14 Comments
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Erik Davis's avatar

This is hilarious. And depressing! It reminds me of a point I made last year: that while "AI is Weird," that weirdness is always in a complex relationship with the banal. Weird and Banal are the new polarity!

William Bass's avatar

Great summation of his theology and ethics.

Christian's avatar

Always so good!

kath/AliaK/invisibleart.space's avatar

love this article. thanks for sharing it

Erik Davis's avatar

Dick definitely references and knew about Thomas as well as Henry. He also read a lot of Jung so almost certainly came across that discussion. He also probably first read about "gnosticism" in Jung.

willhelpme's avatar

“Attachments are not allowed on this comment”

Your loss.

Jeremy Harshman's avatar

Wild that this showed up randomly in my feed. Up until 5 months ago, I lived about a block from this apartment. I used to walk over to it and think about PDK pretty often, and wonder if the people living there knew he’d been there first. I doubt it.

The devil made me do it...'s avatar

wonderful piece, did he also reference Henry's twin, Thomas Vaughan? Also curious to know if Jung's alchemical understanding of the Jesus fish would have influenced him, thanks!

Carolyn Garcia's avatar

This is just far out! PKD has such an amazing imagination. Always my favorite SCI Fi author, he molded my mind in such grand

novelty, I not recovered yet. 😆

Erik Davis's avatar

Glad you enjoyed it. I love that phrase: a mind molded in such grand novelty....

Steve Silverton's avatar

This piece made me get PKD in a new way. I hadn't seen the 'spiritual subversive' in him before... I guess he oscillated between some kind of ragged faith (of the 'negative capability' variety) and

a despairing nihilism...But I had mainly felt more the latter in his work...Thank you!

Erik Davis's avatar

PKD's mature religious orientation did have a ragged and subversive quality, as he empathized with the underdog. In other ways his faith was a kind of auto-generated fiction that attempted to lift him out of despair. Lots going on, for sure, but he was never a mere nihilist.