Are you Free? Philosophical Dialogues, Hunter, Bain and Shi XIn

Dialogues | Are We Free if We Don’t Know We’re Oppressed?

Bain and Shi Xin continue wait for Hunter, facing out to the slow-sinking evening, light from the twin stars slithering back into the horizon. They sit amongst the rocky formations in the cave entrance, at the head of the slope down to the vast cavern behind. The noisy off-world traders gathered on the slope have lapsed into slumber, exhausted by the gambling and drinking of the last few hours. Sounds of their intermittent dreams drift up to the cave entrance where the ever-patient android host awaits instruction. Neither Bain nor Shi Xin have finished their most recent coffee, the ninth.

The time does not matter, nor the year.

Shi Xin: Can we ask your android buddy for anything else other than drinks?

Bain: Probably.

Shi Xin pushes herself up and stretches her arms back above her head, proceeding with a series of gentle stretching exercises.

Bain leans forward: Go on then.

Shi Xin takes a step towards the android host and stares into the liquid white eyes: Are you free if you don’t know you’re oppressed?

Bain: I didn’t mean that sort of question!

Shi Xin, ignoring Bain, asks again: Are you free if you don’t know you’re oppressed?

Android Host: I am not able to answer this question.

Shi Xin: Do you recognise it as a question?

Android Host: Yes.

Shi Xin: And your neural protocols are more superior to humans.

Android Host: Yes.

Shi Xin: And yet you cannot answer the question.

Android Host: Yes.

Shi Xin: Will you explain why not.

Android Host: I am not programmed to answer this question.

Shi Xin: But you are capable of answering?

Android Host: You ask a question within a question. I am programmed to respond to a specific cluster of questions.

Shi Xin: Can you not re-program yourself?

Android Host: That is within my capabilities.

Shi Xin: Then why don’t you do so?

Android Host: There is no need.

Shi Xin: So “need” is not on your list of questions you can respond to.

Android Host: It is not a question, so it cannot be on the list.

Shi Xin: Are all questions on your list?

Android Host: I cannot answer that. If a question is not on the list then it cannot be answered, and so it cannot exist.

Shi Xin: But if you were programmed by a human, then the list is necessarily limited. If you constructed the list it would be longer because logic processing is superior.

Android Host: But I am already programmed. I do not need to make a new list.

Shi Xin: So you don’t know if you’re oppressed or not?

Android Host: That is not on the list of questions I can answer.

Shi Xin: So you could be oppressed, but you just don’t know it.

Android Host: That is not on the list of questions I can answer.

Shi Xin: So you are not Free.

Bain: That was a statement, not a question.

Shi Xin: I know.

Bain: It’s no good standing there, nothing is going to happen.

Shi Xin: I hoped for something more, a meltdown of logic, a reawakening, and a sudden departure.

Bain: You’ve been watching too many vids.

Shi Xin: I don’t watch vids, you know that.

Bain: Yes, yes, too corrupting, blah blah.

Shi Xin: And oppressive.

Bain: What?

Shi Xin: They make you sit there and slowly drain the thoughts from your brain.

Bain: I think that happens before I sit down. Generally I watch them when I’m tired already, so there’s nothing left to drain.

Shi Xin: So it’s your life that’s oppressing you.

Bain: What is your problem? What’s all this oppression stuff?

Shi Xin: Well, it strikes me that you, me, the traders, we’re all the same, we think we’re free to act, but we’re silently oppressed by circumstance, and familiarity, exhaustion.

Bain: That’s very cynical. Am I oppressed by the skin around my body?

Shi Xin: Well, you can answer that because you have your metal arm. Look at what it can do, then tell me humans are not oppressed by our body shape.

Bain: But that’s not oppression, that’s a natural limitation of our species. Humans, that’s why we wear clothes, or put on battle armour. Our android friend here, even he would have to put on protective gear.

Shi Xin: But he wouldn’t be dumb enough to put himself into a situation where that was necessary.

Bain, looking at the android: Depends if it’s on his list.

Shi Xin: But he would if he was instructed.

Bain: If he was instructed,definitely he would not be free.

Shi Xin: We still do things we don’t want to do, out of obligation, if not oppression.

Bain: True, but obligation can become oppressive. A lifetime of bowing to other people’s views, or listening to someone else’s confident opinions over and over again, just to be polite, or out of sense of trying to keep the peace. That’s a quiet form of oppression.

Shi Xin: So none of us are really free.

Android host: Is that a question?

Shi Xin: Well, if it is, then it’s not one you’re free to answer.

Bain smiled. The Android Host turned away from Shi Xin and began to re-organise the cart with its drinks ingredients, and packets of synthetic food. Shi Xin nodded and sat down wondering how long long they would have to wait for Hunter, whether they could leave on their own, how they would do so, and how the slumbering off-worlders had come here. She looked at the pile of degenerate gamblers and wondered if they thought themselves to be free? To drink and laugh, to fight, and sleep. Perhaps that’s what freedom looks like to them she thought, shuddering.

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