How the Frak Do I Know If I'm Human?

Warning: BSG and Blade Runner spoilers are hiding in these paragraphs.

I've been catching up on the last season (season 4) of Sci-Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica. The show is amazing. Like Frank Herbert's Dune, it's not just for sci-fi fans. The series delves deeply into the lives of the characters, as well as issues in politics, religion, and ethics. Since I started watching the series at its start in 2003, a small similarity between Battlestar Galactica and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner) had always interested me: the concept of humanity, the paranoia that accompanies not knowing if you are human or not and the question, “What defines human?” But what has caught my attention recently was the concept of fate and destiny that is explored in the show. I will discuss both here. Firstly, the concept of humanity that appears in both Battlestar Galactica and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.

Since the beginning of the series, when the humans discovered that their rogue robot creations (known as cylons) had evolved to look like humans, a paranoia spread amongst the people. Anyone could be a cylon. That paranoia was made even stronger when one of Battlestar Galactica's own officers' turned out to be a cylon. Sharon Valerii's programming kicked in, and she shot the Commander at point blank. Sharon hadn't even known herself that she was a cylon. Now the people realized that anyone could be a cylon and not even know it, until their programming suddenly kicked in, causing them to hurt or kill their fellow officers and companions. This meant that all memories of a past life, any memories of family, friends, and childhood, could all be fake. Sharon remembered being a child, she remembered her family, she remembered growing up on the colonies and joining the military. All the memories she had were false memories, implanted in her programming. Each human on the ship then began to wonder if they themselves were a cylon too. Sharon hadn't known she was a cylon. And she most definitely was.

This concept was explored in Philip K Dick's 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The android named Rachel had always been convinced that she was a human, until an identification test revealed to her that she was not. All of her memories of childhood and of her whole life, up to her model's incept date, had been programmed into her. This leads the main character, the android bounty hunter Rick Deckard, to wonder about his own humanity. Is he an android himself? Are all his memories fake as well? Rachel hadn't known that she was an android, and she most definitely was.

These questions in turn bring up the questions “What is human?” and “What defines humanity?” What is the nature of cylons, or androids? Can they love, can they feel? In Battlestar Galactica, these questions are posed countless times, often into the face of a cylon itself. Most importantly though, these stories force us to ask ourselves, “What is human?”. What makes us human? Is it our ability to love and to hate, to mourn and to rejoice? If robots can do those same things, that is not what makes us human. Are we human because we make mistakes? Robots make mistakes too. What is it then? Are humans and robots the same?

Now to discuss fate. At the end of the third season, Galen Tyrol and three other “humans” on board Galactica discover that they are cylons, and that they were cylons the entire time. In the fourth season, Tyrol asks one of his fellow newfound cylons, “How do I know that every move I make isn't programmed?” This got me thinking. Even in the real world, as well as for the humans on the show, we don't know that every move we make isn't “programmed.” If fate exists, if each of us has our own destiny already planned out for us at the beginning of time, then every move we make, and every move we have ever made, was “programmed” into us at conception, or even earlier. If fate exists, humans on Battlestar Galactica have just as little choice in their actions as cylons do. Tyrol's fear is apparent in his voice when he asks the question of himself and of those around him. Fate is a very scary thing. It means you've no control over your life, and no control over your actions. All one can do is resign oneself to one's own fate.

Then again the thought occurs, “What is human?” If cylons or robots have their programming controlling their actions, and humans have fate and destiny controlling their actions, what sets the humans apart from the robots?

Of course this is all speculation based on fiction. But it really gets one thinking; it gets one questioning one's own motives and even existence. What is human? What is humanity? Am I really human? Philip K Dick-esque paranoia ensues.