Bladerunner Thoughts

Not sure why I think it relates or matters, but for some reason the discussions erupting from Bladerunner 2049 have seemed linked to the discussion of what is ART for me.

I think because the discussion of what is ‘human’ plays so much on all the challenges one faces with any ‘word’. My thoughts: the question might be what does ‘consciousness’ mean? How do we determine it? For ‘human’ maybe the question is simply about the general ability to reproduce with other humans. Which is challenged because of course Ana might be a hybrid. It’s not simple anyway, but it’s as if you are trying to make it simple, and the answer is, well even that changes. Just as we get back to the question of baldness — when you lose 1 hair? When you have less than 20 hairs? When you have less than 50% of your hair? When you can see more than 20% of your scalp at any one time from a distance of x? And then you remove one hair and it’s over? So Wallace did not have biological eyes and one can assume others had other tech implants, but is it because they ‘started’ as human? Can they not become not human? And that doesnt have to be a moral judgement, that can be a simple semantic situation since really the problem is, all of this relies on _language_ more than anything. Language is human derived and used to separate the universe, specifically because we each have a sense of “I” which is separate from everything else. And language is used both for inner ‘I’ monologue and for communication with external world. And I think that the consciousness part is about having that sense of I. Which I think is addressed in the movie as being able to rebel. You can only rebel if you have consciousness. You can only rebel if you see yourself as an ‘I’ and you see yourself as conscious. But also, there is the idea of ‘love’ — being able to care about someone/something outside of yourself. This can also only be done if you see it as outside of yourself. It seemed very existential in that it was an individual journey. Just because on ‘individual’ recognized ‘I’, loved, became conscious, that did not mean that anyone or everyone or all things or a type of thing, did. Because the the very act of individualization is the act of consciousness. I am still up in the air about insects being conscious but I think perhaps they are, and it is just on a ‘different’ level. Why does the level matter? I guess only in our ability to assign consciousness and our ability to care. We can care about insects, but sometimes we choose not too because we have a hierarchy that we think we need for functioning. I think this is also what we do with animals. And what we apparently do with people to some degree — slaves. Slaves in this case were replicants, but there were of course AI and the poor. Everyone accepted different levels of consciousness in order to feel unified, social. If people accepted the consciousness of the others, “there would be war,” in that people would feel threatened and not feel superior or feel they were happy compared to anyone else. Hierarchy seemed very important. It was interesting to me that K wanted to be with a lower caste girl and did not think he had a soul and remained at ‘baseline’ but still wanted and received joy from some things. Was it that he didnt have anything to live for or was it more that he would not be able to die happy — like which was the problem with his given life? Because he seemed to want to live. He did his work and enjoyed his gf. Was it that he would not die happy because he did not know what it meant to be sad? Or that he did not know what it meant to be loved? But he would have found that out, no? Becasue Joy loved him? Or was it that until she could gain self-awareness, she couldnt really love him, and the same for him? I’m not sure.