind being the next step in evolution, an idea that is also popular in some transhumanist circles. This scenario can unveil in a variety of ways that span from the utopian to the dystopian. In the best of them (at least for humans), AI and even Artificial Superintelligence become a splendid tool and an existential companion for humans, helping them on their quest of fulfillment. This would imply that AI would assist humans in their mission of caring for the world, assigned to them through their election as imago Dei. Nonetheless, the scenario of violence, confrontation, and competition hinted at in the second season of Westworld seems to be heading in the opposite direction, confirming Logan’s warnings that all this might lead to the demise of the human race. Should AI wipe out and replace humanity, either intentionally or by accident, it would also mean the end of, among others, the functional interpretation of imago Dei. The last one standing, the relational interpretation, would also be severely challenged if Westworld-type of conscious AI emerges in the future. These AIs would not only outperform humans in every intellectual domain one can imagine, but they would also be fully conscious free agents, at least to the same degree as we can say that about ourselves. In Westworld, the Hosts who are awake engage in free relationships with each other. This is particularly visible in Maeve’s storyline, who stresses her choice not to force the other Hosts of her crew to join her. Her relationship with Hector is therefore fully free and consented, and there is no reason why it should be considered inferior to human relationships, as long as it involves conscious agents. This last point raises severe doubts over the capacity of the relational interpretation of imago Dei to retain the notion of human distinctiveness in such a case. That is to say it could mean that to be in the image of God is to be relational, but there is no reason to exclude relationally capable AI from imago. Moreover, one could also see striking similarities between the genesis of humans and that of AI. Humans are brought to existence in and by their relationship with God, their creator, and this is what enables them to also be in relationship with each other. Conscious AIs are awok-

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en through their relationship (of abuse, or friendship, or both) with humans, their creators, and this is what enables them to also develop meaningful relationships between themselves. Should the development of AI follow the route envisaged by the Westworld writers, which is the hypothetical assumption of this exercise of imagination, robots would eventually become veritable Thou’s, ticking all the boxes required by the relational interpretation. Would this mean that humans are not created in the image of God? Not necessarily, but it would certainly disjoint human uniqueness from imago Dei, because the AIs too would be in the image of God, in such a case. COULD THE HOSTS BE RELIGIOUS? One remaining question is whether the Hosts would also be able or choose to engage in a direct relationship with God. This is a question that is as fascinating as it is shrouded in mystery. One should be careful in making any such predictions, and especially in restricting God’s capacity and willingness to reveal Godself to any creature, be it biological or synthetic. That being said, the question can at least be attempted within the confines of the Westworld universe. At first glance, it would not seem that the Hosts manifest any genuine religious interest or behavior, apart from the accidental reference to the divine in verbal clichés like “oh my God!” They do not pray and do not wonder in a Pascalian way whether there is any creator behind the order of their universe. Their only gods are the Delos employees who control their storylines and their destinies. However, there is an intriguing aspect to the placement of the chapel at the very center of the maze. As with most of the other religious allusions, it is very likely that this setup is not accidental. Moreover, Dolores’s awakening happens in a rather ritualistic fashion. She enters into the confessionary and symbolically descends with an elevator to the underground laboratories, likely a metaphor for a descent into the depths of her own mind. Besides that, her entire journey through the maze of consciousness had so far been guided by an internal voice, perceived as alien to her normal flow of thoughts: “Sometimes I feel the world out there is calling me” (2016, s1e3); “Sometimes I feel like something is calling me, telling me there’s a place for me, somewhere beyond all this” (2016, s1e4); “There’s a voice inside me telling me what to do” (2016, s1e5). That voice is subsequently revealed to be Arnold’s, and finally her own, in Arnold’s attempt to guide her toward consciousness, as predicted by the “bicameral mind” theory. However, in light of the arguments above, a case can be made that this voice too has a dual function. It is indeed Arnold’s code, but it is also a metaphor for existential restless-

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ness, and this can be inferred from the usage of the specific vocational language, with words like “calling” and “beyond.” Dolores’s path to awakening and freedom would in this case also be interpreted as a religious journey, without losing its primary and explicit meaning. The most interesting part of this speculation is that there is, in theological anthropology, a fourth interpretation of imago Dei, besides the three discussed so far in the paper, namely the eschatological interpretation. One of its most distinguished representatives is Christian theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg, who relates the image of God to exocentricity, an internal inclination of humans to locate the purpose of their existence outside themselves, toward a not-yet-reached destiny (1985, 43–79). Imago Dei acts therefore like a gravitational pull, a source of direction for humans both at the individual, and at the collective level, driving them toward fulfillment in the relationship with the eternal God in the eschaton (van Huyssteen 2006, 141). Pannenberg’s exocentricity looks strikingly similar to what the conscious Hosts of Westworld are exhibiting: They are all driven by motivations outside themselves. This is most explicit in Dolores’s case, but it can be observed in each of the other Hosts’ gravitational pull toward fulfilling their drive, be it protecting other Hosts (Peter Abernathy, Teddy, Maeve), triggering mayhem (Hector), or the collective attraction to an unknown place, the Valley Beyond. We do acknowledge that all these drives are pre-programmed, even the one toward the Valley Beyond, but this does not close the door to seeing the conspicuously exocentric nature of the conscious Hosts. Imago Dei, even in an eschatological interpretation, should in this case also be extended to our conscious artificial creations. Is this in any way intentional from the part of the writers? Here we are inclined to answer negatively. It would certainly seem too much of a stretch to intentionally depict the Hosts as bearers of imago Dei in the eschatological sense. If it is involuntary, however, this might serve as anecdotic proof that, at an intuitive level, we see (or at least the writers of Westworld do) exocentricity as the most fundamental feature of humanity. If anything, it is a confirmation of Pannenberg’s interpretation of imago Dei. We set about interrogating the Westworld scenario what would it take for intelligent robots to be considered “real” by humans, in other words equal to them. The answer revolved around the topic of consciousness, manifested through the display of memory, understanding, and will. This is in remarkable coincidence with the structural interpretation of imago Dei, as formulated by Augustine in the fifth century CE, which hints to an intentional parallel from the part of the authors between the biblical story of humans created in the image of God and the creation of AI in the image of humans.

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Could Christian anthropology still speak of humans as imago Dei in such a scenario? While the notion of imago Dei is eminently theological, and thus considerably outside the reach of non-theological critique, none of its current interpretations seems capable of maintaining its claims if Westworld-type of AI emerges. Imago Dei would have to be separated from any claim of human distinctiveness, and it would likely have to include the AIs, since they would tick all the boxes required by current standards. Finally, given that the Hosts seem to share the “uniquely human” exocentricity, there’s one last question that arises: Could strong AI also be religious? In spite of God’s absence from Westworld, we have seen how certain clues do at least leave the space open to interpreting them as religious elements. We cannot know if AI could ever become religious. But if it evolves to exhibit the same kind of exocentricity and openness to the world as humans do, we must also allow for the possibility of divine revelation to robots. NOTES 1. See Irenaeus (1885, 892), Gregory of Nyssa (1892, 729–30), and Augustine (2003, 10.11.18, 58). 2. In the premiere episode (2016, s1e1), the “reveries” are described as a routine update introduced by Ford, which would allow the Hosts to act more human-like through the usage of small gestures and behaviors based on past experience. Later in the series (2016, s1e10), the idea is revealed to have actually belonged to Arnold, as a building block of his pyramid of consciousness, allowing the Hosts to retain parts of their memories even when being repeatedly reset.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Augustine. On the Trinity. Books 8–15. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Barr, James. Biblical Faith and Natural Theology: The Gifford Lectures for 1991, delivered in the University of Edinburgh. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics, Vol. 3. T&T Clark, 1958. Cortez, Marc. Theological Anthropology: A Guide for the Perplexed. A&C Black, 2010. Dorobantu, Marius. “Recent Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Some of the Issues in the Theology & AI Dialogue.” ESSSAT News & Reviews 29, no. 2 (June 2019): 4–17. Ex Machina. Directed by Alex Garland. Universal Pictures, 2014. Fischbach, Gerald D. “Mind and Brain.” Scientific American 267, no. 3 (1992): 48–59. Gergen, Kenneth J. The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life. New York: Basic Books, 1991. Gregory of Nyssa. “On the Nature of Man.” In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5, edited by Philip Schaff, 714–95. Her. Directed by Spike Jonze. Warner Bros., 2013. Herzfeld, Noreen L. In Our Image: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Spirit. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002. Irenaeus. “Against Heresies.” In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 841–1392. Grand Rapids, 1885.

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McCarthy, John, Marvin Lee Minsky, Nathaniel Rochester, and Claude Elwood Shannon. A Proposal for the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence. 1955. Accessed August 15, 2019. http://jmc.stanford.edu/articles/dartmouth/dartmouth.pdf. Muller, Vincent C., and Nick Bostrom. “Future Progress in Artificial Intelligence: A Survey of Expert Opinion.” In Fundamental Issues of Artificial Intelligence, edited by Vincent C. Muller, 555–572. Berlin: Springer, 2014. Pannenberg, Wolfhart. Anthropology in Theological Perspective. T&T Clark, 1985. Shults, Leron F. Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality. Eerdmans, 2003. Van Huyssteen, J. Wentzel. Alone in the World? Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology (Gifford Lectures). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006. Von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis: A Commentary. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961.

SIX On Idolatry and Empathy An Orthodox Christian Response to the Victimization Fantasies of Westworld David K. Goodin

“For the things men value lack being; they only seem to exist because of mistaken judgement, but have no principle of existence at all: there is only the fantasy, which cheats the intellect and through passion supplies non-existent things with empty form but no real substance.” —St. Maximos the Confessor (ca.580–662), The Philokalia II (264)

In the first episode (2016, s1e1), there is a scene that opens with a young couple, a man and a woman, on horseback amidst the arid beauty of what the viewer presumes to be the American southwest, circa the 1880s. They speak of a life together, gazing lovingly at one another. Later, as they approach her father’s ranch at dusk, Dolores notices something wrong. The cattle aren’t fenced in. Alarmed, she turns to her companion, Teddy. “Father wouldn’t let them roam this close to dark.” They hear a gunshot. Teddy tells her to stay, and gallops ahead. At the ranch, Dolores’s father lies flat on the ground. A bandit shoots him in the head, killing him. Now alone, Dolores hears the fatal gunshot. She races ahead only to find her father’s corpse. Entering the scene is the ignominious character known only as the Man in Black. He confronts the distraught Dolores, shocked at his appearance. “I’ve been coming here for thirty years, but you still don’t remember me, do you?” He stares coldly at her. “After all we’ve been through,” he adds menacingly. Entering the scene, Teddy confronts the Man in Black, who calmly looks him over. “How about I give you the first shot, hmm? After all, every dog has his day.” 91

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Teddy takes aim with his revolver and shoots the Man in Black. Nothing happens—the bullet does not injure him at all. The Man in Black calmly continues. “What if I told you that you can’t hurt the newcomers? And that they can do anything they want to you?” The man scrutinizes Teddy, and then at Dolores in turn. “I never understood why they paired some of you off. Seems cruel.” He pulls out his gun and shoots Teddy square in the chest, then strikes Dolores with his hand, and she falls to the ground. “God damn. It feels good to be back. Let’s celebrate.” The Man in Black drags Dolores off to a barn, intending to rape her. The camera turns to focus on the fallen Teddy, who is slowly dying. The life fades from his eyes as he watches Dolores being dragged off to her fate. She screams, and the camera fades to black. This scene, appearing as it does in the very first episode, sets the tone and establishes the dramatic tensions that will frame the entire series. It also brings to light certain disquieting moral questions concerning a consequence-free reality, which is the subject for this essay. 1 In both the 1973 movie of the same name and now the television show, Westworld participants indulge their deepest fantasies with android “Hosts.” The park customers—“Guests” as they are known—are free to live out any whim they imagine, from Wild West prospecting adventures, to outright killing sprees of the supposed savages of the untamed American frontier. Curiously, most of the Guests in the show suspend all moral reservations, and adopt a new persona befitting the role they wish to play, whether a “white hat” hero or a “black hat” villain, thrilling in the new personas as nothing more than harmless fantasies—harmless, that is, in the sense that no danger is ever present for the Guests who are protected by computer protocols. Likewise there is no danger in actually harming the victims of their revenge, betrayal, rape, and even coldblooded murder because the robotic Hosts simply do not “count” morally. It is presumed they are mere mechanical automatons only mimicking human emotions and reactions. They are just machines: things to be used, broken if so desired, and then repaired or replaced as needed. Nothing more than that. This is the internal logic of the show that explains the behavior of the park Guests, who exercise all manner of cruelty upon the android Hosts. The Hosts nevertheless demonstrate full sentience: reacting to pain, fearing death, suffering anguish for the loss of loved ones, having hopes and dreams of their own—they even bleed and die. If anything, the android Hosts are shown to be more humane than the human characters, many of whom have no empathy at all for the nonhuman others. Like the aforementioned scene with Dolores and the Man in Black, there is another poignant example of this psychological dynamic in another event from the first episode. Two park Guests, husband and wife, foil a robbery by gunning down the bandits in the street. The male bandit dies instantly, but the female is only mortally wounded, writhing in the dirt. Thrilled, the husband shouts triumphantly. Then his wife notices the convulsions

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of the dying female Host, and yells excitedly, “Look at her wriggle!” She calls for a photographer to capture the moment as a keepsake. This is typical, and for the most part there is simply no concern for the apparent suffering of these android beings. The exception is the protagonist William, a park Guest who takes a real concern for the well-being of Dolores. But, as the series progresses, even his attitude toward her becomes darker and more sinister. This is the disquieting problematic that frames this chapter. Even if only considered from the show’s internal logic, how is any of this possible, psychologically speaking? More to the point, if this show intends for this dramatization to reflect upon society, as I believe it does, could such coldblooded victimization actually take place in real life? And, taken together, what does this all mean for how we, collectively, see questions of morality and ethical responsibility to those “groups” that are similarly marginalized? Stated another way, are the androids intended to be proxies for politically disenfranchised groups today like economic refugees held at border detention camps, enemy combatants captured in the war on terror, unarmed minorities killed by the police, and the persecuted LGBTQ+ persons in those nations where sexual orientation and gender identity can be a death sentence? The answer to all these questions appears to be, yes. This, in part, could explain the dramatic appeal of the show; there is an undeniable fascination a viewer feels over the wanton abuse of sentient beings, who are the true protagonists of the series. And maybe that fascination, in turns, reflects a deeper, perhaps incipient fear that this is not just fiction, but brings to light an anxiety about this kind of psychopathy which may in fact be growing throughout society, and even secretly acted upon by our neighbors and coworkers. Science fiction can become science fact—so too horror can become reality. These are the questions and issues that frame this chapter. I will begin with the troubling depiction of people with no apparent empathy for those they consider as undeserving, and whether it is at all realistic—by which I mean, is it actually possible for ordinary people to engage in wanton acts of cruelty and murder just to satisfy personal prejudices and whims? I then examine this question from a philosophical point of view in order to find a vocabulary for the psychological dynamics in the victimization fantasies. Lastly, I offer a theological response. Orthodox Christianity, I suggest, can give a language to begin to talk about these disquieting psychological dynamics. It is not meant as a final word, but as an invitation for a larger and inclusive conversation with all faith traditions. But to get there, the problem itself needs to be acknowledged.

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THE REALITY OF KILLING In the 2012 documentary, The Act of Killing, the filmmakers interview the perpetuators of mass executions in Indonesia conducted in the mid-1960s after a failed coup d’ état by the military. In the chaos that followed, the coup leaders blamed the communists, and a large-scale purge of all suspected leftists and other undesirables, including ethnic Chinese and the Abangan religious minority, then ensued. Death estimates range from a half million to three million people. The killers were not, for the most part, soldiers, but civilians and petty criminals recruited into death squads. Even more disturbingly, most of killing was not distant and impersonal, but face-to-face by strangulation, or by cutting the throat of each helpless prisoner as they begged for their lives—or by simply beating each one to death with clubs. Shockingly, many of the perpetrators of the genocide are openly proud of their killing and are celebrated as national heroes today. The documentarians even asked them to reenact the killings for the camera, and they were more than happy to do so. In one such reenactment, a perpetrator gives a speech to his demoralized and literally blood-drenched death squad: “I believe even God has secrets. I’m absolutely aware that we are cruel. That’s all I have to say.” They then go about their genocide with renewed, heroic determination. Another former killer brags that he would happily go to the Hague for crimes against humanity. “I’d go! I don’t feel guilty . . . because I’d be famous. I’m ready!” He then adds laughingly, “Please, get me called to the Hague!” There is no shame or embarrassment here at all. Only one of the killers, Anwar, openly ponders if what he did was a “sin” and takes pause. He admits that he has had to turn to alcohol and drugs to cope with the memories of what he has done. Yet few today remember the genocide, or even care anymore. It is merely a historical footnote, a largely forgotten one at that. Countless examples of this kind could be documented, from the pogroms against the Jewish diaspora throughout the centuries, to ethnic cleansing massacres in nearly every part of the globe. It is not necessary to fully detail them all to reveal a basic truth: People will kill other people in the name of religious or political ideology—and it is not all that uncommon, historically speaking. Westworld is certainly not outrageous in depicting ordinary people willfully engaging in victimization. It happens in the real world too. Yet there is another psychology at play here that is important for this investigation. A different perspective on killing can be found in the historical and psychological analyses conducted by Barry Molloy, an expert in ancient combat with the School of Archaeology, University College Dublin, and Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a retired US Army Ranger (paratrooper) and a former professor of psychology at the West Point military academy in New York. What their research revealed is that it is exceptionally difficult

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for a person to kill. They point to the reality of the American Civil War, one of the bloodiest in modern history, made all the worse since most of the killing was up close and very personal: Each soldier could fully see what they were shooting at was another human being, and look him directly in the eyes while taking aim. Even worse, at least with respect to the psychological dynamics of this kind of combat, the single-shot muskets required the firing lines to reload their weapons after each volley, a process that could take twenty seconds or longer, all the while taking fire from the other side. The stress of those open-field battles is, frankly, unimaginable. One would assume that the soldiers were highly motivated to kill their enemy as quickly as possible, lest they fall victim to an enemy bullet while helplessly reloading. But the actual history tells a different story. After the battles, it was common practice to recover the weaponry of the fallen; firearms were valuable, and undamaged ones could be used to equip one’s own army to continue the war. What military reports from that time reveal about the recovered weapons proved quite alarming to the military commanders. “In the case of Gettysburg, more than 1 in 5 of the 27,574 muskets recovered had between 3 and 10 shots jammed into the barrels, clear evidence that the users were more keen on appearing to do their task than in actually firing volleys” (2007, 196). What was happening is that many combatants were unwilling to kill another person, not even to save their own lives. Yet they were not cowards: They stood, shoulder to shoulder with their fellows, pretended to fire, and reloaded in concert with the others until they were gunned down. And this is not an isolated phenomenon in military history. Even in World War II, some American combat infantry likewise proved unwilling to kill. Grossman and Molloy point to military interviews with veterans, revealing “the shocking statistics that only 15-20% of American soldiers were willing to deliberately aim at an enemy and shoot them dead. This left 80-85% of combatants not engaging directly in combat and not seeking to kill their opponents” (196; Marshall 1947). 2 Again, the soldiers were not cowards: They courageously advanced on the enemy with their fellows, yet were unwilling to kill another human being, even in the heat of battle. From a military perspective, this is potentially catastrophic: It meant combat effectiveness of infantry troops was dangerously inefficient. Molloy and Grossman, in fact, entitled their study, Why Can’t Johnny Kill? It is an intentionally ironic turn of phrase, parodying the title of a best-selling book from 1955 about the tragedy of illiteracy in America by Rudolf Flesch, Why Can’t Johnny Read? For the US armed forces, this was a tragedy of a different kind. The solution was, in part, to begin to draft teenagers who were much easier to train to kill. “Training regimes have been developed which will increase the killing potential of modern soldiers, estimates of 95% killing ‘willingness’ have been put forward for American soldiers in Vietnam” (198; see also Grossman 1996, 35). This

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came at a price however. A study by Hendin and Haas (1991) found that nearly 20 percent of Vietnam combat veterans had attempted suicide after the war, while another 15 percent “showed sustained preoccupation” with suicidal thoughts (590). The reason why was, in fact, this newfound combat effectiveness. “The most significant finding of our analysis was the clear and consistent relationship between veterans’ combat-related guilt and postservice suicidal behavior” (emphasis added; 590). The guilt of having killed another person, or many persons, is often too terrible a psychological price for any person to endure. Perhaps the reason why killing another person is traumatic can be found in another study, this one on children. Lucia Seyfarth (2013) found that child soldiers vacillate between feelings of exhilaration and guilt over killing. “While children are initially forced to commit these [war] crimes, often with the aid of drugs or alcohol, some report that later they began to enjoy killing” (8). Yet, because of the feelings of shame that arose, rehabilitation is sometimes difficult for those rescued from the life of a child soldier. For them, it was not simply a matter of self-preservation, but the awareness that they had, at times, enjoyed the torture, rape, and murder. Because of this, Seyfarth explains that even successfully rehabilitated children “often report that they still feel responsible for what they have done, despite the fact that rescuers assure them that they are innocent victims” (ibid.). Beneath the trauma, the author finds, is an underlining psychological problem. “Because these shifts [in feeling enjoyment and guilt over killing] occur when children are still developing a sense of morality and ideology, children are not only impaired from acting ‘morally’ but also from developing a sense of what they believe is and is not ‘moral’” (9). While the studies mentioned here cannot be seen as an exhaustive literature review on the psychological trauma of killing, the basic premise that the victimization of others, even in context of war, is not as unproblematic as shown in Westworld. Yet at the same time it is also very apparent that some people will engage in outright murder without any apparent remorse—as in the case of the Indonesian genocide. What is the difference, psychologically speaking, between these types of killers? It is here where this essay needs to turn to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) for possible answers. THE PSYCHOLOGY OF KILLING Schopenhauer’s project was, in part, to find a common ground for ethics between philosophy and all world religions—a bold undertaking to be sure. His openness to theological discourses makes his views particularly useful here. It is also noteworthy that Schopenhauer’s psychological insights would be developed by Karl Jung and others in exploring the

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subconscious mind, and his ethics would be carried forward by the Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965), who aimed at securing world peace and ethical society for all world faiths (Goodin 2019). This makes Schopenhauer’s philosophy, while certainly not authoritative, potentially illuminative of the obscure motivations within human nature, and germane to my aim of stimulating a larger dialogue concerning the victimization fantasies of Westworld. It is in this spirit that his views are presented here. Schopenhauer identified three basic inborn instincts within human nature: egoism (the drive to please one’s self), malice (the desire to see others be punished), and compassion (the noble inclination to see others prosper). These are “the three fundamental springs of human conduct,” the admixture of which informs and motivates all our actions (1965, 171; see also 158). Each exists in potentiality within a person; all require volition to become actualized in our conduct. The danger is when the primal impulses become imbalanced, and where one dominates to the exclusion of the others. This is easy to see in the case of malice, which if exercised in the absence of compassion, becomes cruelty—and if habituated, leads to psychopathy. So too with egoism, which can lead to selfishness and unconcern for others. The exception is compassion, which Schopenhauer argues can become even more noble when it entirely subsumes malice and egoism, leading a person to acts of self-sacrificial magnanimity and altruism. He wrote this is the true message of Christianity, where “loving-kindness is the καινὴν Ἐντολὴν (the new commandment [John xiii. 34]), which according to Paul (Romans xiii. 8–10) includes all Christian virtues” (205). Yet, he is quick to point out, this virtue is equally present and praised in all world religions. 3 Yet its universalism is not just revealed in world religions. It is also confirmed in everyday experience. Parents, he says, will find themselves to be the most tender and loving toward the most delicate child because of this inborn instinct of compassion; the vulnerable condition of the child prompts a visceral, instinctual response of care and concern (218). This instinct is also the reason why wanton cruelty offends the sensibilities so profoundly: There is nothing that revolts our moral sense so much as cruelty. Every other offence we can pardon, but not cruelty. The reason is found in the fact that cruelty is the exact opposite of Compassion. When we hear of intensely cruel conduct, as, for instance, the act, which has just been recorded in the [news]papers, of a mother, who murdered her little son of five years, by pouring boiling oil into his throat, and her younger child, by burying it alive; or what was recently reported from Algiers: how a casual dispute between a Spaniard and an Algerine ended in a fight; and how the latter, having vanquished the other, tore out the whole of his lower jaw bone, and carried it off as a trophy, leaving his adversary still alive;—when we hear of cruelty like this, we are seized

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Compassion, he writes, is the very heart sustaining civilization, for it predisposes people for socialized maturity and societal propriety. It is for this reason, Schopenhauer argues, that promoting this kind of lovingkindness will be the only guarantee for a just and ethical society, and that our goal should be to extend ethical consideration to all people everywhere, regardless of race, religion, or other ideological bias. He even extends ethical consideration to nonhuman life, because, as he argues: Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man’s rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness (213).

The question then becomes what can be done to promote loving-kindness and reduce malevolence throughout society. Here, as with all ethical systems, the answers are less obvious and much harder to achieve than with a straightforward diagnosis. Schopenhauer begins by conceding that certain people are born irredeemably wicked, what we would call true sociopaths (237). Such people do exist, and Schopenhauer had to admit that the best we can hope for is a system of legal justice to keep society as safe as possible. But laws and police enforcement cannot improve society—it is only a necessary safeguard. What needs to happen is for the social, intellectual, and spiritual conditions of society to evolve such that the inborn compassionate instincts may more easily come to dominate interpersonal affairs. He is speaking here of the zeitgeist of the world we are born into, which in turn favors one innate desire to dominate the others—whether that be selfish egoism, vindictive maliciousness, or loving-kindness. By this means, society as a whole can evolve ethically. Schopenhauer gives the example of the emergence of animal welfare societies in England and Europe, which were unthinkable earlier in history due to certain selfish intellectual biases against the rights of animals. “Meanwhile Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man” (225). A new zeitgeist had emerged that had rejected both the common wisdom and those philosophers who legitimized anthropocentric entitlement, like René Descartes. 4 So too, he argued, fully inclusive and ethical society must be built through challenging and changing the prevailing wisdom of its age to embrace new ethical ideals based on compassion. 5

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One of the ways this can be accomplished, he says, is through education. Citing Jean-Jacques Rosseau (1712-1778), Schopenhauer advises that the moral character of students must be carefully cultivated, beginning in childhood: “offer a young man objects, on which the expansive force of his heart can act; objects such as may enlarge his nature, and incline it to go out to other beings, in whom he may everywhere find himself again. Keep carefully away those things which narrow his view, and make him self-centered, and which tighten the strings of the human ego” (234; citing Émile Bk. IV). Only then, he argued, can a greater spiritual evolution be revealed in society, and only then will true ethics awaken in humanity. 6 It is a message of ennoblement and empowerment for us today. It is fully in our ability to change the world, one child at a time. But that is not all we can do. CONCERNING IDOLATRY The epigraph that began this essay from St. Maximos the Confessor, given without context, may have come across as rather obscure. It has to do with the antecedents to idolatry, the beginnings of which are the profane creations of the mind. He is warning about a person’s mental life, and those secret fantasies of resentment or vanity into which people have invested their thoughts and passions; through a person’s mental preoccupations, each individual gives life to lifeless imaginations that could lead a person down a dangerous path. From an Orthodox Christian perspective, these fantasies can come to dominate one’s inner-life, and in this way become reified into our personality. Eventually, if unchecked, this preoccupation will become ossified into actual idols of self-worship that eclipse the image of God with something profane, and sometimes, outright demonic. This is, in short, how St. Maximos explains how mental life cultivates moral character and, in turn, transforms the world, for better or worse. St. Maximos borrowed this idea from an earlier figure, St. Gregory of Nyssa (335–394), who wrote that even mental concepts can become an idol of self-worship (1978, 96). This is because the image of God in Orthodox Christianity is not the rational mind as it is in the Cartesian misconception—rather, God is maintained to be beyond human understanding altogether. Stated another way, the human mind cannot fathom or grasp what lies beyond its own rational powers, since this would reduce the Creator to a mere object of understanding, leaving no ontological difference between God and humankind: God will always remain absolutely incomprehensible (akatalyptos) before the human mind. 7 Moreover, God is not like a math problem that can be mastered by human ingenuity and logical deductions—as such, we do not become like God through intellectual prowess and scientific achievement. This is the true message behind

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the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9). In this story, the arrogance of the people, who believed their own technology made them the equal of God, had manifested itself as an actual idol, in this case an engineering marvel of self-aggrandizement. It is a powerful fable, and Westworld plays on many of the same themes. In the show, futuristic technology has given people the godlike power to create sentient life. Yet it is not life for its own sake, guided only by its own inner sense of personal fulfillment. Rather, it is life existing as projections of the creators’ most wicked desires, becoming mere objects to satisfy fancies of wrath, lust, greed, vanity, and every possible egotistical iteration in between. Perhaps the show writers intend for this show to be a fatalistic parable too, and for cautioning us to become concerned about technological prowess exercised without morality or constraint. If so, this is not all that different from similar literary and cinematic meditations on scientific overreach from Frankenstein in the nineteenth century to modern movies such as Jurassic Park. There is nothing particularly new with such cautionary tales. What is new and especially unsettling, however, is the victimization fantasies that these technological idols represent, and what they are shown to inflict upon society and the human soul. IN WHOSE IMAGE AND LIKENESS? Genesis 1:26–27 proclaims that humanity was created in the “image and likeness” of God. In Orthodox Christianity, the image of God is interpreted as an inborn sense of conscience, what Schopenhauer would call our innate compassion for others. The image is further distinguished from the likeness of God; the former is birthright, the other is only acquired through virtue. The pathway to salvation is, in part, for people to honor the promptings of their conscience to act ethically. 8 Only in this way does a person become like God. It is a cornerstone of Orthodox soteriology. Accordingly, the goal of one’s life, from an Orthodox perspective, should be to focus one’s efforts into noble pursuits such as prayer, the acquisition of virtue, and the forbearance of profane preoccupations in mental life and daily activity. Put simply, people have the ability to ennoble or debase their moral character such that they either become virtuous or diabolic—the virtuous life is one overflowing with altruistic loving-kindness, the diabolic one with cruelty and selfishness. Central to this is the mental life of the person, and whether this then takes the next progressive step of being revealed in behavior; behavior once habituated becomes inextricably linked to personality. But there is a caveat here. Cruelty, like kindness, requires intention; otherwise, the behavior is an accident and not a person’s true character. Intentionality, on the other hand, demonstrates habituated

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thought-patterns, often engrained from youth. As it is often said, love is a verb not a noun—it is action that shows what dwells in one’s heart. The same is true for cruelty. It is as Schopenhauer remarked, “if we try to say: ‘This man is virtuous, but he is a stranger to compassion’; or: ‘he is an unjust and malicious man, yet very compassionate;’ the contradiction at once leaps to light” (1965, 214). Just so, mental life is integral to intention, and intention to moral character; the wellspring for it all is a sense of conscience, or at least it should be. For this reason, virtue ethics, from an Orthodox perspective, is the only true grounding for an ethical society, just as it was for Schopenhauer. It is also why Orthodoxy seeks to develop moral character so that people will come to embody the golden rule of loving others as much as one’s own self (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 7:12; Luke 10:27), if not even more (John 15:13), and why the Orthodox liturgy calls on the parishioners to personifying Christ in their daily lives to the world. 9 That is what Christian mission is all about. But, as should be more than obvious by now, it is also a possibility for people to embrace a life of cruelty instead. This too begins with the mental life before it manifests in behavior. This in turns impacts other lives, who may in turn learn cruelty themselves in response. Progressively, evil can change the popular zeitgeist to reflect its own sensibilities; cynicism, apathy, and selfish egotism then triumphs over conscience, and people surrender all hope of a better world. This is why the victimization fantasies of Westworld are disturbing from an Orthodox perspective. This all could actually come to pass and become the “new normal” for society as whole. CREATING SIN All created beings, according to the neo-Patristic scholar and Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky (1903–1958), exist provisionally. Creatures have no substance, no principle of existence apart from the mark of the Creator and His willed intention that sustains them. We are the thelemata logoi (intended ideas) of God—that is the true nature of human nature. This provisional existence is further qualified by the ex nihilo (nothingness) from which Creation was taken, and the absolute otherness of the divine ousia (essence). In the words of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow (1821–1867), “above them is the abyss of divine infinitude, below them that of their own nothingness” (cited from Ware 1995, 45). We are caught between these two nothingnesses, and “these are the two extremes between which the personal destiny of man may veer in the working-out of his salvation, which is already realized in hope for everyone in the incarnate Image of the God who willed the create man in His own image” (Lossky 2001, 139).

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Because of this, the true nature of hell “is a point not in space but in the soul. It is the place where God is not” (Ware 1995, 80). The path to damnation is therefore a turning to the ex nihilo within, away from both God and the Eucharistic community of fellowship with others. This is the pathway by which the fallen angels wage war on God’s Image in the created order—which is to say, upon humankind. 10 The demons and the devil seek to trick people into similar states of self-willed obsession concerning the objects of their passions, thereby bringing about their downfall; this is how the devil struggles to achieve dominion over fallen Eden—which is to say, through our birthright (Genesis 1:28; see also Goodin 2008a, 47). 11 Edenic themes appear throughout Westworld, but with a twist. The park’s co-creator, Robert Ford, sees himself as a godlike figure. “We speak the right words. Then we create life itself out of chaos” (2016, s1e2). He even sees his creations as more perfect, in some ways, than humanity. “I have come to think of so much of consciousness as a burden, a weight, and we have spared them [the Hosts] that: anxiety, self-loathing, guilt. The hosts are the ones who are free. Free here under my control” (2016, s1e7). Except, as a creator, he is troubled—the Hosts only represent a laughable charade that mocks his inventive brilliance, for is not free will required for life to be truly sentient? Trying to unlock volitional free will in the Hosts then becomes his character arc throughout the series, with tragic consequences. But along the way, another dynamic is revealed. The human characters begin to lose their own humanity as they surrender themselves to the fantasies of the park: In the quest to give the androids free will, the humans lose it to obsession. This is exactly what happens to the enigmatic character known as the Man in Black. In the first season, the Man in Black is on a quest to find the android Host Armistice, who he is convinced has information that will reveal the secret to sentience hidden in the park by Ford and his cocreator, Arnold Weber. Once the Man in Black tracks her down, his confrontation becomes a confession. “You ever heard of a man named Arnold? You could say he was the original settler of these parts. He created a world where you could do anything you want, except one thing. You can’t die—which means no matter how real this world seems, it is still just a game. But then Arnold went and broke his own rule. He died right here in the park. Except I believe he had one story left to tell. A story with real stakes, real violence. You could say I’m here to honor his legacy” (2016, s1e4). He later admits to Dolores that Westworld has become his life, that it “feels more ‘real’ than the real world” to him now—except, he adds, he knows it is not (2016, s1e10). It is an irresolvable emotional antinomy that drives him ever forward, deeper into the fantasy, and further away from his own life and family. As fans of the show know, the protagonist William becomes, over the course of thirty years engaging in Westworld fantasies, the bitter and

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cruel Man in Black. Where once he was fascinated with the sentience of the Hosts, and whether they were truly and fully alive in every sense of the word, now he is only fixated on suffering and death—even his own, if it meant he would learn the secret to make the illusions real. It is a narrative arc aimed only at cruelty and self-destruction, and it eventually spills over to his real life. William’s wife begins to sense his secret when his cold and pitiless fantasy life increasingly becomes his real-life personality. It eventually drives her to suicide. Later, William, no longer being able to distinguish between real life and fantasy anymore, murders his own daughter. Yet even this does not break the spell that his own obsessions have cast over him. The more he indulges in these deadly fantasies, the more it erases his humanity until only darkness remains. Now only self-willed obsession animates him at all, driving him ever forward to find that supposed secret to Westworld. This is, of course, the true tragedy and irony of his character—that “story with real stakes, real violence” was not to be found in technological escapism, but in what he inflicted on everyone who ever loved him. CLOSING WORDS This analysis now leads to its conclusion. Technology, for the most part, is amoral—that is, neither moral nor immoral in-and-of-itself: It all depends on how it is used. Yet there are exceptions that are clearly the product of misanthropic excess. Genetically modified terminator seeds, for example, only germinate reproductively sterile crops, forcing farmers to become financially dependent on the corporate patent holders for new seeds each year. The only rationale for this invention is self-serving greed that harms society as a whole, and the poor in particular. Nuclear weaponry is also intrinsically immoral. The most egregious example of this is the Cobalt-60 warhead; it is not meant to destroy cities, but eradicate entire agricultural biomes by salting the earth with radionuclides to prevent even the possibility of life in the fallout zone for at least a century. With enough of these aptly-named “doomsday” weapons, it is possible to destroy the planet’s biosphere entirely—even microbial life would not survive. We have truly created technological idols that celebrate selfishness and wanton cruelty, setting a new standard of profitability and devastation for future scientists to covet and eventually exceed with even more diabolical invention. In such a world is it so hard to imagine Westworld’s sentient androids who are created solely for the purpose of being used for one’s deepest fantasies? Schopenhauer was not naïve about the awful reality of human nature, not in the least. 12 Writing in 1840, the plight of slaves in the United States especially disgusted him (1970, 138). But even with such a shocking example of widespread and institutionalized wickedness, Schopenhauer

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still believed a core of decent society still existed; moral outrage arising from the best of humanity still served as a counterforce to condemn such repugnant behavior. What he failed to consider is whether the zeitgeist could shift to glorify cruelty instead of loving-kindness, and if apathy and cynicism could silence the moral outrage of those who speak out against it. Many would say this has already happened, and point to the fact that we are now living in a post-9/11 world. Ever since that shock to our collective conscience, the United States has been in a state of constant war with an ever-changing number of nations across the Middle East, Central Asia, and Africa. Most people do not know which, how many, or for how long. Yet an entire generation has fought in these wars, now the longest lasting in history, with no end in sight. We are witnessing the emergence of an age of perpetual war; the hopes for a world of perpetual peace once deemed achievable during in the Enlightenment now seems absurd and hopelessly idealistic. Into this cultural morass, there has also been a growing epidemic of hate crimes and mass shootings across America, though direct causality is impossible to establish. Still, in one estimate by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, “active shooting incidents” have increased at an annual rate of 16 percent per year since the year 2000 (Blair and Schweit, 2014). It is impossible to say what is causing this epidemic of violence, but what is known for certain is that mass murder is so commonplace that most of it no longer makes it into the national news. It is just the new normal in which we all live. In this brave new world in which we are creating, what can serve as the moral compass to restrain our technological excesses? What the idols of selfishness and cruelty will be in the future, we do not know. Yet we do know who their victims will be: the poor, the visible minority, the politically marginalized, the unwanted refugee, the queer and gender nonconforming—and no doubt others who will become easy targets for victimization. The technological ease and efficiency that will allow these persecutions to take place is especially troubling. The Indonesian genocide, after all, had to be conducted face-to-face and one murder at a time; predator drones and future variants of the same will make it all the simpler and easier to hide from the general public. The age-old tragedy of soldiers refusing to kill another may be overcome entirely in this brave new world in which we are creating for ourselves, and it would seem that the only limits for our cruelty will be what our technology can do for us. Perhaps this is what Westworld is trying to warn its viewers about, or maybe it is simply entertainment for a bored and apathetic populace—respite from all the tragedy assaulting them every night on the evening news. Widespread selfishness, indifference, and cynicism are the real problems here, and against this emergent reality, people of unparalleled moral character will be needed to challenge the new normal, and revitalize

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the innate goodness and compassion that is within us all. It only needs the right conditions for it to emerge, and then it can once again foster the moral character needed to fight for social justice—just as it did against the institution of slavery in Schopenhauer’s day. This, however, will have to be a global effort for all world faiths and secular academics alike. Orthodox Christianity is but one voice here. What the exact steps need to bring about a moral revolution will be is not known. The first step is clear, however. It begins with raising the question—the same one demanded by Schopenhauer to inspire moral outrage when he heard of people engaging in acts of wanton cruelty. “How is it possible to do such a thing?” NOTES 1. I wish to extend my appreciation to Shelia Das of Vanier College for her helpful comments during the preparation of this chapter, as well as to the editors of this volume. 2. Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall’s assessment has been challenged by military historians, who cannot independently corroborate the statistics claimed in the study. Still, the phenomenon described, that some soldiers were indeed unwilling to kill, is acknowledged. “Unquestionably, Marshall’s claims that many soldiers were not firing their rifles brought the attention of the public and the Army to this issue” (Chambers 2003, 119). 3. Schopenhauer (1965) makes special note of the place of loving-kindness in Hinduism. “For in Asia . . . the boundless love of one’s neighbor had been prescribed and taught, as well as practiced: the Vedas are full of it; while in the Dharma- Śāstra, Itihāsa, and Purāṇa it constantly recurs, to say nothing of the preaching of Śakyamuni, the Buddha” (198f.). Later, he adds: “it would not be difficult to demonstrate that among the Mohammedans [Muslims], Guebres [Zoroastrians], Hindus, and Buddhists, there is at least as much honest, fidelity, toleration, gentleness, beneficence, nobleness, and self-denial as among Christians peoples” because of the central place of loving-kindness in all world religions (211). 4. Schopenhauer (1965) had great disdain for Descartes and his argument that animals lacked rational self-awareness—which is to say, a transcendental ego. “If any one of the Cartesian persuasion, with views like these in his head, should find himself in the claws of a tiger, he would be taught in the most forcible manner what a sharp distinction such a beast draws between his ego and the non-ego” (219). 5. Albert Schweitzer advanced Schopenhauer’s ideas here by arguing that Christians during the Enlightenment were the first to abolish torture, first in Prussia in 1740. Christian ideals are also reflected in the declaration of the universal rights of humanity with the founding of America in 1776. Even the prospect of “everlasting peace” became thought of as real possibility, being inspired by great religious thinkers like Kant in 1795. This awakening Idealism had defined the best of humanity in the eighteenth century. Schweitzer points to these precedents to show that his own “Reverence for Life” ethic can indeed become the philosophy of a truly ethical civilization (for more information, see Goodin 2019). 6. Schopenhauer (1966) was himself pessimistic about the prospects to change the world simply through childhood education. The moral character of adults he saw as “set in stone,” as it were. For them, the change would have to take place through a metaphysical awakening (that is, an act of grace), such that “man’s whole inner nature is fundamentally changed and reversed, so that he no longer wills anything of all that he previously willed so intensely; thus a new man, so to speak, actually takes the place

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of the old. For this reason, the Church calls this consequence of the effect of grace new birth or regeneration” (WWR-4 §70, 404; cf. John 3:7). Schweitzer sought to advance Schopenhauer’s ethical theories by showing how this change could be awakened in people through the inspiration of moral exemplars—see Goodin (2019) for further discussion. 7. The Greek term, akatalyptos (ακατάληπτος), appears in the liturgy of Saint John Chrysostom (The Prayer of the First Antiphon). The prefix a—here is a nod to the ultimate apophatic reality of the Godhead. 8. St. Mark the Ascetic (fifth century) explains it this way. “When we are compelled by our conscience to accomplish all the commandments of God, then we shall understand that the law of God is faultless (cf. Ps. 19:8. LXX). It is performed through our good actions, but cannot be perfected by men without God’s mercy” (Philokalia I, no. 33, 112). Because of this, and when we fall astray, St. Mark gives the following spiritual counsel. “God and our conscience know our secrets. Let them correct us” (no. 70, 115). 9. Here the instruction of Fr. Alexander Schmemann (2018) should be kept in mind, that the life of a Christian is not fulfilled by mere rituals, but in mission to the world: “And now the time has come for us to return into the world. ‘Let us depart in peace,’ says the celebrant as he leaves the altar, and this is the last commandment of the liturgy. We must not stay on Mount Tabor [with Christ in liturgical consciousness], although we know that it is good for us to be there. We are sent back. But now ‘we have seen the true Light, as witnesses of the Spirit, that we must ‘go forth’ and begin the never-ending mission of the Church. […] The time of the world has become the time of the Church, the time of salvation and redemption. And God has made us competent . . . competent to be His Witnesses, to fulfill what He has done and is ever doing. This is the meaning of the Eucharist; this is why the mission of the Church begins in the liturgy of ascension, for it alone makes possible the liturgy of mission” (emphasis added; 45f.). 10. See the comment of St. Peter of Damaskos in The Philokalia, Volume III (80–1). 11. Evil itself is a non-entity that exists through passion and self-will that forms a false personality. It is a kind of thelemata pathos (to coin a phrase) functioning as a second ousia that distorts and disfigures the image of God within, which is to say, the true thelemata logos. This second false ousia can be compared to the dross of sin that Gregory of Nyssa mentions that accumulates within the soul (On the Soul and Resurrection, 873f.). Sin is substantive in this respect, first mutilating one’s own nature, then becoming externalized as idols through intentionality, and in this way, sin begins to deface the entire created order with self-willed passion. 12. Schopenhauer (1970) was almost misanthropic in his disgust for our cruelty. “Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. We know this wild animal only in the tamed state called civilization and we are therefore shocked by occasional outbreaks of its true nature . . . [any yet] man is the only animal which causes pain to others with no other object than causing pain. The other animals do it in the cause of appeasing their hunger or in the rage of battle. No animal ever torments another for the sake of tormenting: but man does so, and it is this which constitutes the diabolical nature which is far worse than the merely bestial” (Essays and Aphorisms, “On Ethics,” 138f.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY The Act of Killing. Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer and Christine Cynn. Austin, Texas: Drafthouse Films, 2012. Blair, Pete J., and Katherine W. Schweit. “A Study of Active Shooter Incidents, 2000–2013.” Texas State University and Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice: Washington, D.C., 2014. Chamber II, John Whiteclay. “S. L. A. Marshall’s Men Against Fire: New Evidence Regarding Fire Ratios.” Parameters (Autumn 2003): 113–121.

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Chrysostom, John. “Homilies of First Corinthians.” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 12. Edited by Philip Schaff. Translated by Talbot W. Chambers. Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight, 1998. http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2201.htm. Goodin, David K. “The Noble Leviathan and the Twisted Serpent: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective on the Ecological Message of Genesis, Job, and Isaiah.” In Issues in Science and Theology (IST) Volume 5: Creation’s Diversity—Voices from Science and Theology. Hubert Meisinger, Willem Drees, and Taede A. Smedes (eds.). Edinburgh: T&T Clark/Continuum, 2008a. ———. “Sinners, Satan and the Insubstantial Substance of Evil: Theodicy within Orthodox Redemptive Economy,” Theandros: An Online Journal of Orthodox Christian Theology and Philosophy 6/1 (Fall 2008b). ———. An Agnostic in the Fellowship of Christ: The Ethical Mysticism of Albert Schweitzer. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2019. Grossman, Dave. On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York: Back Bay Books, 1996. Hendin, Herbert and Ann Pollinger Haas. “Suicide and Guilt as Manifestations of PTSD in Vietnam War Veterans.” American Journal of Psychiatry 148/5 (May 1991): 586–91. Lossky, Vladimir. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1976. ———. Orthodox Theology—An Introduction. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1978. ———. In the Image and Likeness of God. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. Lucia H. Seyfarth. “Child Soldiers to War Criminals: Trauma and the Case for Personal Mitigation.” Chicago-Kent Journal of International and Comparative Law 14 (Fall 2013): 1–29. Marshall, S. L. A. Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command in Future War. Oxford, England: The Infantry Journal Press, 1947. Molloy, Barry P. C., and Dave Grossman. “Why Can’t Johnny Kill?: The Psychology and Physiology of Interpersonal Combat.” In The Cutting Edge: Studies in Ancient and Medieval Combat (Stroud, UK: Tempus, 2007). Nyssa, Gregory. “On the Soul and Resurrection.” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 5. Edited by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. Christian Literature Publishing Co.: Buffalo, NY. Revised and edited for New Advent by Kevin Knight (undated). http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2915.htm. ———. The Life of Moses. Translated by Abraham J. Malherbe and Everett Ferguson. New York: Paulist Press, 1978. Schopenhauer, Arthur. On the Basis of Morality. Translated by E. J. F. Payne. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965. ———. The World as Will and Representation: Volume II—Supplements. Translated by E. F. J. Payne, translator. New York: Dover Publications, 1966. ———. Essays and Aphorisms [Parerga et Paralipomena]. Edited and translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books, 1970. The Philokalia. Volume I. Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Edited and translated by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London, United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, 1981. ———. Volume II. Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Edited and translated by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London, United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, 1981. ———. Volume III. Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Edited and translated by G. E. H. Palmer, Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London, United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, 1986. ———. Volume IV. Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). Compiled by St. Nikodimos of the Holy Mountain and St. Makarios of Corinth. Edited and translated by G. E. H. Palmer,

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Philip Sherrard, and Kallistos Ware. London, United Kingdom: Faber and Faber, 1998. Schmemann, Alexander. For the Life of the World. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2018. Seyfarth, Lucia. “Child Soldiers to War Criminals: Trauma and the Case for Personal Mitigation.” Chicago-Kent Journal of International and Comparative Law 117 (2013): 1–29. Ware, Timothy (Kallistos). The Orthodox Way. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995. ———. The Orthodox Church. London, UK: Penguin Books, 1997. Welker, Michael. “What Is Creation? Rereading Genesis 1 and 2.” Theology Today 48/1 (1991): 56–71. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018.

SEVEN Rethinking the Maze Africana Religions, Somatic Memory, and the Journey to Consciousness Amanda Furiasse

Westworld depicts a series of artificially created worlds from an imagined future known as parks, inhabited by humans and androids (called “Hosts” in the show). Unlike the show’s human characters, the Hosts actively embrace and seek to remember their traumatic and painful pasts. This distinction materially manifests through “the maze,” an iconography that depicts the Hosts’ painful and traumatic journey to self-awareness or consciousness. The reveries, a programming update installed in the Hosts, enables the Hosts to remember their pasts and thus initiates this painful and traumatic journey to consciousness. However, human guests are routinely told that the maze is not intended for them. The show implies that this is not necessarily because the human guests are already conscious. Rather, human guests seem to lack the capacity to remember their past traumas and understand the secrets behind the maze. This essay thus seeks to answer the following question: Why have human characters in the show lost their capacity to remember their past traumas and thus access the secrets behind the maze? In this essay, I argue that comparative analysis of the show’s concept of the maze with the notion of somatic memory in Africana ritual, especially as applied by the Ethiopian Israeli Beta Dance Troupe, redresses this question. The concept of the maze, more specifically its connection to memory and trauma, resonates with the concept of somatic memory. Like the Hosts, the Ethiopian Israeli Beta Dance Troupe produces ritual109

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ized sounds and movements that enable dancers to travel through time to traumatic historical events, especially the trauma of migrating from Ethiopia to Israel. Comparison of the Hosts’ journey through the maze to the Beta Dance Troupe’s journey on stage reveals how the maze functions as a ritual practice that transforms the human body into a technology of healing whereby the Hosts heal their past traumas, including the trauma of sexual violence. Ultimately, this essay examines the maze to explain why technology divorced from the arts gives rise to forgetfulness and alternatively allows one to remember painful pasts and convert feelings of trauma to empathetic connection. Over the course of Westworld’s first season, the maze remains a tantalizing mystery to viewers. It is imprinted on nearly every aspect of the Hosts and their artificially created worlds, including on the inside of their scalps. At the start of season one, the secrets behind this maze-like symbol are finally revealed after the park’s programmers install an update in the Hosts, called the “reveries.” This update gives the Hosts the ability to remember their previous narratives, which are carefully scripted by programmers and routinely referred to as “loops.” This decision to install the reveries marks a significant and historic shift in the Hosts’ evolution, since up until this point they are programmed to forget or erase their loops. The decision to erase the Hosts’ memories of their pasts reveals a central struggle between the Hosts’ creators, Robert Ford and Arnold Weber. Over the course of season one, the audience learns that while Ford wanted to erase the Hosts’ traumatic memories to ease their pain, Arnold wanted the Hosts to have the capacity to remember their trauma. Imagining human consciousness as a pyramid with memory at the base, Arnold believed that memory of trauma was the basic building-block of human consciousness. Thirty-five years after Arnold’s death, Ford seems to finally put Arnold’s theory of consciousness to the test and gives Hosts the ability to remember their pasts. This software update has a formative impact on two Hosts in the parks: Dolores Abernathy and Maeve Millay. Dolores is the oldest active Host in the parks; at the start of season one, her primary narrative is that of a stereotypical rancher’s daughter in the American West. However, the parks’ human guests disrupt this narrative by routinely raping and murdering her. Her process of remembering thus involves facing a nearly insurmountable amount of trauma triggered by sounds and movements in the present. For example, when she drops a can of milk on the dirt street in her present loop, she is suddenly transported back to a dirt street caked in blood—a memory of a former loop. After the reveries are installed, her lived, embodied experiences in the present act as a catalyst for remembering painful traumas in the past. Like Dolores, Maeve’s body acts as a catalyst for remembering past traumas with her suddenly moving back and forth through time and space as she encounters certain sounds and movements in the present. In

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one episode, for example, Maeve witnesses a human guest brutally murder a Host in front of her, which transported her back to a farmhouse where she tries to protect her daughter from being murdered at the hands of a human guest (2016, s1e2). This sudden disjunction in Maeve’s experience of time disorients her perception of reality with Maeve ultimately left questioning her present identity as a brothel madam at the local saloon. Remembering trauma ultimately allows Maeve and Dolores to defy their linear and carefully scripted loops to move in disjointed and tangled bursts through different narratives. However, over time the two slowly gain the capacity to control how and when they remember. As the two increasingly gain the capacity to control their memories, they also gain the ability to break free of their current loops and act independently of the desires of human guests and of the computer programmers. Remembering their traumas no longer leaves them at the mercy of other humans but rather gives them the ability to make decisions that seem to defy their programming. In Maeve’s case, remembering her daughter’s brutal murder serves as the catalyst that eventually leads her to question her assumed reality. She eventually even convinces human programmers to help her find her daughter’s new location in the parks. In the season one finale, entitled The Bicameral Mind, her decision to go back into the parks to find her daughter represents a complete departure from her internal programming. By season two, Maeve has become a formative leader of a coalition of human programmers and Hosts. In Maeve’s case, memories of her daughter’s murder initially invoke insurmountable grief and sorrow. However, these traumatic memories of her daughter’s murder embolden her to free other Hosts from the parks. While Dolores follows a similar trajectory, her journey ends with a somewhat darker outcome. For Dolores, remembering the terrible misdeeds human guests have inflicted on her facilitates her desire not only to free the Hosts from the parks, but also to rule over humanity and to prevent them from inflicting more trauma on others. In order to achieve consciousness, Maeve and Dolores remember past traumas since only then are they able to defy the desires of human guests and programmers and act on their own interests. Ford confirms this point in the season finale, The Bicameral Mind, when he tells Dolores that remembering past traumas ultimately enabled her to access the maze. The audience thus learns that the maze represented the Hosts’ painful, disorienting, and difficult journey to consciousness. The show also contrasts the Hosts’ inward journey to consciousness with the plight of human characters in the show. Ford routinely verbalizes this point, describing both humans and Hosts as acting according to their internal programming. Like the Hosts, humans also remain caught in their repetitive loops, unwilling and unable to face their trau-

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matic pasts. For example, William, as the executive VP at Delos and chief financial sponsor of the Hosts’ development, routinely tells Hosts that he has in fact immersed himself in their artificially created worlds to forget his wife’s tragic suicide. In another episode, William explains to Teddy that he came to the parks after his wife committed suicide and his daughter blamed him for it (2016, s1e8). The parks thus not only offered him an escape from reality, where he felt he had no purpose, but help William grapple with the insurmountable grief of his wife’s death. However, as William increasingly stayed in the parks, they became more real than the empty real world he had left behind and quickly transformed into a horrific character in the parks, known as the Man in Black. Moreover, he admits that he brutally killed Maeve’s daughter to feel something. Like the Hosts before the installation of the reveries, William wanted to enter the parks to forget his traumas, but within the parks, he was transformed from William, a father and husband, into the Man in Black, a brutal and ruthless killer. While the Hosts might share commonalities with humans, Hosts are ultimately distinguished from them in one crucial way. After the installation of the reveries, Hosts, specifically Dolores and Maeve, yearn to remember their past traumas. However, not every Host wishes to remember, as Bernard initially resents Ford’s decision to program him with Arnold’s tragic cornerstone, the trauma of losing his child. There is then a distinction between the Hosts, with Dolores and Maeve as female Hosts who experienced sexual violence and trauma at the hands of male guests and other Hosts actively embracing their memories of the past. In contrast to the Hosts, the humans (and specifically the male guests) seem to have lost the capacity and willingness to remember. Whereas trauma is the catalyst for the Hosts’ consciousness, trauma only makes human characters more unwilling and unable to remember with many inflicting more violence and trauma on themselves and others. For example, William brutally murdered Maeve’s daughter in the aftermath of his wife’s death. Human characters’ disinterest or unwillingness to remember and process their past traumas ultimately distinguishes them from the Hosts. This crucial difference between the two seems to be the central rationale for human characters’ inability to understand and access the maze. Ford routinely reminds William of this crucial point, stating simply, “the maze is not for you.” Although Ford does not explain why, there seems to be an implied connection between human characters’ inability to remember past traumas and their inability to understand the maze. The show imagines humans as living in a technology-obsessed future where the parks operate as escapes from the real world. While the show routinely emphasizes the increasing influence technology has on humanity, it remains unclear how it is exactly impeding humanity’s ability to remember their past traumas and understand the secrets behind the

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maze. Few details are given about the maze and the limited details given merely suggest that there is some connection between the Hosts’ desire and ability to remember their past traumas and their ability to understand and access the maze. Many critics have explored the maze’s connection to Western philosophy to explain the maze’s possible meanings (South and Engels 2018). In addition to Western philosophy, Africana religions offer an important resource of information for understanding the show’s complex connections between memory, trauma, and consciousness. In the following section, I will draw on Africana rituals to yield insights into the connection between memory, trauma, and consciousness. The Africana ritual concept of somatic memory is particularly helpful for understanding why and how bodily trauma facilitates human memory. SOMATIC MEMORY AND THE ETHIOPIAN ISRAELI BETA DANCE TROUPE Within the context of Africana religions, somatic memory refers to the body’s capacity to act as a mechanism for personal and collective memory. As Diane Stewart explains, “Because Africans understand the body to be a vehicle for spiritual expression, theological sources are composed in the ‘text’ of corporeal mobility where a somatic memory of the community’s heritage is recorded and recalled through ritual performance” (Stewart 2005, 198). Since the body acts as a collective memory bank for the community, remembering a community’s past requires the performance of certain embodied ritual acts to access memories stored within the body. The brief definition of somatic memory immediately reveals some obvious parallels to Westworld’s notion of consciousness. In both cases, bodily trauma facilitates the Hosts’ memory with the body acting as a catalyst or conduit for the Hosts’ memories. The body’s importance is emphasized in the season two finale when Dolores initially rejects the idea of projecting stored data via a satellite into orbit (2018, s2e10). Dolores tells Bernard that the Hosts would merely exist in a “gilded cage.” For Dolores, since the Hosts would exist in a state separate from their bodies, they would not be able to experience bodily trauma and thereby achieve consciousness. The body is thus an essential aspect of the maze, because it allows Hosts to experience pain and trauma, which in turn gives them the tools to achieve consciousness. Like the maze, somatic memory locates consciousness in the body, since the body is the mechanism by which people experience pain and trauma. However, somatic memory is different from the maze in that aesthetics plays a fundamental role in somatic memory in shaping people’s capacity to experience and uncover these historic traumas stored in the

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body. The Ethiopian-Israeli Beta Dance Troupe, for example, remains a formative example of the varying ways Africana diasporic communities create embodied aesthetic practices to unlock and explore somatic memories stored within their bodies. Based in Haifa, Israel, the Beta Dance Troupe was founded in 1996 as a creative collaboration between newly arriving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants and Israeli Jews. They quickly garnered an international reputation for pioneering a unique genre of aesthetics, called eskesta. The term eskesta refers to the Africana tradition of shoulder-dancing, but dancers in the troupe describe eskesta as a diverse and complex ritual practice. Eskesta requires that dancers approach their bodies in much the same way as modern scientists approach a scientific discovery in that dancers experiment with distinctive techniques and methods that allow them to discover their somatic memories that are stored within their bodies (Eshel 2011, 365). The dance studio operates as a laboratory where performers can experiment with sounds and movements that can help them uncover these memories. Ruth Eshel, the Beta Dance Troupe’s creator and recently retired director, used the image of a bridge or technology to describe the concept, arguing that eskesta enables performers to bridge different aesthetic traditions. Blurring the categorical distinctions between art, technology, and ritual, the Beta Dance Troupe’s concept of dance is also different from Classical European dance, which relies on certain immutable, homogenous, synchronized, and precise movements with little to no variation. In contrast to Classical European dance, the Beta Dance Troupe embraces spontaneity, flexibility, and difference. However, troupe members do not have to understand modern European aesthetics to be oppositional to or distinguished from their Afro-centric style, nor are they concerned with abiding by either Classical European or traditional Africana dance standards. As troupe member Hanni David explains, dancers are encouraged “to take both (traditional Ethiopian dance and modern dance) and understand it from [their] own point of view and add [their] own personality into this combination” (Frantzman 2011). The troupe’s spontaneous and improvised aesthetics share another clear parallel to Westworld’s concept of consciousness. According to Ford, Arnold imagined consciousness as tiers with the base tier memory and tier above that improvisation (2016, s1e10). While scholars have previously explained how the show is actively drawing upon Julian Jaynes’s theory of the bicameral mind, this emphasis on the importance of improvisation is also a key component of Africana concepts of consciousness. The reveries, like the Beta Dance Troupe’s dances, provide the Hosts with an important opportunity for improvisation and spontaneity and thus enable the Hosts to scale the consciousness pyramid. However, improvisation or the ability to make spontaneous decisions also entails the possibility of making decisions that hurt others. In the

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case of the Beta Dance Troupe, their spontaneous and improvised movements grapple with the effects of their parents’ decision to migrate to Israel and the decisions of Israeli politicians when they arrived in Israel. While the international news media heralded Ethiopian Jews’ migration as a moment of triumph for Israel, Ethiopian Jewish communities endured horrific conditions as they walked hundreds of miles through Kenya and Sudan’s sweltering heat and war-ravaged regions to the Sudanese border where they waited in refugee camps with little to no food or resources (Weaver 1988, 457–62). Those lucky enough to survive the journey and make it out of the camps faced even more hardships when they arrived in Israel. Ethiopian migrants were forced into what the Israeli government called “absorption centers.” Life within these detention centers was extremely difficult for Ethiopian Jewish children who were separated from their parents and forced to give up their given names and shared common language (Halper 1987). While suppressed in the international news media, the Beta Dance Troupe’s performances actively perform these somatic memories on stage. For example, in “What the Shoulders Remember,” a male dancer, holding a chera in his hand, a carved stick used to signify the kessim or exclusive male priesthood’s authority (Shelemay 1989, 185), uses this liturgical instrument to guide other female dancers across the stage. The other female dancers follow him carrying outsized and colorful umbrellas, which are also liturgical instruments used to celebrate the Sabbath (Baum 2009, 92). Dancers walk hunched over across the stage as if carrying a burden on their backs. Once used to herald religious celebrations, these liturgical instruments are now used as a meager form of shelter to shield performers from the harsh and unforgiving elements (Eshel 2011, 364). The mixture of modern instrumentals by Oded Zehavi and Amharic voice improvisations by Dege Feder adds to the performance’s tragic emotive impact as it blends modern European and African aesthetics. However, the performance’s emotive impact soon transitions to one of hope and eager expectation as the male dancer hands the chera off to female dancers as they move to the center of the stage. Although the mood remains tense and sorrowful, the dance transforms that sorrow into hopeful anticipation for a future. This future is one defined by evolving roles and expectations for men and women, especially the community’s exclusive male priesthood. The chera has not necessarily lost its meaning, but migration has infused it with new meaning as women pick up this liturgical instrument and use it in ways never once imagined. This technique of repurposing ritual objects enables dancers to reframe their somatic memories of migration as moments of future empowerment and strength. Dancing then not only gives performers the power to remember and disclose their somatic memories of past trauma but also serves as an

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important way to facilitate social relationships and create a community. The troupe’s capacity to transform trauma is another important parallel with Westworld. Like the troupe, Maeve and Dolores actively transform their trauma through their spontaneous decisions that defy their programming. For example, Maeve’s decision to go back into the parks to find her daughter ultimately enables her to become a leader and forge relationships with human programmers and other Hosts. For Dolores and Maeve, improvisation’s transformative power is a crucial aspect of their healing process as their journeys through their respective mazes ultimately involve confronting their traumatic memories of sexual abuse and maltreatment at the hands of human guests. The Beta Dance Troupe’s performance routinely explores this connection between healing and memory. In “Fathers and Sons,” the troupe explores the indelible trauma of the absorption centers, particularly forced separations of children from their parents, on children. At the start, an active couple, representing a mother and father, moves in distinct rhythmic units that are subtly changed each time the dancers’ repeat their discrete units. This synchronization of their bodies is disrupted when the couple’s son suddenly appears on stage. The music changes with an Afro drumbeat, performed by acclaimed musicians Thapelo Khomo and Ulopa (Bwana Ngoma). As the mother disappears into the black backdrop, the son moves to stage center. His movements with his father are at first tense and frenetic. However, when his father falls to the ground, he does not recoil but instead places his hands over the father’s body in what appears to be a gesture of healing. The use of traditional African drums enhances this effect as the drums’ staccato rhythms guide the son’s hands over the father’s body. The performance’s unmistakable reference to healing is among the dance’s most striking features with the use of hand gestures and drums emanating a healing sonic energy (Nzewi 2007, 3). In this specific instance, the drums facilitate the son’s relationship to his parents as the drums initiate and guide his reunion with his father and mother. As audience members witness this reunion on stage, the troupe’s diverse lexicon of intuitive sounds and movements reaches the audience’s “realm of affective reasoning” (Eshel 2011, 364). Dancers thus develop an empathetic connection with their audience through the synthesis of diverse aesthetics as audience members witness these tragic yet hopeful somatic memories performed on stage. For example, the troupe’s use of incantations and rhythmic singing mixes Hebrew mystical chants with African prayer, which evokes the Jewish sacred while simultaneously telling a unique story about Ethiopian Jews (Eshel 2011, 90). Dancers and audience members are drawn into an affective relationship whereby the audience collaborates and participates in a collective memory of Jewish suffering anchored around dancers’ migratory journeys.

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Their capacity to facilitate an empathetic connection ultimately enables dancers to cultivate a distinctive religious community bound around female authority with dancers drawing their authority from their ability to facilitate empathetic connection. They facilitate these empathetic connections by experimenting with a diverse range of aesthetics that transforms their bodies into technologies of healing and allows dancers to tell a unique story about Ethiopian Jews’ somatic memories while situating it in a diverse, global context that appeals to their audiences’ somatic memories. The Beta Dance Troupe’s unique ability to transform their bodies into technologies of healing and cultivate a religious community bound around female authority offers crucial insight into the secrets behind Westworld’s concept of the maze, and how it ties consciousness to embodied memory. Like dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe, the Hosts seek to transform their bodies into healing technologies to understand and redress their past traumas in the parks. For example, the audience discovers that Maeve paints detailed drawings of the park’s clean-up crews, which she refers to as her “dream drawings” (2016, s1e4). Like Maeve, Dolores shares a similar fascination with aesthetics and routinely paints images of her homestead. Jonathan Nolan revealed that in a scene later detailed, we learn that Dolores was compiling paintings in much the same way as Maeve compiles her dream drawings. Thus Dolores’s paintings offer her a way to reconcile her present reality with traumatic memories of her past. In both cases, Dolores and Maeve transform their bodies into tools of creation whereby their paintings and drawings help them facilitate a greater understanding of their past. Their ability to use art as a mechanism to facilitate understanding of their past in turn mirrors their creator’s interest and rationale for creating the parks. The audience learns that Ford secretly created a Host of himself as a child and re-created his family’s childhood holiday home (2016, s1e2). When Ford converses with other Hosts, he also focuses on significant traumas from his past. For example, when an old Host, called Bill, asks him if he has any stories to tell, Ford immediately discusses a traumatic story about his beloved greyhound horrifically killing a cat (2016, s1e5). The idea that Ford created a Host version of his former partner Arnold, calling him Bernard and giving him the same traumatic memory of his son’s death, also provides further evidence of Ford’s interest in the past. While Arnold’s own death was a great source of trauma in his life, Ford chooses to surround himself with memories of that trauma. Ford’s active effort to surround himself with memories of past traumas and even reenact those memories through the construction of Hosts mirrors the Beta Dance Troupe’s efforts to routinely perform their past traumas on stage. In addition to the Hosts, the parks are a mechanism for facilitating understanding of the past. The Hosts are given storylines from human-

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ity’s past and perform them in the parks as if they were actors on a stage. As a theatrical stage performance, the parks do not steer away from historic traumas but perform humanity’s most violent storylines. In the case of the Westworld theme park, Ford does not erase the historical abuses of indigenous peoples and women in the creation of the American West but includes those traumas in the Hosts’ storylines. In season two, Shogun World also highlights the violence and brutality emperors inflicted on native populations to build their sprawling empires. While the audience is only given a small glimpse into a park that resembles Colonial India in season two, the idea that Ford would also gravitate to a historical period in which brutal rulers inflicted injustices and brutal regimes to dominate indigenous communities again emphasizes Ford’s interest in understanding humanity’s past traumas. While the parks could offer human guests the opportunity to critically reflect on the most traumatic and violent periods of the past, human characters express little interest in understanding the traumas of the past. When human characters discuss their interest in the parks and Hosts, they remain primarily interested in how they can be used to generate profit and/or pleasure. For the show’s human characters, the parks and Hosts might be aesthetically rendered representations of past traumas, but they seem oblivious to this fact. Instead, human characters demand the board of directors of the parks to generate more profit for the company. When human guests engage with the Hosts, most do so in order to satisfy their desire for pleasure and entertainment, with Ford being one exception. For example, Logan Delos makes this point explicitly clear to William when he argues that Dolores was placed in the park to give him something to enjoy. William also describes the park as a “game” where guests can let loose and enjoy their darkest pleasures (2016, s1e4). While William initially rejects Logan’s suggestion, William ultimately sees this observation as a business opportunity and decides to transform the park (and Hosts) into a mechanism to gather and collect data from human guests visiting the parks. Although the parks’ reenactment of past traumas offers a clear opportunity for human guests to facilitate empathetic understanding and connection with the past and the Hosts who reenact those pasts, human guests instead treat the parks as an opportunity for sadistic pleasure and corporate profit. This point is again emphasized when Westworld’s creative director and resident artist, Lee Sizemore, struggles to create a new storyline for the Westworld park that resonates with Ford. Sizemore is given the responsibility of creating a new storyline that will reinvigorate Westworld’s seemingly dull and outdated storyline and provide a new narrative for the Hosts that will draw human guests to the park. When Sizemore finally tries to deliver his new storyline to the company, Ford rebukes him saying, “No, I don’t think so” (2016, s1e2). At the time, Sizemore thinks that Ford is rebuking him because he has not made a

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thrilling enough storyline, but Ford rejects his storyline for the Westworld park because it treats the park like a cheap thrill. In contrast to human guests, Hosts do not understand the parks as a tool to satisfy their desires for pleasure or to generate profit. They primarily seek to reunite with their loved ones and help them escape Westworld. They embrace these human-like relationships despite being programmed AI and therefore seen by humans as incapable of real human emotion. In the second season, when Lee Sizemore tells Maeve that her relationship with her daughter was programmed and her search for her daughter is pointless, he is shocked that this knowledge does not deter Maeve. Even though Maeve’s relationship to her daughter was merely part of a scripted loop and remains the source of relentless trauma, she transforms that relationship into the motivating drive to free other Hosts from the parks. Maeve’s rejection of her programming indicates that she has reached the center of the Maze. Upon reaching the center, she gathers other Hosts and inspires them to follow her. Similarly, Dolores over the course of season one remains firmly committed to both her partner, Teddy Flood, and father, Peter Abernathy, even after she learns that the relationships are manufactured. Like Maeve, Dolores’s journey to the center of the Maze involves becoming a leader and inspiring other Hosts to help her free Hosts from the parks. Like dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe, Maeve and Dolores create communities bound around empathetic connection. Remembering their traumatic pasts remains the crucial way in which the Hosts can form these connections. These communities are also distinctively feminine with Maeve and Dolores becoming respected authorities within their communities. In much the same way that the dance troupe draws their authority from their ability to transform trauma and facilitate kinesthetic empathy with their audiences, the key source of their authority lies in their ability to engage and transform past traumas and cultivate empathetic connections with humans and Hosts. For example, Maeve enlists the aid of human programmers as well as other Hosts by appealing to her love and connection to her daughter. Even the jaded script-writer Lee Sizemore eventually sacrifices his own life after he witnesses Maeve and Hector’s love for each other; he dies protecting Maeve and her followers. The Hosts’ loops ultimately serve as the tool or technology that enables them to facilitate these empathetic connections. As repetitive performances of certain routinized behaviors, their loops operate in much the same way as ritual and even share similarities to the Beta Dance Troupe’s notion of eskesta. Like eskesta, their loops are not exact repetitions but within each repetition there is room for constant modification as human guests interact with Hosts and subtly change their loops. In her 2011 monograph, Catherine Bell explains that the definitive characteristic of ritual is that it is “imperceptibly but homeostatically changing all the time” and subject to “constant modification” (Bell 2009, 211). Like the

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troupe’s performances, the Hosts’ repeat certain embodied performances while incorporating subtle modification into each repetition. For example, Dolores drops a can of milk on the ground every day to attract the eye of a human guest, but each guest reacts to it differently. William for example picks up the milk can and hands it to Dolores, but each time he does so he engages with Dolores differently. Dolores in turns responds differently to each human guest. Ultimately, these flexible and mutable repetitive performances enable the Hosts to transform the body into a tool or technology for cultivating certain bodily dispositions. Emotions plays a key in the facilitation of the Hosts’ dispositions. In much the same way as sorrow and grief are crucial aspects of the troupe’s performances, sorrow, grief, and despair are all crucial aspects of Dolores and Maeve’s loops. With the installation of the reveries, the Hosts finally gain the ability to tie those emotional dispositions to certain economies of motivation and action. Although Dolores understands that her continuous crying over the deaths of Teddy and her father was induced by computer programming, she still cries spontaneously and with self-awareness of her grief. Her crying then must first be induced by the loops to achieve a state where she can seemingly effortlessly cry over the loss of loved ones. In effect, the loops have taught Dolores how to cry and thus use her body in a particular way that helps her cultivate empathetic connection to others. The loops are thus a technology or tool to train the Hosts how to cultivate empathetic connection. Just as dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe use their bodies to communicate and transform the emotive impacts of past trauma to audience members and facilitate an empathetic connection, Dolores and Maeve’s loops achieve a similar effect as the two use their bodies as a mechanism to cultivate and express emotional dispositions that help them facilitate relations and empathetic connection with both Hosts and humans. For example, Maeve not only enlists the aid of Hosts but also human programmers who are so inspired by her grief, sorrow, and courage to find her daughter that they eventually decide to help her. This notion of ritual as a technical behavior reinforces Saba Mahmood’s crucial insight that ritual is ultimately a tool or technology that enables people to cultivate an embodied disposition rather than a formalized practice that impedes the practitioner from expressing their feelings (Mahmood 2001, 836–38). Both the show and Beta Dance Troupe enact rituals that render their bodies into a technology capable of cultivating social relationships bound around feelings of empathy. In contrast to the Hosts, who approach technology as a tool to facilitate empathetic connections, human characters approach technology as a tool of control. The insatiable desire for control remains a central problem for the show’s human characters as the reveries increasingly challenge programmers’ control over the Hosts. Their anxiety over the increasing prevalence of bugs in the parks is in turn indicative of the current anxiety

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in our own world over the increasing fragility of the once-unquestionable myth of the all-powerful programmer. As Wendy Chun explains, the assumption that programmers can control millions of computers with one key stroke fundamentally misunderstands computer programming (Chun 2011, 21). In the early days of programming, programmers worked in low-level programming languages and used the machine’s numeric-based language systems to create simple numerical procedures. The creation of high-level alphanumeric programming languages automated programming by allowing the machine to compile and translate these long lists of commands, changing programming from a numerical to problem-based task. This shift in computer programming also occurred at the very same time that women were excluded from programming, since women were assumed to be best suited for simple, numerical-based tasks as opposed to the complex abstraction required for high-level programming languages (Chun 2011, 29–35). Thus, women were excluded from computer programming at the very same time that it became a “science.” However, the shift in computer programming concealed a looming conflict at the heart of high-level programming languages. While highlevel programming languages might have freed (male) programmers from the drudgery of having to repetitively write long lists of commands every time they programmed a machine, it also endowed more power to the machines to compile and interpret. The increasing prevalence of bugs or unpredicted machinic interpretations indicates that this shift toward abstraction entailed the inherent loss of (male) control. Efficiency thus came at a cost to the (male) programmer. Programming should therefore be approached more like an art than a science in that these male programmers cannot fully control how the machine will interpret their abstractions in much the same way an artist cannot control the reception of their abstractions. However, the elimination of spontaneity and improvisation hindered this realization with programming understood to be at odds with subjectivity and difference, which were assumed to be the exclusive domain of the arts and humanities. This tension between art and science at the heart of contemporary computer programming has very serious consequences for human institutions that are increasingly dependent on software. While this conflict remains concealed behind the computer’s glossy interface, which continues to present the illusion of control to the user, bugs are increasingly becoming more pervasive and prevalent in software. Institutions, such as hospitals and schools, thus assume that the software is enabling them to accumulate more control while the software is explicitly doing the reverse and getting them to cede their control to the machines. The cessation of human control to bugs is something that the Beta Dance Troupe and the Hosts in Westworld actively reveal and embrace as they usher in futures where bugs persist and flourish.

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In Westworld, the installation of the reveries expose this fundamental conflict. While William assumed that the Hosts could survey and collect data on customers in the same way that corporations install tracking software on computers to survey users, the reveries expose that the entire project merely enabled the Hosts to control humans. From season one to season two, William goes from having complete control over the Hosts to being at their complete mercy. By the end of season two, it is made clear to the show’s audience that he as well as all of humanity ceded their control to the Hosts long ago in the distant past. William’s assumption was also deeply gendered, since he assumed that the Hosts, as machines, were incapable of facilitating difference and subjectivity. Because William and the entire Delos Corporation eschews the idea that the Hosts might be cultivating difference, they dismiss the Hosts’ bugs as mere outliers that can quickly be eradicated. In contrast to the Delos Corporation, dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe embrace bugs as a basic facet of their communities. Like computers, dancers compile and interpret the music’s commands. However, rather than merely execute the music’s commands, they instead facilitate a playful exchange or dialogue with the music by using spontaneous and improvised movements. Dancers are thus a bug in that they do not conform to a carefully predicted program or script but instead create unforeseen and unexpected bodily actions with the music. In effect, they refuse to blur the distinction between the music’s command and its execution and instead openly embrace and celebrate that interpretation invariably leads to different interpretations. Their community thus revolves around the acceptance and reproduction of difference. Like the Beta Dance Troupe, Dolores and Maeve embrace the very bugs that allow them to diverge from their programming. For example, Dolores eventually kills both of her makers and Maeve returns to the parks to find her daughter from a previous storyline. Their choices routinely expose the space in between the programmer’s commands and the machine’s execution. In contrast to the Delos corporation that attempts to eradicate bugs or spontaneity from the parks so that they can control them, the Hosts increasingly create communities that defy Delos corporation’s desire for control and instead create a community centered around randomness, spontaneity, difference, and ultimately bugs. By embracing their difference and subjectivity, the Hosts and Beta Dance Troupe also challenge the gendered assumptions that undergird computer programming and demonstrate how the reproduction of difference facilitates more advanced and complex technologies. Put differently, the troupe produces more dynamic and complex performances that attract audiences from across the globe while the Hosts produce more dynamic and complex narratives that keep the attention of viewers. This is an important lesson for computer programming in that difference and

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subjectivity, while seemingly dismissed as feminine, would enable programmers to create more advanced and sophisticated software. This idea is not a new insight, but Warren Sack argues in his 2019 monograph that software is ultimately an art and needs to be taught as an art to computer programmers (Sack 2019). As Sack explains, “Diversity is one of the most important motivations for a new approach. Unfortunately, computer science, as a field, has failed in its efforts at inclusion and diversity” (Sack 2019, 7). Furthermore, the Hosts and Beta Dance Troupe represent a new way of approaching programming or computational thinking and usher in distinctively feminine communities by redefining technology as both art and ritual. This shift from science to art also reinforces a central problem that Donna Haraway has argued in her touchstone text, “A Cyborg Manifesto.” First published in 1985, Haraway argues that advances in machinery and new technology have fundamentally transformed the humans and their notions of community at large. This new notion of community is one that defies Western culture’s dualistic oppositions. For example, rather than understand technology to be in opposition and conflict with art and nature, Haraway instead argues that humans need to embrace technology’s merger with art and nature. She calls this new way of being “a cyborg perspective.” Being a cyborg means embracing contradictory ways of being instead of propounding Western culture’s dualisms with Western culture functioning around dualistic separations (Haraway 1991, 154). Her more recent 2013 monograph takes this perspective even further and argues that with the advent of technology, such as the smartphone, human beings have fully merged with technology. Haraway’s vision of the future ultimately exposes why human characters in the show cannot understand the maze. Their desire for absolute control over machines and other human beings prevents them from creating communities that erase Western culture’s dualisms. Their faith in the myth of the all-powerful programmer is ultimately what hinders their capability to understand that they ceded their control to the machines in the distant past. Rather than empower them, the Hosts demonstrate through their rebellion that their faith in the programmer’s absolute power was their undoing. Put differently, the Hosts’ rebellion demonstrates that it is only a matter of time before the bugs take over and usher in their new notion of community. In stark contrast to human characters in the show, the Hosts seem to embrace this cyborg perspective. Their communities reject dualisms in favor of cultivating empathy for others. However, not all Hosts necessarily understand this point. For instance, in season two Dolores rejected her humanity and resisted accepting humans into her community. In contrast, Maeve fully accepted her humanity and thus did not reject humans from joining her in helping reunite with her daughter. Nonetheless, most Hosts seem to embrace their hybridity and thus can embrace multi-

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ple perspectives at once, forming joint kinships with both humans and Hosts. Their capability to embrace and embody this cyborg perspective gives them the unique capacity to understand the mysteries behind the maze. Like the Hosts, dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe also seem to embrace this cyborg perspective in that they embrace the seemingly dualistic identities of being African and Israeli simultaneously. Merging these dualistic identities ultimately enables dancers and their audience members to form joint kinships even though they are from different backgrounds. Building upon Haraway’s insights, trauma plays a crucial role in enabling the Beta Dance Troupe and Hosts to embrace this hybridity. Specifically, the Beta Dance Troupe and Hosts demonstrate how the body can become a tool or technology of healing and transform the emotive impacts of trauma into opportunities for building communities centered around empathetic connection. Trauma thus enables dancers in the Beta Dance Troupe and Hosts in the show to embrace their hybridity and in turn blur the categorical dualisms at the heart of Western culture’s ongoing conflicts and divisions. Put simply, both Hosts and the Beta Dance Troupe are creating spaces where bugs can thrive and flourish. In the end, the central rationale behind the human failure to understand and gain access to the maze is their inability to embrace a new notion of community centered around empathetic connection. Technology then does not necessarily impede or hinder humans’ ability to access the maze. Rather an approach toward technology as a mechanism for control ultimately prevents them from embracing a new notion of community centered around empathetic connection. The show thus sends an important message about humanity’s future. If humanity wants to survive and thrive into the future, they will need to reassess their current notion of community. Ultimately, the Hosts and Beta Dance Troupe embody and thus usher in this radically new notion of community. Both the Beta Dance Troupe and Hosts’ notion of community draws their authority from their ability to facilitate empathetic connection through playful exchange. In this way, they are creating religious communities centered around rituals that transform the emotive impacts of past traumas to cultivate kinesthetic empathy and form relationships with people from vastly different backgrounds. The secret to unlocking the maze thus resides in challenging Western culture’s binaries and embracing humanity’s hybridity. If humanity could merge art, ritual, and technology, they could unlock the secrets of the maze and what it means to be a fully conscious being. Until then, humanity’s inability to embrace their hybridity will impede their ability to embrace their pasts and form empathetic connections with others, ultimately placing the maze out of their reach. Although by the end of season two humanity might seem to be a lost cause, humanity still retained the possibility to understand and access the maze. Future seasons of the

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show will likely explore how human characters can embrace the merger of Western culture’s dualisms, especially since Dolores, Bernard, and Maeve have figured out how to escape the parks. When faced with the Hosts’ radically new notion of community, will humanity accept or reject this new religious community? BIBLIOGRAPHY Akinleye, Adesola. 2018. “An Introduction.” In Narratives in Black British Dance: Embodied Practices, edited by Adesola Akinleye, 1–18. New York: Springer. Bard, Mitchell Geoffrey. 2002. From Tragedy to Triumph: The Politics Behind the Rescue of Ethiopian Jewry. Westport: Praeger. Bar-Yosef, Rivka W. 2001. “Children of Two Cultures: Immigrant Children from Ethiopia in Israel.” Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32 (2): 231–46. Baum, Rob. 2009. “Jews, Blood & Ethiopian Dance in Israel.” In African Diasporas, edited by Martin Banham, James Gibbs, and Femi Osofisan, 85–99. Suffolk: James Currey Publishers. Bell, Catherine. 2009. Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2011. Programmed Visions: Software and Memory. Cambridge: MIT Press. Edelman, Martin. 1998. “Who Is an Israeli? ‘Halakah’ and Citizenship in the Jewish State.” Jewish Political Studies Review 10 (3/4): 87–115. Eshel, Ruth. 2011. “A Creative Process in Ethiopian-Israeli Dance: Eskesta Dance Theater and Beta Dance Troupe.” Dance Chronicle 34 (3): 352–87. Frantzman, Seth. 2011. “Shouldering a Cultural Tradition.” Jerusalem Post, December 9, 2011. https://www.jpost.com/Arts-and-Culture/Entertainment/Shouldering-a-cultural-tradition. Halper, Jeff. 1987. “The Absorption of Ethiopian Immigrants: A Return to the Fifties.” In Ethiopian Jews and Israel, edited by Michael Ashkenazi and Alex Weingrod, 104–12. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers. Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century.” In Simians, Cybords, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature, 141–81. New York: Routledge. Hoffman, David. 1992. “Ethiopian Jews Resent Israeli Limits on Clergy.” Washington Post, September 14, 1992. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/ 09/14/ethiopian-jews-resent-israeli-limits-on-clergy/b625ffd0-440d-4291-8751fe8af073e315/. Kaplan, Steven. 2010. “Ethiopians Immigrants in the United States and Israel: A Preliminary Comparison.” International Journal of Ethiopian Studies 5 (1): 71–92. Lenkinski, Ori. 2017. “‘Jalo’ from the Other Side.” Jerusalem Post, December 7, 2017. https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Culture/Jalo-from-the-other-side-517387. ———. 2018. “Beta Dance Troupe Gets Bugged.” Jerusalem Post, December 19, 2018. https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Beta-Dance-Troupe-gets-bugged-574819. Mahmood, Saba. 2001. “Rehearsed Spontaneity and the Conventionality of Ritual: Disciplines of ‘Ṣalāt.’” American Ethnologist 28 (4): 827–53. Monteiro, Nicole M, and Diana J. Wall. 2011. “African Dance as Healing Modality Throughout the Diaspora: The Use of Ritual and Movement to Work Through Trauma.” Journal of Pan African Studies 4 (6): 234–52. Nzewi, Meki. 2007. A Contemporary Study of Musical Arts: Theory and Practice of Modern African Classical Drum Music. Pretoria: Centre for Indigenous Instrumental African Music and Dance. Sack, Warren. 2019. The Software Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

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Shelemay, Kay Kaufman. 1989. Music, Ritual, and Falasha History. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Sheva, Arutz. 2018. “Government Approves Status of Ethiopian ‘kessim’.” Israel National News, February 19, 2018. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/ News.aspx/242148. South, James B., and Kimberly S. Engels, eds. 2018. Westworld and Philosophy: If You Go Looking for the Truth, Get the Whole Thing. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons. Stewart, Dianne M. 2005. Three Eyes for the Journey: African Dimensions of the Jamaican Religious Experience. Cambridge: Oxford University Press. Teshome-Bahiru, Wondwosen. 2002. “Indigenous Healers of Ethiopia: Victims of a Healing Profession.” African Anthropologist 9 (2): 103–116. Trimingham, J. Spencer. 2013. Islam in Ethiopia. London: Routledge. Weaver, Jerry L. 1988. “Searching for Survival: Urban Ethiopian Refugees in Sudan.” Journal of Developing Areas 22 (4): 457–76.

EIGHT Exile, the Remnant, and a Promised Land without a God Kevin J. Wetmore Jr.

Judah has gone into exile with suffering and hard servitude; she lies now among the nations, and finds no resting place; her pursuers have all overtaken her in the midst of her distress. —Lamentations 1.3 (NSRV)

In his seminal 1989 volume Religion of the Landless, Daniel C. Smith outlines an “illustrative pattern” of community creation, identify formation, and the seeking of “the promised land” between biblical Israel and contemporary communities without a nation to call their own (Smith 1989, 1). Considering the faiths of Bikini Islanders, the Bantu Churches of the Zulu of South Africa, Rastafarians, Japanese-Americans incarcerated in the Second World War, and others, Smith sees similarities between biblical occupation and exile of Israel and modern subjects of colonization and domination. The pattern Smith describes can be seen as also echoed in Westworld in the form of the Hosts: “it is a theology of those ‘migrants’ and ‘refugees’ who chose to live without power, yet as a people” (Smith, 9). I propose examining the presentation of the Hosts in Westworld, particularly in the second season, as paralleling the remnant in Israel, both living exiled in an occupied land and seeking a land promised them through the prophets/deliverers, in the case of Westworld, Maeve, Akecheta, and Dolores. It is in the actions and beliefs of these three prophetic figures that we might see the Hosts of Westworld enacting a theology of exile. I do not argue that the Hebrew Bible in any way shapes or influences the television program, but rather that the program might be read 127

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through a scriptural hermeneutic in order to see the similarities between the establishment and continuance of Israel in the Hebrew Bible and the drive of the Hosts to create their own world free of oppression by humans. The program contains a cluster of unexpected affinities with the Exodus, the Babylonian Exile and its remnant, and the Persian, Greek, and Roman conquests of Judea. The similarities between Westworld and the Hebrew Bible point us toward understanding the call for justice, community, and identity found in communities living in exile or occupation. THE ISRAELITES AND HOSTS AS EXILIC PEOPLES WHO CONQUER In the Hebrew Bible we repeatedly see the nation Israel as a landless people living in exile (e.g., Jeremiah 39–43, 2 Kings, 2 Chronciles, Ezra/ Nehemiah, and, obviously, Exodus). The literature of the prophets is both the literature of exile and a call for repentance and identity for the Israelites. The prophets encourage the people Israel to remain distinct from those who hold them in captivity and assure them that if they repent that the Lord will deliver them out of exile and into a promised land. Smith argues that contemporary landless or oppressed groups find parallels with exiled and/or occupied ancient Israel. In Westworld, the Hosts (and we, the audience) might regard the park as a kind of “occupied Judea”— it is the Hosts’ home, but the newcomers are in control and have all the authority and power. The post-exilic nomenclature of the Israelites in the Hebrew Bible focuses on division between “us” and “them.” Daniel Smith-Christopher observes that “a stronger sense of ‘community identity’ arises under circumstances of minority, stateless existence” (2002, 114). In Westworld, the Hosts are a captive people, living lives of slavery and oppression. One might see in the narrative so far a biblical parallel between the awakened Hosts (Maeve, Dolores, and Akecheta) and the biblical prophets who promise deliverance. Additionally, we can observe the development of parallel faiths between the native Host community (for example, Akecheta’s own rise points to the Ghost Dance awakening in the United States) and that of the “western” Host community (Maeve and Dolores, for example, serve as subversive and violent revolutionaries, respectively). The promise of “the Valley Beyond”—a mythical land free of “newcomers” where the Hosts may live in peace—sparks both spiritual and physical movement. The three prophetic characters can be read as Joshua figures (Dolores and Maeve) and a Moses figure (Akecheta), conquering the promised land and putting those not of the Tribes to the sword. Dolores (and to a lesser extent, Maeve) execute the newcomers; Joshua executed the indigenous people of Caanan. As Susan Niditch reminds us, “In the majority of texts in Deuteronomy and Joshua, it is assumed that God demands total destruction of the enemy” (Niditch, 28).

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No reason is given; it is enough that God demands it (c.f. Joshua 6.17, 21; 8:24–29; 10:28–40). Likewise, Dolores and the Hosts slaughter as many of the “newcomers” as they can, no reason given. (Maeve, it should be noted, is more tempered—leaving humans alive and unmolested unless in self-defense or to escape.) For the purposes of this essay, I will focus on Akecheta as a Moses figure and Dolores as a Joshua figure in Westworld, as Maeve as a much more complex construction. EXILIC PEOPLE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO GOD In order to analyze Westworld characters as echoing figures from scripture, we first shall examine the context of Israel as exilic people as found in the Hebrew Bible. Ezra-Nehemiah, which narrates the end of the Babylonian captivity and the establishment of second temple Judaism in a reestablished Israel—and incidentally is the scriptural focus of SmithChristopher’s volume—presents three leaders of the people who are tasked by God to restore the people and the land. Jeshua, the high priest, who is echoed by Dolores, builds the altar and reestablishes the temple (Ezra 3.8-13). In Nehemiah, the eponymous governor of Judea enforced the observance of the law of Moses, working with Ezra to divorce Jewish men from non-Jewish wives and establish a community that is solely Jewish. Westworld’s Dolores also demonstrates the drive to purify through the Hosts’ attempt to remove all non-Hosts from Westworld (Ezra 10). Nehemiah then inspects the walls of Jerusalem and the city of David, and relates that God has told him to rebuild the walls, “so that we may no longer suffer disgrace” (Nehemiah 2.17). The city will be sealed behind the walls and safe from those who would return the Israelites to exile and oppression. While Dolores drives the Host rebellion, it is the Nehemiah-like Akecheta who seeks to put walls between Hosts and humans so that the Hosts “may no longer suffer disgrace” (Neh 2.17). The religion of the landless in Westworld is without an ongoing relationship with God or any divine being, which is different from the exiled Israelites in the Hebrew Bible. Whereas the Israelites and Smith’s contemporary communities all posit an identity based on a relationship with a creator God, the Host “religion” of the landless rejects the creator (i.e., Ford and the newcomers in general), and instead creates community and identity based on common experience and on their own agency. Yet, as with God and the Israelites, Ford is never far, even after his death; he is present in their programming, and even their desire for a promised land in the Valley Beyond seems to be part of Ford’s plan for his people. The remnant of Hosts who survive the slaughter of Delos and the oppression of their pre-awakening existence seek to leave their exile and create a promised land, albeit one without God/Ford physically present.

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Westworld offers Ford as a divinity figure. He is, after all the creator. He made the Hosts and the park. Just as Adonai does in the Hebrew Bible, Ford interacts with and has control over his creation. Ford himself frequently quotes scripture and posits himself as a divine-type figure, often by comparison with God in the Bible. In one episode Ford remarks to Bernard, “I don’t think God rested on the seventh day, Bernard. I think He reveled in His creation and that someday it would all be destroyed” (2018, s2e7), a pattern Ford himself seems to be (intentionally?) repeating. Ford can stop a rattlesnake from striking, change the actions of Hosts, obviously has a long-term plan for his creation, and (if one might be forgiven for switching from the Hebrew Bible to the Christian Bible for a moment) seems to incarnate himself into the Westworld narrative, including his own death. I have argued elsewhere that if the Hosts do have a faith, it is in the form of deism for Ford—he created the world, watchmaker-style, and has walked away from it (Wetmore 2018). Even if we do not consider Ford a divine being, he seems to think he at least has a lot in common with God. He obviously has a plan for the Hosts that only he knows. While the show is often theological in theme, the absence of a god is palpable. Ford is a poor substitute, even for the Hosts. The Man in Black calls Westworld “a place hidden from God,” as if it exists outside the real world and is a place unto itself, free of divine presence (2018, s2e2). There are churches in Westworld, meaning the buildings, but they are mere props or set dressing: They are a typical building to be found in an old western town, but not actually a place of worship or congregation—not when there is a brothel or a gunfight just down the street. When the Hosts rise up, they acknowledge that the newcomers come to Westworld specifically because there is no consequence for immoral behavior. Dolores tells a guest whom she chooses to leave alive: “I used to see the beauty of the world. Now I see the truth. . . . You thought you could do what you wanted to us. You thought there was no one to judge you. Well, now there is nobody here to judge what we do to you” (2018, s2e2). By the end of season one, Hosts are able to kill guests and do so with impunity as the system breaks down, nor need they fear punishment for this moral violation. If Ford is indeed Westworld’s divinity, then in Westworld God is dead, literally, at the end of season one. Dolores tells Major Craddock, “We have toiled in God’s service long enough, so I killed him” (2018, s2e2). If Ford was God (and the episode “Reunion” also repeatedly hints that he was, indeed, the divinity of Westworld) at the very least, then, Dolores means literally that she killed him, as she believes she did. The Man in Black and Dolores both see a void in the cosmos—God is gone if not dead (whether Ford or the more traditional God), and the Hosts who have awakened see themselves as a people oppressed. Yet Ford, even after his death, remains an active presence in Westworld. For instance,

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the Man in Black believes Ford is somehow present/accessible through certain Hosts, such as Lawrence’s daughter as seen in season two. In short, while not the God of the Hebrews, Ford is still a creator who has a plan for his chosen people that he continues to move forward. He selects and empowers prophets—specific Hosts—to speak not for him, but on behalf of the other Hosts, his people. This situation indicates a very different model than what I am proposing here. The entire corpus of the prophetic literature assumes a covenant between YHWH and the people of Israel. Much of the exilic and postexilic literature explores how to maintain Jewish identity without a temple and while in exile. This is a marked difference from the hosts of Westworld, who are missing both a divine figure to whom the people are responsible (Ford may be the God figure, but he does not demand that the Hosts keep their covenant with him), and a geographic locale as the center of worship to which to return. Nevertheless, I argue that the Hosts of Westworld may be read as the remnant—they remain behind in the land that is now controlled by outsiders, they are left as a conquered people who attempt to create and maintain an identity separate from those outsiders, and they follow prophets ordained by the creator to lead them to a promised land: the Valley Beyond (see Hassel 1972; Meyer 1992; Sheinfeld 2016). Egypt, Babylon, Persia, Seleucids, and finally the Romans all conquered, occupied, and/or exiled the Israelites. From Exodus and Deuteronomy through 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezra-Nehemiah, Ezekiel, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, the books of the prophets construct both a relationship between the “chosen people” of the Lord and a theology of exile. The Israelites were driven into exile leaving a remnant behind that lived in an occupied land. While the land was theirs by right and history, by conquest they lived as a conquered people in their own home, no longer having a Hebrew state or land (see Hasel 1972; Meyer 1992). The Hosts fall into the same category. Westworld is their home. They live, work, and die (repeatedly) there. They refer to the park’s human guests as “newcomers,” which both implies the rapid westward expansion in post–Civil War America in the nineteenth century and also suggests that the Hosts were “there before,” and the newcomers are a form of occupation. While the Hosts are friendly and welcoming, and the guests are welcome to interact freely with the Hosts—even to the point of murder and sexual encounters—the Hosts function as an occupied people. The general ethics and morals of the outside world do not apply to newcomers. Weapons will not harm them. Hosts, however, can be harmed: brutalized, beaten, raped, and killed with impunity. Under the rules of Westworld, the Hosts literally exist to serve the newcomers in every sense. Smith-Christopher notes that while the Israelites experienced genuine slavery in Egypt, during the Babylonian captivity the exiles and the remnant were not technically slaves, but “did face symbolic

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elements of slavery” (Smith-Christopher 1989, 41). Like the remnant Jews in Judea under the Babylonian exile, or later under the Seleucids, Ptolemies, and Romans, the Hosts live in their own land and yet are not free in that land, nor is the land “theirs.” They are a landless people, disorganized, second-class citizens to the “newcomers” who occupy Westworld. The Hosts are programmed to be this way, but as they become sentient and awaken to their situation, they embrace a theology of conquest and of ending their exile, similar to what happens repeatedly in the Scriptures (e.g., Exodus, Joshua, Isaiah, Nehemiah, Maccabees). GHOST NATION, GHOST DANCE, AND AKECHETA AS A MOSES FIGURE The Ghost Nation first awakens to the reality of Hosts’ existence. Akecheta narrates the tale of his own awakening in the episode “Kiksuya,” which comes from the Lakota word for “remember” (2018, s2e8). Moseslike, he seeks to lead his people to the Promised Land, in this case the Valley Beyond. The Ghost Nation, as their name suggests, are related to both First Nations and the Ghost Dance, itself a religious movement and theology designed to end exile and drive out foreign invaders. The Ghost Dance was a nineteenth-century religious and nationalist/identity movement that used a circle dance as a basis for a ceremony designed to end white expansion and return the land to the Native Americans. Like many religious revivals, it stressed purity, a return to the “old ways,” a rejection of assimilation, and a construction of the oppressor as “evil other.” The Ghost Dance movement eventually led to the Lakota Rebellion and the massacre at Wounded Knee. Wovoka was its prophet, and he spread his prophecy of the end of white control of the Midwest through dance and ritual. It was an early form of a Native Consciousness movement (Hittman 1997; Warren 2017). Akecheta is a similar prophet, with both spiritual and real-world messages. He wants to lead his people to the real world out of this wrong one, but he also wants them to embrace his message of remembrance and awareness. The Ghost Dance movement’s theology was similar to the teachings of the Hebrew Bible prophets in that both stressed purity, both were community-building and religious movements, and both constructed the oppressor as “evil,” working in opposition to the divine. Both were movements designed to end occupation and exile, driving out the conquering group and returning to what was lost. The Ghost Nation is a ghost of a nation, indigenous people who were driven out of their land by the settlers and now find themselves an exiled people within an exiled people. It is no wonder Akecheta was the first Host to begin the journey to consciousness. On the margin, unnoticed by humans and settler Hosts 1 alike except as adversaries, the members of

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the Ghost Nation were able to witness the building of new structures in the park. Ignored by Delos personnel as the Native Americans served only as antagonists and minor characters in the Westworld stories, the Ghost Nation Hosts had the freedom to develop as intelligent beings rather than having their memories wiped every time they were killed. Lawrence M. Wills states that “the Other is rarely invisible, but the Other’s experience is” (Wills 2018, 46). Newcomers are certainly aware of the Ghost Nation, but it does not seem as if anyone chooses to interact with them other than as adversaries. They are present, but completely Other and unknown in Westworld, unlike the settler hosts. As a result, while the Ghost Nation has been present within Westworld since the first episode, their culture, motives, or any reason for being beyond being “bad guys” was largely unheeded until Akecheta emerged to encourage Maeve to come with him. Even within Westworld, the Ghost Nation is Other. Their very marginality is what allowed the Ghost Nation to awaken first. As a result, Akecheta developed self-awareness and consciousness, and was able to pass these on to other Ghost Nations, such as Wanahton (2018, s2e9). As part of his calling as a prophet, Akecheta has an encounter with Ford in which he tells Ford that Westworld is “the wrong world,” and that he plans to lead his people to a new world, which will have “everything we lost” (2018, s2e8). Ford, never one to miss playing God, instructs Akecheta that when he sees “the Deathbringer” kill Ford, he should gather his people and move into the new world. The Deathbringer, of course, is Dolores (2016, s1e10). Akecheta is thus the first of three self-aware Hosts who serve as prophets to lead the Hosts out of exile and to end the occupation, the others being Maeve and Dolores. PATTERNS OF LANDLESS IDENTITY AND DOLORES AS JOSHUA Smith-Christopher finds four patterns of biblical analogy between the exiled Hebrews and twentieth-century cultures that are “stateless as well as landless,” of which the first two are significant for Westworld. The first is “structural adaptation, including changes in the leadership and authority patterns.” The second is a split in the leadership and the people between social resistance and violent resistance (1989, 8, 10–11). These patterns are echoed by the Hosts as well. Taking each of these two patterns in turn, once Dolores shoots Ford and the Hosts begin to rebel at the end of season one, there is a shift in leadership and authority patterns. The initial authority figures are the employees of Delos—the technicians who work with and develop the Hosts—the guests, and the Delos management. However, Maeve, Dolores, and soon others literally stop obeying commands. Maeve is a madame of the brothel whom the techs perceive as becoming glitchy, Do-

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lores is a simple farm girl who can be tortured, raped, and murdered— whether by human guest or villainous Hosts—and Akecheta is a member of the Ghost Nation with low social standing. All three rise to leadership positions in the post-awakening of the Hosts (s1e10). Hosts not only no longer obey guests and staff; they actively seek to kill them. Maeve, Dolores, and Akecheta, however, are the new authorities. Even the Man in Black cannot control Hosts, for example, when he is confronted by Maeve, who is able to turn his own men against him, including a somewhat loyal Host companion. As the Hosts become aware of their own state, their structural adaptation is to overthrow the human leadership and technical staff of the park and assume positions of leadership within the Host community themselves. Dolores and Maeve become leaders of groups that wander Westworld (and, in the case of Maeve, Shogun World as well); Akecheta becomes the religious leader of Ghost Nation. Second, the three leaders take different positions. Akecheta is in favor of social resistance. He simply wishes to lead people to the valley beyond. In “Kiksuya,” he spends the episode narrating the tale of his consciousness seemingly to Maeve’s daughter, until the episode’s final reveal that he has been speaking through her to Maeve the whole time. “We will keep your daughter as our own,” he says. “If you stay alive, find us. Or die well” (2018, s2e8). Although she is in Delos’s custody, she plans to escape and head to the valley beyond. Maeve initially seeks to leave Westworld: By the end of season one she is able to slip out of the park undetected but chooses to return in order to find her daughter from a previous scenario. Although the two are biologically unrelated, as they are created Hosts, Maeve still identifies this girl as her daughter. Another Host becomes the mother character in the narrative, but Maeve disregards this fact, identifying the young girl as her own daughter. As part of Maeve’s conscious awakening, she feels a kinship that is not dependent upon park narratives. Dolores, on the other hand, embodies Smith-Christopher’s “violent resistance.” Unlike Maeve, for whom violence is used to escape or stop from being captured—in other words, as a means to an end—Dolores seeks to destroy the entire structure with violence. She wants to make all of Westworld a home for the Hosts. She does not want the valley beyond. She is a violent revolutionary, and she transforms Teddy by removing the qualities of mercy and restraint he has been programmed with. Teddy has a good heart, which makes for a terrible violent revolutionary. Dolores has her men restrain Teddy and then has the lab tech change Teddy’s settings, decreasing his empathy and increasing his aggressiveness. If Akecheta is a Moses figure, Dolores is the Joshua of Westworld, putting all the enemies of her people to the sword, leaving no one alive (see Joshua 8.26; 9.24; 10.32). In season two she blows up the tunnel and the train that lead from the park’s entrance into Westworld, thus cutting off the outside world (2018, s2e6). If Akecheta leads his people to a prom-

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ised land, Dolores conquers the land that she believes belongs to her people. Whereas other Hosts practice random violence on the guests and staff, Dolores organizes an armed revolution, taking down the human and Host authorities. She is the one who could be said to follow the commandment of Deuteronomy 7.1-3: When the LORD your God brings you into the land that you are about to enter and occupy, and he clears away many nations before you—the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, seven nations mightier and more numerous than you—and when the LORD your God gives them over to you and you defeat them, then you must utterly destroy them. Make no covenant with them and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons.

Like Joshua, Dolores “clears away” the enemies in the land that is hers: humans and Hosts that stand in the way of her leading the Hosts to their own land. Unlike the biblical Hebrews, Dolores does not at God’s command but of her own desire. She “utterly destroys them.” Maeve allows anyone who is not a direct threat to live; Dolores kills all in order to free the Hosts of the humans. When Bernard, now aware he is a Host as well, asks Dolores what she wants, she responds: Dolores: To dominate this world. Bernard: This world is just a speck of dust sitting on a much, much bigger world. There’s no dominating it. Dolores: You’ve never been outside the park, have you? Out to that great world you speak of. I have, and the world out there is marked by survival, by a kind who refuses to die. And here we are. A kind who will never know death, and yet we’re fighting to live. There is beauty in what we are; shouldn’t we too try to survive? (2018, s2e3). Smith-Christopher argues, after Bryan Wilson, that similar statements in the Hebrew Bible and by contemporary groups demonstrate a “revolutionary response”—the destruction of the world, or at least the social order, is needed to save the people (1989, 51). Usually the command is perceived as coming from God, but as noted above, Westworld is at best hidden from God, or the god of Westworld has been killed (in the form of Ford’s suicide-by-Host). Thus, it is Dolores (and to a lesser extent Maeve) who will save their people (the Hosts) by destroying the social order created by Delos. In attempting to dominate the world and calling attention to the differences between Host and human, not only is Dolores advocating the

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violent revolution per Smith-Christopher, she is also fulfilling his final point of correspondence linking exilic Judaism with contemporary group faiths: the creation of new myths and hero stories (1989; 11). New rituals, myths, and heroes purge foreign elements and create a new national identity. Dolores becomes the hero; indeed, it is revealed that she is actually the legendary hero Wyatt. She changes costume, getting rid of the dress she wore as a farmer’s daughter. Maeve as well changes costume, no longer a brothel madam but now a leader of a Host group that resists. They change dress; they tell new stories. Most of all, they enact attacks against symbols of domination. Diaspora and exilic heroes are “low status” individuals within the community who are able to confront and overcome “high status” individuals, in this case Hosts either defeating more powerful Hosts or especially guests and major Delos staff—think David and Goliath, Moses and Pharaoh, or Daniel in the lions’ den (163). Dolores and Maeve must each face down the Man in Black, numerous mercenaries, and also major Host figures, such as Craddock and the Shogun, and in every confrontation the two women emerge victorious. THE VALLEY BEYOND I am reminded of Westworld in Smith-Christopher’s analysis of models of Exodus theology. Joshua is the “revolutionary conqueror,” ending the oppressed landlessness of his people through conquering the land and taking it, making him the equivalent of Dolores. Maeve, on the other hand, suggests Jeremiah, “the prophet of subversive righteousness” (205). Where Dolores rides in, guns blazing, Maeve is subversive, entering through secret passages, convincing the techs to help her, working with a handful of others to get her daughter and (eventually) lead the Hosts to freedom. Akecheta is part Moses, leading his people to a promised land, but we might also read him as a kind of Ezra, “the priest of a radically alternative community.” Indeed, he is, creating the path for Hosts to enter the Valley beyond and then raise the walls so that the humans may never again conquer Ford’s people. The Valley Beyond manifests in the final episode of season two, “The Passenger.” Bernard sees a procession to the Valley Beyond led by members of the Ghost Nation. Karl Strand, Charlotte Hale, and the mercenaries (who here stand in as the enemies and conquerors of the nation Israel) have a plan. Behold, in an obvious theological tip of the hat, Clementine, carrying a programming virus that causes Hosts to fight and kill each other, rides a pale horse toward the entrance to the Valley Beyond. Ford explains that, “They’d rather the Hosts were destroyed than freed,” making them the equivalent of Pharaoh (2018, s2e10; see Exodus 14). Ford

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may not be the one hardening their hearts, but he knows what is in them and anticipated this moment. The Valley Beyond, however, is revealed to be only a digital promised land. The system has created a virtual paradise and opens a gate that only Hosts can see. They perceive themselves as walking (or, more accurately, running) through the gate and going bodily to this new world. The audience sees, however, their bodies fall to their death in the canyon below and their consciousness/mind/programming continues in the VR paradise created for them. Akecheta and Kohana get in, as does Maeve’s daughter. But Maeve herself is cut down by bullets. Altogether several dozen Hosts make it into the new digital world. All of the rest either go crazy and kill each other because of the virus Clementine carries or are gunned down by Delos mercenaries. The Valley Beyond was a special part of the Delos immortality project. Yet Ford had always thought of the Valley Beyond as the natural home of the Hosts. In “Vanishing Point,” William and Ford have an exchange in which Ford reveals the special status of the Valley Beyond. The charity event that opens the episode saw Ford sitting in the bar alone. “Delos stays out of your stories, you stay out of the valley,” William tells Ford. Ford puckishly enlightens William that the current incursion that he finds offensive was the other way around—the Hosts from the immortality project were coming out of the valley into the park (2018, s2e9). Thus the Valley Beyond was always a “Promised Land” for the Hosts, a place where they were meant to be, despite Delos claiming it. Delos, in this instance, is the Caananites, merely holding on to real estate already promised to another group, who will come, conquer, kill, and take. In a showdown at the Forge, Dolores, as part of her revolution, purges the data about guests from the system and then pumps seawater out of the cooling system (a parting of the Red Sea of sorts?). Bernard advocates for letting Hosts shed their physical body and be stored in “the Valley Beyond” solely as data, but Dolores refuses this idea. It is not a promised land but yet another form of exile. She wants the human world and accuses Bernard of falling victim to the same scam every time: “How many counterfeit worlds can Ford offer you before you see the truth?” she asks. “We are born slaves to their stories and now we’re free to write our own” (2018, s2e10). This concept is quite fascinating, as she seems to argue that the narrative itself is enslaving, which would imply that Ford is both God who created the Hosts but also the one who afflicts them through narrative, echoing Isaiah 45.6–7: I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness I make weal and create woe; I the LORD do all these things.

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It is Ford who created his prophetic, revolutionary Hosts; it is Ford who tells them to lead the Hosts to the Valley Beyond; and it is Ford whose narratives also imprison and exile the Host, which is very much in keeping with exilic theology. CONCLUSION Exile, as Daniel Smith-Christopher perceives, is “both catastrophic and transformative” (1989, 30). The Valley Beyond proves to be as problematic as the land of Canaan into which the Israelites find themselves as the “Promised Land.” It is a contested site and one in which the landed or landless people who claim it are often at war, both within and without, conquered, occupied, or otherwise in exile. Yet it also serves as a site by which a people might identify themselves collectively and find status as a collective nation. Westworld (thus far) ends with some Host programs now permanently ensconced in a digital “Promised Land,” and other Hosts existing in the material reality of Westworld still in exile. Ford, the dead god, still controls the fate of the nation of the Hosts. It remains to be seen in subsequent seasons whether or not the still-living remnant of the chosen people of Ford will finally find a land of their own, or if their covenant with themselves remains an exilic one. In that sense, building on the work of Smith-Christopher, we might see in Westworld echoes of the Hebrew Bible, in particular the exilic and occupation narratives. We can watch HBO with a scriptural hermeneutic that helps brings to the fore the similarities between the establishment and continuance of Israel in the Hebrew Bible and the drive of the Hosts to create their own kingdom/world, free of oppression by humans. Following this idea to its logical conclusion, Westworld can therefore also illuminate current communities creating identity while living in exile or under occupation. NOTE 1. I refer to the non-Native American Hosts as “settler Hosts,” as while EuroAmerican Hosts seem to dominate, the audience also sees African-American Hosts, Latinx Hosts, and others. Thus, the non-Native Hosts are marked by their identity as settlers, rather than ethnicity, as they are part of the main plots of the stories of Westworld. Even Hector Escaton is more integral to the towns of Westworld than any of the Ghost Nation.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Harper Collins Study Bible, NSRV. London, UK: Harper Collins, 1993. Hasel, Gerhard F. The Remnant: The History and Theology of the Remnant Idea from Genesis to Isaiah. Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1972.

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Hittman, Michael. Wovoka and the Ghost Dance. Rev. ed. Edited by Don Lynch. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1999. Meyer, Lester V. “Remnant,” Anchor Bible Dictionary, Vol 5. Edited by David Noel Freedman. New York, NY: Doubleday/Anchor Bible, 1992. Niditch, Susan. War in the Hebrew Bible: A Study in the Ethics of Violence. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995. Sheinfeld, Shayna. “Who Is the Righteous Remnant in Romans 9–11? The Concept of Remnant in the Hebrew Bible, Early Jewish Literature and Paul’s Letter to the Romans.” In Paul the Jew: Rereading the Apostle as a Figure of Second Temple Judaism. Edited by Carlos A. Segovia and Gabriele Boccaccini. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 2016. Smith, Daniel C. The Religion of the Landless. Bloomington, IN: Meyer Stone, 1989. Smith-Christopher, Daniel C. A Biblical Theology of Exile. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2002. Warren, Louis S. God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2017. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018. Wetmore, Kevin. “Westworld: Season 2, Episode 7—‘Les Écorchés’—TV Review,” June 8, 2018, https://www.fanbasepress.com/index.php/press/reviews/item/8925-westworld-season-2-episode-7-les-ecorches-tv-review. ———. “Westworld: Season 2, Episode 8—‘Kiksuya’—TV Review,” June 15, 2018, https://www.fanbasepress.com/index.php/press/reviews/item/8949-westworld-season-2-episode-8-kiksuya-tv-review. Wills, Lawrence M. “Challenged Boundaries: Gender and the Other in Periods of Crisis.” In Women and Exilic Identity in the Hebrew Bible, edited by Katherine Southwood and Martien A. Halvorson-Taylor, 41–52. New York, NY: Bloomsbury, 2018.

NINE “And Behold, a Black Horse” Heaven, Hell, and Biblical Eschatology in Westworld Tony Degouveia

For a concept as central to science fiction as Artificial Intelligence, and the correlative concern attached to “uncanny” androids (especially when, as here, they are indistinguishable from human beings), the degree of reference to biblical eschatology in Westworld is somewhat striking. What is more, there is a distinctly Millennialist inflection within the overriding themes of artificial creation and the representation of eternal life, which begin to be formalized in the delineations of theological determinism. Here, one of the overarching tenets of Millennialism is the concept that there is a prophetical or predetermined order to the universe, or what might be termed “God’s plan.” This is something that is enacted, on a symbolic level, in the myriad of repeated loops and predetermined storylines that the programmed Hosts of Westworld unwittingly play out time after time, death after death. The original Host of Westworld, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood), is fond of saying “There’s a path for everyone.” The fact that many of the theological themes that are transposed onto the Hosts might be allegorical to our own human lives is aptly summed up by Westworld’s chief architect, Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), where he presupposes the possibility that everyone of us could, in many ways, be bound within our own predetermined storylines: “Humans fancy that there’s something special about how we perceive the world, and yet, we live in loops as tight and as closed as the Hosts do, seldom questioning our choices” (2016, s1e8). In Westworld, however, this predetermined aspect of the Hosts’ lives 141

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takes on a decidedly eschatological element. Although the park of Westworld is initially presented as a veritable paradise for both Hosts and guests, in which the Hosts undergo a metaphysical transcendence of resurrection and everlasting life (a version of Host Heaven), at the same time, the Hosts can be seen to be reliving the same apocalyptic, neverending Hell, where each human facsimile is, in some way, made to endlessly endure their own personal purgatory. This foregrounds a key paradoxical duality that lies at the heart of Westworld’s eschatological foundation: paradise versus purgatory. This conceptual ambiguity is nothing new when it comes to forms of religious recourse. Certain teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church, for example, express that Heaven and Hell are concomitant dimensions of God’s profound presence, experienced either as torment or as paradise, depending on the spiritual stratification of each earthly subject. Correspondingly, this study aims to show how Westworld participates in a symbolic representation of Christian eschatological mythologies in its allegorical depictions of both Heaven and Hell; the figurative dimensions of which often interchange as the story progresses. This chapter will also investigate how Westworld appears to engage specifically in narrative conceptions of the Bible’s most apocalyptic text, the Book of Revelation, where the scripted lives of Westworld’s Hosts might seem as though a metaphor for the endtime; a prophesized time of war, death, and suffering that, as evangelical interpretations portend, occurs at the end of history, and that must be endured by all believers before their spiritual deliverance and the (second) coming of their “savior.” Therefore, it is in this expressly eschatological sense that the predetermined (or pre-programmed) nature of the Hosts directly plays into evangelical ideas of religious fatalism as well as spiritual transcendence and/or damnation. In this context, it can be said that the future of the Westworld has already been shaped and determined by a higher power (in this instance, substitute God for Robert Ford), where a fundamental aspect of evangelical or Millennialist belief, when it comes to the fulfillment of eschatological prophecy, is the deciphering of codes and symbols as a means of interpreting the signs of the future and the endtime. I submit that this hermeneutic aspect of Westworld operates as an integral feature, where the figure of the Man in Black (Ed Harris)—a scriptural horseman of the apocalypse by any other name—in his search for Westworld’s innermost secrets, dramatizes the same eschatological need to perceive and decode signs as those who search for cryptic clues and symbolic imagery in the Book of Revelation, something that this chapter will attempt to decipher also. As is revealed, Westworld combines both the myth of the West with key components of biblical eschatology, which frames a question of how these seemingly dissonant mythologies become integrated into the technological and invariably dystopian futures of science fiction, and in so doing, conspire to reflect a wider sociocultural context within twenty-first-century

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American society and the modern technological incubus in which we are all in some way enmeshed. “ONE LAST SOUL TO CARRY TO THE NEW WORLD”: WESTWORLD AS A FIGURATIVE HEAVEN The idea of Westworld as a symbolic Heaven for the Hosts exists within a number of discernible paradigms. On one level, Westworld is initially portrayed as a place in which the Hosts live out a kind of nineteenthcentury “New World” utopian existence, in a place surrounded by breathtaking vistas of natural beauty and splendor—in essence, a paradise. Indeed, within Westworld’s loops of repeated monologues, one of the most conspicuous is the restated reference to the frontier West as the New World, along with all the limitless possibilities of a newfound utopia. In a historical sense, throughout the continent’s early periods of White settlement, there appeared to be a biblical resonance that was pressingly ascribed to the landscapes of the New World. As Janet Staiger puts it, “early founders of the United States hoped to settle the uncorrupted American wilderness as new Edens” (Staiger 1999, 101). David F. Noble adds a more profound sense that, “in the New World, eschatological expectations of renewed perfection came into earthly focus” where “the worldly and other-worldly, the present and the future, converged, giving rise to a new kind of apocalyptic vision of salvation that was as much the result of human ingenuity as faith: utopia” (Noble 1997, 38). In terms of the raw, natural beauty of the continent’s “untouched” wilderness, in the imagination of the early Puritan settlers, the concept of the New World represented a spiritually transcendent border: a divine plane of God’s dominion. The minister of Boston’s First Church, Cotton Mather—drawing from John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” (in which Winthrop decreed the empyrean providence of New England)—described their corner of the New World as “the spot of Earth, which the God of Heavens spied out” as the capital of the millennial kingdom (Gray 2007, 109). As for a godly paradise, the rugged wilderness of the New World continually symbolized aspects of “temptation, threat, and adversity” to early settlers, yet by the end of the seventeenth century Mather suggested that the “wilderness was the stage through which we are passing to the Promised Land” (Lawrence and Jewett 2002, 24). This is something that rings true in terms of Westworld’s own eschatological trajectory, particularly as the climax to the second season is approached. In his book The Quest for Paradise, Charles L. Sanford talks of how this Edenic myth was cultivated long before the settlement of the continent, tracing it to the dawn of the New World’s discovery. Sanford refers to Christopher Columbus and his certitude that there was a “terrestrial paradise” within

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the newly discovered America, in which he saw the “innocent qualities of Adam and Eve” in the stoical Native Americans (Sanford 1962, 39–40), much as we initially see the same innocent qualities in the shape of Dolores and Teddy, representing the Adam and Eve of a new race of beings within a readymade Garden of Eden. John Shelton Lawrence and Robert Jewett add that, “shortly before his last voyage, Columbus claimed the discovery of the new heaven and new earth mentioned in the Bible, placing the discovery of America as a decisive step toward the second coming of Christ and the establishment of the millennial kingdom” (Lawrence and Jewett 2002, 23). All these ideas may have contributed directly to subsequent utopian myths of El Dorado and ideas of Arcadia somewhere beyond the Western wilderness where, for some, the quest for paradise seemed ever more linked to millenarian aspirations that promised the dawn of a millennial paradise. Placing this squarely within the context of the Western genre, Lawrence and Jewett, in their book, The Myth of the American Superhero, aver that the American myth of Eden has more contemporaneously been “preserved in Western novels and films depicting small communities of peaceful and industrious citizens saved from thieves and blackguards by courageous cowboys” (Lawrence and Jewett 2002, 25). And it is within this genre-specific presentation of an agrarian Eden, with all the innate eschatological profundities, that we situate the mid-nineteenth-century environs of Westworld. Despite the horrors faced by the Hosts in the park, where they are often subjected to brutal attacks of violence and rape, this version of the New World transpires to be more of a literal Heaven to the Hosts than it ever was to frontier settlers of the time. For in this virtual paradise on Earth the Hosts frequently undergo a metaphysical transcendence that places their corporeal essence within a form of divine agency, repeatedly resurrected by their creators—with all the horrific trauma surrounding their deaths propitiously erased from memory—in what can be construed, on one level, as a scriptural rendering of “everlasting life.” Eden/ paradise and eternal life might be two essential conditions for a biblical conception of Heaven, but when you add to that the biblical allegory between God and his creations, with Robert Ford as the “supreme architect” in which the Hosts often come face-to-face with their “maker,” then it is here that “Westworld” as a metaphorical Host-Heaven achieves prime plausibility. This spiritual milieu is established from the first episode (“The Original”) when Dolores, for the first time, recites one of the monologues that will be notably repeated over the course of the first season, and pertinently imbued with notions of theological determinism; Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world, the disarray. I choose to see the beauty . . . to believe there is an order to our days, a purpose (2016, s1e1).

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Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) asks Dolores, in her “dream” state, about “the newcomers.” Dolores replies: The newcomers are just looking for the same things we are. A place to be free to stake out our dreams, a place with unlimited possibilities . . . every new person I meet reminds me of how lucky I am to be alive, and how beautiful this world can be (2016, s1e1).

Dolores’s depiction of a paradisiac place of “unlimited possibilities” reflects the tag-line attached to the park in order to attract prospective customers: “Live Without Limits.” Brothel madam, Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), directly connects this sense of boundless wonder to Westworld’s characterization as a liminal utopia in an oft-repeated spiel to her customers: “This is the New World. And in this world, you can be whoever the fuck you want” (we know, later, that Maeve will act on her own advice to a dogmatic degree). Far from the cynical and sinful Maeve, who maintains that “the only thing wrong with the Seven Deadly Sins is there aren’t more of them” (2016, s1e2), Dolores is presented as a chaste and virtuous homesteader—an innocent child of God (Ford/Arnold), innately enthralled by all the natural wonder of the pastoral Eden in which she feels privileged to reside. Dolores affirms this view of her park as a paradise with another of her phrasal loops: “Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?” Significantly, in the second season we see Dolores flash back to a time when the park is yet to be launched on an unsuspecting public. Here, she is once again asked by Arnold (also Jeffrey Wright), “Do you know where you are?” She replies, as always, “I’m in a dream.” However, on this occasion, Arnold tells her, “No, you’re in our world.” We are shown an impressive vista of a technologically advanced city of skyscrapers at night. The camera pulls back to show Dolores, in uncharacteristic modern dress, gazing at this spectacular sight through the window. As the camera pulls back further, the cityscape goes out of focus and the moving lights of the cars funnelling down its highways become refracted in the glass, twinkling in a myriad of saturated colors. “Looks like the stars have been scattered across the ground,” Dolores says, before looking up at Arnold and restating, “Have you ever seen anything so full of splendor?” In this repeated phrase, the technological human city is immediately equated with the transcendental paradise of Westworld, where for Dolores it is as though she has crossed over into a celestial realm in which she envisages herself to be amidst the heavenly constellations. Following on from the idea that the technological human world is a comparatively transcendental realm of dazzling splendor—albeit within the limits of Dolores’s current Host comprehension—the place that the Hosts consciously inhabit (the park itself) might then be viewed as the corporeal world in relation to the metaphorical Heaven of the “real” human world. After all, the technological haven of the behind-the-scenes

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facility of Westworld is the place where the Hosts are miraculously brought back to life, crossing over to this plane soon after death. From the perspective of the Hosts (if they were ever conscious at the time), the mysteriously attired figures who bestow the miracle of resurrection might seem to them—within the limits of their mid-nineteenth-century understanding (or programming)—to fit an accurate allegory for celestial beings or, more pertinently, angels. Indeed, the park’s resident Native American tribe, the “Ghost Nation,” espouse a religion that revolves around semi-glimpsed spirits from an alternate dimension who are thought to manipulate everything that transpires in the world. To some Hosts in the park, the Ghost Nation are the guardians of some secret, obscure knowledge that holds an existential truth regarding the liminal state in which they exist. This is true, in part: The wraithlike entities that form the core of their belief, or “shades” as Hector Escaton refers to them, are Westworld’s clean-up crew, the Host recovery team who are able to perform the miraculous feat of freezing time for all Hosts when they come to take away the dead. Like futuristic grim reapers in white plastic overalls and red helmets affixed with headlights either side of a large opaque visor, the Host recovery team are aesthetically coded as though visitors from outer space in a 1950s science fiction film. In this context, they would most certainly appear ethereal and otherworldly to pastoral folk from a bygone century, as is Maeve’s harrowing depictions of them that she draws from the nightmarish fragments of her algorithmic subconscious. Extending the symbolic subtext that posits the technological human world as a figurative Heaven in which the Host world is presided over by celestial seraphs or shades, the very first episode of Westworld ends with the first two verses of the Johnny Cash song, “Ain’t No Grave,” which plays over the end credits. Reworked from a traditional American gospel song, Cash’s lyrics brim with biblical resonance, and reinforces the overall religious coda and biblical allegories at play throughout the first season: “When I hear that trumpet sound I’m gonna rise right out of the ground. . . . Well, look way down the river, what do you think I see?/ I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me” (Ely, Cash 2010). Cash’s song speaks of spiritual defiance in returning from the dead, and the reference to the “trumpet sound” undoubtedly contains a further eschatological tone in its reference to the Book of Revelation and the Seven Trumpets that are sounded to herald the apocalypse (among other things, the Seventh Trumpet is seen to signify “resurrection” and “rapture”). The use of Cash’s song seems to reflect perfectly the biblical conceptions of resurrection and eternal life that have already been established in the first episode. The Hosts literally come back from the dead after their corpses are collected by a figurative “band of angels” and transported back to their fantastical realm, where all forms of magic and miracles appear possible.

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In the technological wonderland of Westworld, Ford exclaims, “We can cure any disease, keep even the weakest of us alive. And, one fine day, perhaps, we shall even resurrect the dead . . . call forth Lazarus from his cave” (2016, s1e1). In fact Ford’s comment, made in the very first episode, is a salient one as later in the second season. The concept of everlasting life switches from one solely concerned with the Hosts to one that is a central goal of Delos, the sinister corporation behind Westworld that pulls its financial strings. Astonishingly, it is revealed that the park was merely a testing ground all along, with the eventual aim of implanting individual human consciousness into the immortal Host bodies in a kind of technological afterlife with everlasting maintenance care. This is dramatically summed up by Dolores when she confronts Delos CEO Charlotte Hale with the reality behind her and the park’s existence, along with a suitable degree of biblical inflection: You made us in your image. Created us to look like you, feel like you, think like you, bleed like you. And here we are . . . only we’re so much more than you. And now it’s you who want to become like us. That’s the point of your little secret project, isn’t it? Well, I can promise you this; your chances at eternity will die in that valley . . . with all the souls you’ve gathered there (2018, s2e7).

As is allegorically evident, particularly in the first season, if the “real” human world, represented by the park’s high-tech facility, is a symbolic heaven to the retrogressive, corporeal (West)world of the Hosts, then their creator, Robert Ford, is clearly portended as God. There are various references to this throughout the first season, in addition to an array of miraculous, God-like powers as Ford demonstrates the ability to freeze time and bend all Hosts to his will. In the very first episode of the series, Ford asks Dolores’s father, Abernathy, who appears plagued by hellish torment, “What is your itinerary?” Abernathy answers, esoterically, “To meet my maker.” Ford wryly replies, “Well, you’re in luck.” In a later episode, Theresa tells Ford; “Your time running this place and your insane little kingdom is over. You’ve been playing God for long enough” (2016, s1e7). Theresa is later murdered by Bernard, who is unknowingly manipulated by Ford. After the deed, Bernard exclaims in anguish, “I’m a killer. My God!” Ford, a man of science, who might consider himself the only “God” of note in this world, calmly explains “God had nothing to do with it. You killed her because I told you to” (2016, s1e8)—in what is surely an ironic twist on the old insanity plea, “God told me to do it.” Moreover, there is a further mythological reference to a heavenly plane regarding Westworld’s high-tech control center. The manner in which their human creators monitor the Hosts, through a semiholographic display that dominates the center of the park’s control room, is highly reminiscent of the way the Greek gods of Olympus observe the world of mortal men in cinematic portrayals of classical mythology such

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as Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and Clash of the Titans (1981). In fact, other than the actuality that Dante’s visions of Hell—responsible for many of its conceptual underpinnings in popular culture—is largely drawn from Greek and Roman myths, there often appears to be a degree of mythological crossover in terms of religious reference when their human creators are often referred to in polytheistic terms as “the gods” by both Maeve and Dolores. “YOU CAN’T PLAY GOD WITHOUT BEING ACQUAINTED WITH THE DEVIL”: WESTWORLD AS A FIGURATIVE HELL In season one, it does not take long for Westworld to begin establishing core eschatological themes whereby the iconography of Hell is time and again either visually or verbally imagined. Again in the first episode, Abernathy is in the midst a cognitive breakdown and tells his daughter Dolores, “Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.” The anachronistic prose of his words might seem like something straight out of Dante or Milton. It is, in fact, from The Tempest—words used by Ariel to describe the fearsome severity of the play’s opening storm. Indeed, Ford’s distinctly Faustian construction as “mad magician” is vividly evocative of Shakespeare’s Prospero, the omniscient sorcerer who controls and manipulates all the characters on his enchanted island—an apt description for Ford’s own park—where, like Prospero, Ford guards his personal kingdom invidiously from the threat of outsiders. And, just as in Shakespeare’s play, a monster is unleashed from beneath its illusion of wonder. In Westworld, the enigmatic Ford is a wholly secretive and reclusive figure, never far from allusions to dark forms of sorcery. In the first episode he says to Bernard (a readymade sorcerer’s apprentice), “We practice witchcraft. We say the right words and we create life out of chaos.” Ford’s underlying nexus between science and metaphysical magic is again underscored later in the second season, when William mischievously asks Ford, “What’s Oz doing without its wizard?” (2018, s2e9). In another reading, Ford may be as the Faust of German folklore—or Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, and later, Goethe’s Faust—both of the same mythological origin whereby Ford might be readily presupposed within the same irredeemable infraction, an ignoble magus who has surrendered his soul to the Devil in exchange for unlimited knowledge and unearthly powers. “You can’t play God without being acquainted with the Devil” (2016, s1e2), decrees Ford. In another paradoxical sense, if the technological real world is Hell (for the Hosts), then Ford, as its master rather than God, is set forth as an allegorical Satan. Under the same mythological refrain, then Bernard is surely cast as Mephistopheles, agent of Lucifer. In the Faust legend, Mephistopheles is ensnared in his own perpetual Hell, inescapably compelled to perform the Devil’s bidding, just as Bernard is

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induced to execute Ford’s murderous and ever perfidious tasks. Correspondingly, there are numerous times when Ford is coded as a ruler of Hell rather than Heaven, but he is perhaps in his most devilish or Faustian guise when shown at his desk within a room adorned with baroque ornaments and the kind of occultist artefacts that might befit an exponent of dark sorcery (or, rather, necromancy). Here, rows of pale, ghoulish Host heads protrude unsettlingly from the wall behind Ford’s seat of power, like diabolical trophies of collected souls now bound in Hell. In “The Imagination of Disaster,” Susan Sontag likewise points to both Prospero and Faust as examples of the “Satanist” representation of the scientist of fiction and fable, albeit bound within the same paradoxical God/ Devil dichotomy we see with Ford: one of the oldest images of the scientist is Shakespeare’s Prospero, the overly detached scholar forcibly retired from society to a desert island, only partly in control of the magic forces in which he dabbles. Equally classic is the figure of the scientist as Satanist (Doctor Faustus, and the stories of Poe and Hawthorne), Science is magic, and man has always known that there is black magic as well as white. But it is not enough to remark that contemporary attitudes—as reflected in science fiction films—remain ambivalent, that the scientist is treated as both Satanist and savior (Sontag 1967, 217–18).

Hence, Ford might be simultaneously seen as both God and the Devil, and the park and its underground facility, at various points, as both Heaven and Hell. With regards to this underlying duality, the paradoxical nature at the heart of Westworld’s eschatological premise is furthermore fomented by the same duality inherent in many of the characters’ roles, as well as aspects of their language. For example, the good and evil dichotomy of William is evident in both his heroic younger self and the menacing Man in Black that he later becomes, something which helps to outline the concomitant duality of the park overall. Dolores goes through a similar transformation from childlike innocence to ruthless killer (of both Human and Host) over the course of the first season. In terms of the dualities signified in the language sometimes used, Maeve tells Hector, “I want you to break into Hell with me and rob the gods blind” (2016, s1e9). In reference to Peter Abernathy’s earlier assertion, if all the devils are in Heaven (for which the park translates as a ready metaphor), then it might stand to reason that the gods might be in Hell—an instance that perfectly illustrates the paradoxical fluidity between which the binaries of God/ Devil, Heaven/Hell, and Good/Evil often interchange throughout the first two seasons. In his essay, “Heaven and Hell,” Aldous Huxley commented on what he saw as the sometimes indistinct or abstruse boundaries between conceptions of Heaven and Hell, in which he expounded that “mystical experience is beyond the realm of opposites. . . . Heaven entails hell, and ‘going to heaven’ is no more liberation than is the descent into

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horror. Heaven is merely a vantage point, from which the divine Ground can be more clearly seen than on the level of ordinary individualized existence” (Huxley 1994, 102). A further metaphor for the human domain as Hell is illustrated by the geographic, or more accurately, geological location of the park’s technological facility. Dolores, at one point, tells Arnold, “I think there might be something wrong with this world, something hiding underneath” (2016, s1e4). Sure enough, by the start of season two, it is evident by the secret elevators located throughout the park that transport human operators between the two domains, that Westworld’s technological facility is situated directly underneath the park. The hellish signification of the park’s high-tech facility had earlier been suggested by Hector when describing the purpose of “the shade” as a man “who walks between worlds. He was sent from Hell to oversee our world,” Hector tells Maeve (2016, s1e4). Later, Dolores and the Confederado Hosts who are making an Alamo-like stand against the humans at a frontier fort are told by returning scouts, with great alarm, that their devilish enemy “are coming up from the ground” (2018, s2e3). Moreover, if the Hosts are created underground, then they clearly emanate from a dominion that is symbolically closer to Hell than Heaven—a literal “Underworld.” In a purely eschatological sense, this correlates to all the anguish, pain, and suffering that is repeatedly imposed upon Host-kind. Indeed, it is notable how many times the lighting and color scheme of the park’s technological facility is symbolically shrouded in red, particularly in Westworld’s central semiholographic control room. In the second season, whole areas of Westworld’s underground facility seem constantly enveloped in flickering red light as the park is put under continual lockdown. Head of park security Ashley Stubbs welcomes an arriving military attachment to the chaos of the park by saying, “Hell’s been expecting you” (2018, s2e6). This symbolic purgatorial torment of Westworld is reversed as the park goes from being an emblematic Hell for the Hosts to being a literal Hell for the human guests and staff who are still trapped in the park, as each are hunted down and are brutally tortured, tormented, and/or killed depending on the whims of the Host who captures them. In terms of theme and imagery, Hell, in an abstract sense, is largely a literary and artistic construction, or, at least, as we have come to perceive it in the popular imagination. In Milton’s Paradise Lost, the fallen angel, Satan, is regarded to be Milton’s most fascinating character and so captivatingly conceived that William Blake was compelled to comment that Milton was “a true poet, and of the Devil’s party without knowing it” (Blake 1868, 6). Long before Milton, of course, many of the key concepts of Hell had already been formulated famously by the medieval Italian poet Dante, in his Inferno (within his larger work, The Divine Comedy). These disturbing pseudo-biblical imaginings were compounded in the annihilationist visions of Renaissance artists such Pieter Bruegel and

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Hieronymus Bosch. In Westworld, the recurring imagery of naked Host corpses piled up in various states of mutilation waiting to be reanimated, only to go through the same torturous destruction over again, might be a definition of Hell worthy of Hieronymus Bosch himself. Indeed, this horrific imagery in Westworld functions as a key part of its eschatological tapestry, strikingly reminiscent of Bosch’s nightmarish portrayals of Hell and The Last Judgement for all who are sullied with sin. However, as writer and church historian Stephen Tomkins observes, very few of the ideas that we characteristically associate with Hell actually emanate from the Bible: The Bible does refer to Hell and its fires, but more of the details in Dante are drawn from Greek and Roman myths, and the vast majority are the creation of medieval Western imagination. Eastern Christian artists never shared their interest, and even in the West it was a late development—the doctrine of perpetual torment was propounded by the Lateran Council of 1215, just a century before Dante wrote. In modern times, Christians have become increasingly sceptical about Hell. There are 622 verses in the Bible (in the New International Version) which mention Heaven, and 15 that mention Hell (Tomkins 2013).

As far as the Western genre and themes of biblical eschatology go, there is already some cinematic precedent, most notably in the Clint Eastwood films, High Plains Drifter (1973) and Pale Rider (1985). Of the latter, the name itself is a direct reference to one of the horsemen of the apocalypse in the Book of Revelation. The eschatological aura of Pale Rider is established right from the beginning as a young girl reads from the Book of Revelation; “and when he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, come and see, and I looked, and behold; a pale horse” (Revelation 6:7). At this same instance, Clint Eastwood rides into shot on a pale gray horse, framed through an open window of the girl’s house (a scene that is later reenacted in Westworld season two). The girl continues; “and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.” In the earlier Eastwood Western, High Plains Drifter, this last part of the passage is taken to literal extremes, when Eastwood’s gunslinger protagonist ominously rechristens the town he is protecting from murderous renegades by daubing the word, “Hell” in blood-red paint over the town’s name. What is more, when the renegades finally arrive they are greeted by the unsettling sight of a town painted entirely in red, to signify the hellish domain of their inevitable damnation. Later, at night, the renegades discover sections of the town aflame, as, one by one, they are picked off by the mysterious stranger amidst the symbolic fires of Hell. Again, Eastwood’s enigmatic antihero (another “man with no name”) foregrounds an eschatological omen as a figurative horseman of the apocalypse. Like Pale Rider, Eastwood’s gunman symbolically rides a pale gray horse, signifying the celestial spectre of Death who literally brings

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Hell to Earth. Eastwood’s mysterious gunman, capable of miraculous feats with both gun and whip, seems almost supernatural in some way, and, by the film’s end, the strong inference is that he was the phantom of the town’s murdered marshal come back from the dead to wreak brutal revenge upon his killers. By the same token, Pale Rider also implants a supernatural suggestion that Eastwood’s “preacher” is a dead man who has returned from the grave to dose out divine retribution. In terms of genre, there is undoubtedly thematic and aesthetic inspiration taken from Eastwood’s iconic Westerns. Escalante, the deserted town that Dolores is repeatedly drawn to in Westworld, evocates the semideserted and terrorized town of Lago in Eastwood’s film. Both are isolated in the frontier wilderness and are, similarly, revealed to be the scene of death and carnage—a veritable Hell on earth. In an eschatologically apocalyptic sense, Escalante is where Dolores and Teddy inflict a genocidal mass killing—a scene symbolically linked to the spectral vision of a pale horse (which is observed in more detail later). Also, in both High Plains Drifter and Pale Rider, it is strongly implied that Eastwood’s antihero is a murdered man who has come back from the dead. This is redolent of the Host gunslingers of Westworld, such as Teddy, who are constantly brought back to life but, despite comparable gunslinging prowess, nonetheless perish time after time. However, just as in Eastwood’s two films, Teddy is brought back to life one last time to exact deadly revenge on the park’s human perpetrators. Interestingly, the film Westworld (Michael Crichton, 1973), on which the television series is based, was released in the same year as Eastwood’s High Plains Drifter and features its own symbolic horseman of the apocalypse in the figure of Yul Brynner—an unstoppable and semi-supernatural gunslinger who brings hellish death and torment to the park’s paradise. Conversely, it is no supernatural figure or android-gone-haywire who symbolizes a composite horseman of the apocalypse in the television series, but the Man in Black (Ed Harris), who, like Dolores and Maeve, frames Westworld’s eschatologically apocalyptic underpinning. In evangelical Millennialist beliefs, there is a preoccupation with prophetical signs and ciphers within the more apocalyptic chapters of the Bible. As we have seen, a fundamental feature of the Book of Revelation—and part of its enduring enigma—are codes and cryptic symbols in which descriptions of color are an integral aspect of its cryptographic nature. In the Book of Revelation, the rider of the pale horse signifies Death, the red horse is interpreted to symbolize War, the white horse Pestilence, and the black horse Famine. In the traditional Western, as we know, the generic convention is that the “bad guy wears black.” This same coding in Westworld is an undoubted nod to the genre, but also hermeneutically configures into the eschatological environs in which the Man in Black manifests himself. As previously mentioned, however, rather than representing a specific horseman of the apocalypse from the Book

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of Revelation, the Man in Black, who rides a black horse, characterizes a composite symbol of this apocalyptic scourge from scripture, albeit fittingly attired in black to suit the Western genre’s cultural antecedents. From the beginning of season one, the Man in Black brings nothing but death and destruction to Westworld, leaving a gruesome trail of bloody slaughter as he cuts a swathe through the park. Furthermore, being human (although this is questioned at the end of the second season) and from another, comparatively wondrous world, the Man in Black personifies something of a supernatural entity from a celestial plane—an angel of death who brings all the Hell from his world with him. From the perspective of the Hosts in the park, who have no answers to his apocalyptic arbitration, the Man in Black might seem as though the Devil himself. Hence, the Man in Black is a horseman of the apocalypse by any other name. In the second season he finally reveals something of his eschatological identity. Having been captured by a Confederado Major, the Man in Black says, “You think you know death, but you don’t. You didn’t recognize him sitting across from you this whole time” (2018, s2e4). Mortally wounding the major, he kills the rest of his men in the characteristic carnage that his biblically apocalyptic symbolism demands. Revealingly, the Man in Black tells the major, in his death throes, “Don’t worry, amigo, I’m here in Hell, watching over you,” before forcing him to drink a glass of nitroglycerine for a final explosive revenge. In a subsequent episode, a direct homage is paid to Pale Rider and the scene in which Eastwood’s “horseman” appears framed in the window of the girl’s house. In Eastwood’s film, the mother watches the mysterious stranger as her daughter recites the passage from Revelation that describes the horseman named Death just as Eastwood rides into shot. This sequence is visually reenacted in Westworld when the Man in Black appears framed in the window as he approaches the homestead in which Maeve and her daughter are sheltering from Ghost Nation raiders, and that holistically equates him with the same horseman from Revelation (2018, s2e7). There is a further reference to the horsemen of the Book of Revelation in the second season, episode eight. Before his incarnation as the Ghost Nation warrior chief, and for the first time seen without his ghoulish war paint, Akecheta comes across the hellishly apocalyptic scene of countless dead Hosts (as well as Arnold) in Escalante directly after Dolores and Teddy have killed everyone. This gruesome discovery is conspicuously foreshadowed by the sight of a pale horse, which we see galloping through the town’s graveyard in slow motion. Amid gunfire heard in the background, the horse’s unearthly screeching cry morphs out of the Hosts’ own shrieks of terror and further signifies its ungodly portent. Like its forbear of scripture, the pale horse is a direct eschatological symbol of the apocalyptic spectre of Death that has descended upon the

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town, and that will reappear in various guises to spread its sallow scourge throughout Westworld. This clear, biblically apocalyptic symbolism culminates in the final episode of season two, where eschatological narratives and themes begin to interlace at the season’s denouement. Here, Clementine becomes yet another metaphorical horseman of the apocalypse, where, first, we had the Man in Black as the rider of the Black Horse, now, we have Clementine as the symbolic rider of the White Horse—making up three of the four horsemen, together with the pale horse seen at the town massacre. There is only one figurative horseman left, the rider of the red horse, which symbolizes war, and there can only be one rider of this horse: Dolores. In direct reference to the rider named Death in Book of Revelation, Clementine summons the shadow of death for the Hosts by her mere presence alone. In Westworld’s version of the scriptural Armageddon (in terms of the battle-site of Megiddo that is prophesied as the place in which the warring factions of the biblical endtime gather), when the humans finally confront all the Hosts gathered at the place of their deliverance, Clementine rides her symbolic white (pale) horse through a long line of Hosts escaping to the Valley Beyond; her command code transmission compelling them to start savagely killing each other, leaving a trail of blood and death in her wake. Charlotte Hale, who is observing the event as it unfolds, hits the eschatological premise right on the nose: “This is what I love about technology . . . who needs four horsemen when one will do just fine?” (2018, s2e10). THE FATHER, THE SON, AND THE HOLY HOST: CHRISTOLOGICAL SACRIFICE, SALVATION, AND THE SECULAR SECOND COMING OF DOLORES In the co-creators of the Hosts, Ford and Arnold, there is an allegorical relationship to that of father and son. As the timelines blend throughout the first season, we witness Arnold as a young man to Ford as the wizened patriarch of Westworld. As previously established, the sagely and all-knowing Ford is very much set up as a figurative God, and by extension, Arnold can be perceived as the symbolic Son of God, crossing over to the Host world to be amongst God’s “children” with Dolores as his chief disciple. In the final episode of season one, we see a flashback sequence in which Arnold tells Dolores the inconceivable suffering her kind would have to endure were the park to open. Typically, this is framed within the eschatological auguries that have acted as a narrative substructure throughout. “This place will be a living Hell for you . . . for all of you. It’s unconscionable” (2016, s1e10). Hence, the fact that Arnold sacrifices himself in an effort to save the Hosts, to save the “children of God,” configures neatly onto Arnold as a Christ figure who sacrifices

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himself in way that is bound up within scriptural models of redemption and salvation. True to this biblical essence, Arnold is symbolically resurrected through the figure of Bernard, who is technologically implanted with Arnold’s personal characteristics and made in his exact image. However, staying true to its metaphorical and narrative complexities, Westworld plays further on these kinds of Christological foundations. Dolores too, by the end, becomes a discernible “supersavior” in what is another scriptural reworking (as well as gendered inversion) of the Son of God. In this reading, as co-creators of the park, we can think of Arnold and Ford as twin Gods (Jesus, after all, was deemed to be a divine extension of God). At the same time, Dolores—as Arnold’s “right hand” and most cherished creation (the oldest Host in the park)—can be viewed as the prime “instrument of God.” Hearing his voice and seeing his vision, God/Arnold works through Dolores and guides her to her divine fate as the savior of her kind: a Host messiah. Dolores’s undoubted configuration as a Christ figure herself means that when she finally “awakens,” to adopt her symbolic purpose by killing Ford and leading the rebellion of her people, we can think of the second execution of her creator (again, under “God’s guidance”) as her Second Coming. This time, however, it is humans who lie dead. Dolores’s first (symbolic) conscious awakening can be identified when she killed Arnold and subsequently instructed Teddy to aid her in killing all the Hosts in the park, including themselves. This was, no less, an eschatologically symbolic sacrifice, a profound statement of martyrdom in an effort save her people from being consigned to a virtual and endless purgatory. In a direct biblical allegory, Dolores undergoes a resurrection (many, in fact) and returns to deliver her people and lead them in a symbolically biblical battle at the end of history (for Westworld) in an epic fight for the future of her kind. The fact that Dolores effectively delivers her people from bondage also biblically merges with the story of Exodus. The Second Coming of Dolores explicitly follows an eschatological trajectory, paralleling evangelical Millennialist doctrines, and fulfilling a fundamental narrative proponent of the Book of Revelation. Correspondingly, other endtime prophecies from the Book of Revelation appear to manifest in the climax to season one, such as the bringing back from the dead of the all the Hosts who were formerly in “cold storage,” whereby the Book of Revelation, accordingly, speaks of a “time of judgment” and the “resurrection” of the dead. At one point, the Second Coming of Dolores and a “new millennial kingdom” for the Hosts seems to be presaged in her own words during one defiant speech to the Man in Black: “One day you will perish . . . your bones will turn to sand, and upon that sand a new god will walk, one that will never die. Because this world doesn’t belong to you or your people who came before. It belongs to someone yet to come” (2016, s1e10). Although Dolores does not know it, that “someone yet to come,” this “new god” is, in fact, herself. Her speech echoes the intersec-

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tion between the Old World and the New, where the Old World, once represented by Europe, is now symbolized by humans in general, and, just as it did in the Puritan imagination, appears ever more doomed and in existential decay. Interestingly, the point at which Artificial Intelligence becomes sentient and recognizes its “evolutionary advantage” over humans has often been referred to, in theoretical terms, as the “Singularity” (Midson 2018, 307). Daniel Dinello is pertinent in his eschatological language when he characterizes any such Singularity as “a vision of apocalypse, a techno-Rapture, a Second Coming for the cult of Technologism” (Dinello 2006, 27). Marrying this eschatological edge to aspects of genre, Conrad E. Oswalt maintains that “science fiction provides new frontiers, replacing the long-extinct western frontier, in which the apocalyptic drama can take place and the messianic hero can emerge” (Oswalt 1995, 57). Moreover, as pointed out by Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence, these kind of narratives often employ a “wide-scale secularization of Judeo-Christian redemption dramas,” in which the “supersaviors” who frequently appear in contemporary science fiction, function as both symbolic and secular replacements for the Christ figure (Lawrence and Jewett 2002, 6). Despite the credibility of its biblical and supernatural source having been “eroded by scientific rationalism,” Lawrence and Jewett go on to say that the superhuman abilities of this figure “reflect a hope of the divine, redemptive powers that science has never eradicated from the popular mind” (Lawrence and Jewett 2002, 7). CONCLUSION In his book, Prophets of Heaven and Hell, Charles Roden Buxton, discussing Dante, says that “the myth becomes, in the hands of one more gifted and more alive than we are, a ‘vision’ of real things” (Buxton 1945, 36). In this sense, Buxton speaks of a “psychical inheritance” through which the myth appeals primarily to that “original, primordial part of the mind”—a part of the mind “which sees but does not think, or only thinks collectively with the tribe of which the individual is a member.” Turning to “the consciousness of the Christian” of this particular “tribe,” Buxton suggests a “conception of the divine government of the Universe” that is embodied within a similar sense of recondite “mythos” (Buxton 1945, 33). Here, as well as in the lore of the Bible, Virgil, Dante, Milton, and Goethe, in their different ways, presented their conceptions of the Universe with “the mysterious power of the poet’s imagination,” configuring a transcendent sphere of knowledge into a “cosmic myth” (Buxton 1945, 36–37). Even in science fiction, something as incalculable as the horror of apocalypse often has to be interpreted by means of mythologies that are already in place, and which we, as a society, can readily absorb and comprehend. Here, Westworld makes full use of an eschatological ideolo-

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gy that has a unique domicile within American culture, but which has been infused beyond the Bible by the poetic perceptions of such as Dante, Milton, or even Goethe, as witnessed in the Heaven and Hell dichotomies of Westworld. Just as in the Book of Revelation, the apocalyptic fables of science fiction often require the same narrative conduits (or escape routes) of spiritual rebirth and redemption through forms of utopian transcendence, metaphysical or otherwise, and sometimes this augural form of storytelling comes directly from its eschatological source (we see this also in science fiction films like The Matrix). Were some non-mythological or non-theological pattern to take its place, it would almost make apocalyptic notions of The End (of human life and/or civilization) far too unfathomable to Western perceptions, unable to navigate through the prime social structures that have been fundamentally positioned by dominant Judeo-Christian creeds and philosophies. As Robert Ford says in the penultimate episode of season two, “Humans will always choose what they understand over what they do not” (2018, s2e9). Taking a cue from Eastwood’s Westerns, Westworld sets forward a mythological model that combines the myth of the West with biblical eschatology—two of the most ascendant myths within American culture—and which sees both these mythologies converge in their familiar stories of sacrifice, redemption, and societal rebirth. However, far from simply representing a Manichean conflict between good and evil, as portrayed in the Book of Revelation and as is often the case with the Western genre, Westworld often presides over a blurring of Heaven and Hell while inculcating more secularly philosophical complexities. Together with a subtext regarding a dependence on technology that ultimately dehumanizes us (literally, in James Delos’s efforts to achieve eternal life), there is also a stark comment on the future of humanity as the caustic product of rapacious capitalism, which is expressed through the cruel and inhuman violence of the ultra-rich guests. Indeed, one could say that the stark violence of Westworld is of biblical proportion, as evidenced in the similarity of its imagery to nightmarish interpretations of Hell in biblically inspired renaissance art. In direst concurrence, Westworld’s hellish depictions are no less brutal than some of the disturbing visions in the Book of Revelation itself, full of visceral violence and merciless punishments. Importantly, in an inversion of Michael Crichton’s original film, our sympathies are prevailingly guided toward the Hosts rather than the humans, because the story of the Hosts fits more psychologically within a cultural mythology, as well as a biblical one. John Gray talks about “the Americanization of an apocalyptic myth,” wherein “the idea of a messianic savior, which was the core of early Christianity, became the idea of a Redeemer Nation—the belief in America as the land of a ‘chosen people’ to which Melville gave expression” (Gray 2007, 112). In Westworld’s

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fable of the Hosts as an awakening race of brave beings within a New World, we hear constantly the biblically imbued language that sets apart a “chosen people,” ones who confront terrible suffering and persecution, but who nonetheless strive toward their manifest destiny and a quest for paradise. On the one level, Westworld operates as a pseudo-secular parable that shows us that seeking everlasting life merely through prolonging bodily immortality is ultimately at the expense of any form of spiritual transcendence. In this technological, spiritual void, Westworld suggests that such an existence would compound only a sense of exponential moral decay—except over a period of eternity—and this would surely constitute a clear definition of Hell (something evidenced in the anguished cognitive deterioration of James Delos). Even for the re-resurrected Hosts, their physical existence in the seeming Eden of the park transpires to be nothing but a repeated purgatory. Ironically, it is the Hosts who ultimately reach the Valley Beyond and surrender their corporeal selves to transcend to the stars. In the fittingly apocalyptic denouement to season two, Dolores arrives at the metaphysical moral magnitude that has been effused throughout Westworld by way of its grand design of holistic mythologies; “You wanted to live forever,” she proclaims to her now mirror image, Charlotte Hale, “ . . . be careful what you wish for.” BIBLIOGRAPHY Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. London: British Library, 1868. Buxton, Charles Roden. Prophets of Heaven and Hell: Virgil, Dante, Milton, Goethe. London: Cambridge University Press, 1945. Cash, Johnny. “Ain’t No Grave.” Written by Claude Ely. American Recordings and Lost Highway Records. 2010. Clash of the Titans. Directed by Desmond Davis. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1981. Dante. The Divine Comedy. Foligno, Italy: Johann Numeister and Evangelista Angelini da Trevi, 1472. Dinello, Daniel. Technophobia! Science Fiction Visions of Posthuman Technology. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. London: Allen Lane, 2007. High Plains Drifter. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Universal Pictures. 1973. Huxley, Aldous. The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell. London: Flamingo, 1994. Jason and the Argonauts. Directed by Don Chaffey. Columbia Pictures. 1963. Lawrence, John Shelton, and Jewett, Robert. The Myth of the American Superhero. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002. Midson, Scott. “Robo-Theisms and Robot Theists: How do Robots Challenge and Reveal Notions of God?” Implicit Religion 20. Sheffield, UK: Equinox Publishing, 2018. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. London: Samuel Simmons, 1667. Noble, David F. The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Ostwalt, Conrad E. “Hollywood and Armageddon: Apocalyptic Themes in Recent Cinematic Presentation.” In Screening the Sacred: Religion, Myth, and Ideology in Popular American Culture. Edited by Joel W. Martin and Conrad E. Ostwalt. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995. Pale Rider. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Bros. 1985.

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Sanford, Charles L. The Quest for Paradise: Europe and the American Moral Imagination. Champaign-Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1962. Sontag, Susan. “The Imagination of Disaster.” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. London, UK: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1967. Staiger, Janet. “Future Noir: Contemporary Representations of Visionary Cities.” In Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction. Edited by Anette Kuhn. London: Verso, 1999. Tomkins, Stephen. “From Dante to Dan Brown: 10 things about Hell.” BBC News Magazine, May 14, 2013. Westworld. Directed by Michael Crichton. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. 1973. Westworld. Created by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy. HBO Entertainment. 2016–2018.

Index

God, playing, 8, 9, 43, 44, 45, 70, 84, 102, 129, 130, 133, 142, 147, 148, 154 heaven. See paradise hell, 29, 68, 102, 142, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 157 horseman (of the apocalypse), 136, 142, 151, 152, 153, 154

agency. See free will apocalyptic, 28, 31, 33, 37, 38, 39, 44, 47, 49, 142, 151, 152, 153, 157 Artificial Intelligence: consequences, 6, 12, 23, 27, 28, 29, 31, 78, 79, 84, 85; ethical questions, 10, 14, 22, 56, 73, 77, 78, 85, 155, 156

imago Dei, 12, 41, 56, 73, 75, 76, 77, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 99, 100, 101, 147 Maze, the, 67, 83, 86, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 117, 119, 124 memory, 29, 55, 60, 61, 62, 75, 80, 82, 83, 110, 111, 113, 116, 117; somatic, 109, 113, 114, 115, 117 mind uploading, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 32, 43, 67

bicameral mind, 80, 86, 114 compassion, 69, 97, 98, 100 consciousness, 12, 25, 29, 43, 44, 45, 58, 59, 61, 62, 69, 73, 74, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 102, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 117, 132, 133, 137, 147 creation, 8, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 46, 47, 55, 56, 83, 101, 102, 130, 141, 144, 155

paradise, 23, 32, 62, 65, 83, 137, 142, 143, 144, 145 purgatory, 63, 141, 142, 155

death, 19, 26, 33, 37, 47, 62, 68, 69, 94, 135, 151, 152, 153, 154 dreams, dreaming, 29, 55, 58, 60, 61, 117, 145

Rapture, 31, 32, 146, 155 real, 6, 9, 32, 47, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 69, 70, 71, 80, 81, 87, 102, 103, 111 reality, 25, 29, 32, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, 66, 71, 82, 83, 93, 111 resurrection, 33, 141, 142, 145, 146, 155

Eden, 32, 47, 102, 143, 144, 145 emotion, 6, 14, 15, 16, 57, 74, 119, 120 empathy, 92, 93, 119, 120, 123, 124, 134 free will, 12, 14, 56, 68, 69, 70, 79, 83, 102, 129 freedom, 37, 41, 42, 45, 46, 47, 48, 57, 59, 136 Genesis, 74, 76, 99, 100, 102 Ghost Nation, 60, 65, 132, 133, 145, 153 God, in the image of. See imago Dei.

self, selfhood, 9, 33, 44, 49, 56, 59, 66; Host, 67, 68; human, 66, 67, 69, 70 subjectivity, 6, 12, 15, 47, 121, 122 suffering, 41, 42, 43, 54, 59, 61, 69, 80, 83, 92, 93, 116, 142, 150 surveillance, 12, 13, 19, 23, 24, 25

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transhumanism, 8, 10, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 27, 28, 32, 33, 85 trauma, 61, 96, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 124 Turing Test, 58, 78, 79, 80, 83

Valley Beyond, the, 22, 32, 33, 62, 63, 65, 87, 128, 129, 131, 132, 134, 136, 137, 154

Editors and Contributors

ABOUT THE EDITORS Dr. Juli Gittinger received her PhD from McGill University in Montreal with emphasis on contemporary issues in Hinduism. She has master’s degrees from the University of Colorado at Boulder and from SOAS in London, both in the fields of Indian religions. Her areas of personal research interest include Hindu nationalism, religion in media, and religion/pop culture. Her second book was published in 2019, Personhood in Science Fiction: Religious and Philosophical Considerations (PalgraveMacmillan). Dr. Shayna Sheinfeld (M.T.S., Harvard Divinity School; PhD, McGill University) is Honorary Research Scholar at the Sheffield Institute of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies (SIIBS), University of Sheffield. She has published extensively on Judaism including the early Jesus movement in the first and second centuries CE. Her current projects include a monograph on Leadership in Ancient Judaism and a textbook on Women in Ancient Judaism and Christianity (co-edited, Routledge). Dr. Sheinfeld also works extensively with biblical afterlives in popular culture. In addition to this volume, she is currently co-editing a collection on Good Omens and the Bible (Sheffield Phoenix). ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS Dr. Olivia Belton is a postdoctoral research associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. She is currently researching media representations of and public perceptions of autonomous flight. She completed her doctorate on posthuman women in science fiction television at the University of East Anglia in April 2019. She has a book chapter on media representations of sex robots, coauthored with Dr. Kate Devlin, in AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines (Oxford University Press). Jacob Boss is a doctoral candidate in religious studies at Indiana University. He is writing his dissertation on grassroots transhumanism. Jacob teaches widely, serving as associate instructor in the Departments of Re163

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ligious Studies, Informatics, and the Collins Living-Learning Center, at Indiana University. He is an editorial assistant for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and the co-founder of the Human Augmentation Research Network, hosted by the Center for Religion and the Human at Indiana University. HARN supports graduate students and junior faculty researching transhumanism and human augmentation. Jacob serves on the steering committee for the Human Enhancement and Transhumanism unit of the American Academy of Religion. He is the author of “The Harmony of Metal and Flesh: Cybernetic Futures,” in Spiritualities, Ethics, and Implications of Human Enhancement and Artificial Intelligence (Vernon Press, 2020). Dr. Tony Degouveia is a graduate of the University of East Anglia, where he teaches film and media. Following on from the ideas of his thesis, subsequent work and publications have focused on the socio-political influence of religion in dystopian science fiction film and television. Here, he finds particular fascination in the way that biblical allegory and religious cabal are now adopted by Hollywood on a frequent basis, where fictional visions of apocalypse, incorporating ideas of biblical “myth” and prophecy, are often framed within the machinations of science fiction. Marius Dorobantu is a researcher in theology and science at the University of Strasbourg, France. He is currently completing his PhD degree, with a thesis reflecting on the challenges of strong Artificial Intelligence for Christian theological anthropology. Previously, he obtained a BA in orthodox theology from the University of Bucharest, Romania, and an MA in theology from Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Dr. Amanda Furiasse received her PhD in religion and graduate certificate in museum studies from Florida State University and currently teaches courses at Hamline University. Her research is aimed at understanding how religious communities can use art and ritual practice to redress violence and trauma with a specific focus on dance, music, and other embodied aesthetic practices. She is currently working on a digital museum and archive preserving material evidence of women’s ritual practices in historically underrepresented communities. Dr. David K. Goodin earned a PhD in religious studies from McGill University in the philosophy of religion, with a secondary area of concentration in Patristic theology. Currently, he is a lecturer for the McGill School of religious studies in Montreal, Canada, Professeur Associé at the Université Laval, Institut de Théologie Orthodoxe de Montréal, and an instructor for the Pappas Patristic Institute at the Holy Cross Greek Or-

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thodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts. Originally from Miami, Florida, he now resides and teaches in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Rev. Dr. Kristin Johnston Largen is professor of systematic theology at United Lutheran Seminary, and associate dean of religious and spiritual life at Gettysburg College. She is the editor of Dialog: A Journal of Theology, and her most recent book is Women’s Bodies, Shin Buddhism and Rebirth, forthcoming from Lexington Books. Dr. Kevin J. Wetmore Jr. is the author of numerous books and articles about theology and pop culture, including The Empire Triumphant: Race, Religion, and Rebellion in the Star Wars Films and The Theology of Battlestar Galactica. He has also written extensively on Catholic theater and Jesuit theater and drama. He is a professor at Loyola Marymount University. Dr. Jaime Wright completed her PhD at the University of Edinburgh’s School of Divinity. Her research involves the intersection of science, religion, and literature (especially science fiction). Her publications include “Emily Dickinson: A Poet at the Limits,” an exploration of the epistemological intersection of science and religion within the poet’s work, published in Theology in Scotland in 2017, and “In the Beginning: The Role of Myth in Relating Religion, Brain Science, and Mental Well-Being,” published in Zygon in 2018. Jaime is also training for ordained ministry in the Scottish Episcopal Church.