Mercerism: Communal Empathy and Its Limits

On Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1967) and the films Blade Runner 2049 (2017) and Blade Runner (1982).

What makes us human? Dick's story about androids emphasized their lack of empathy, while the movie adaptations portrayed the "replicants" as plenty capable of emotion, but unjustly treated as servants or targets.

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