[kyo3]

I posted this content the last time this post made its way through here and it seemed there was some interest so here it is again: https://wuu.bi/the-religious-experience-of-philip-k-dick/

[hnzix]

Kanye West has also had eerily similar religious hallucinations. [0]

When I recounted the story to a friend who is a drug and alcohol recovery nurse, she snorted and said these kind of pink elephant episodes are common in recovering alcoholics. Although to play the spiritual devil's advocate, one could argue that mortifying the flesh has long been a mystical practice (accessing the etheric plane, if one believes in that modality).

Jung's Red Book [1], written and illustrated during a (debatable) psychotic break and only recently released from his archives in 2009, is also a fascinating attempt to integrate the spiritual with the scientific.

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/philip-k-dick...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)

[whalabi]

Thanks for those links, fascinating

[reitanqild]

Read that and then had to look him up.

So today is the first day I can remember having heard about Philip K. Dick and also the day when I learn he has written the stories that became Blade Runner as well as The Adjustment Bureau.

[magpi3]

His works are also the basis for Minority Report, Total Recall, and The Man in the High Castle

[taneq]

Also "A Scanner Darkly".

[pmoriarty]

And arguably influenced The Matrix, The Terminator, and The Truman Show as well. Virtually any modern film that questions reality has probably been directly or indirectly influenced by PKD.

[tempguy9999]

I dunno about PKD. His books are often lifeless to me, and I have other reservations but about blade runner, I read the book (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) many years ago and IIRC there was virtually naff all in the films that related to the book.

So has anyone read the book and can say I misremeber, that the film and the book were at all similar? Honestly curious.

I watched the original again recently and it stood up rather well. The one thing that really dated it wasn't the curved CRTs which I can overlook but when Deckard had Rachael in his flat, and pushed her hard against a wall when she apparently wanted to leave. Such an action and attitude wouldn't be acceptable these days.

[qazpot]

The book and the movie are very different but share the same philosophical underpinnings.

> pushed her hard against a wall when she apparently wanted to leave. Such an action and attitude wouldn't be acceptable these days.

I am tired of reading such comments where the current moral standards are being used to judge works of fiction written 50 years ago.

[afthonos]

Of all the possible defenses of that scene (Deckard is a villain; Deckard literally does not consider her a person at this point in the story; Deckard is trying to break her association with being the rich niece of the inventor of replicants; others), this is the absolute worst.