Abstract: The current analysis centers on the concept of “pragmatic love” and its three core characteristics – compassion, courage, commitment – as encompassed in Blade Runner 2049 (2017, director Denis Villeneuve). The analytical protocol pursues a two-step procedure: the definition of each of the three dimensions and its subsequent integration within the mediatic phenomenological experience. The investigative discourse outlines further potentialities of the concept of “pragmatic love” in everyday encounters as well as its ideological extensions into “awe” as both a necessity to action and a state of mind.
The fundamentals of pragmatic love
Throughout history, love has been perhaps the most observed and praised phenomenon, in its various appearances, experiences, delusions. From an emotion to a mental state, love as “pure love” seems to have positioned itself at the center of humanity’s preoccupations with itself. In contrast to that, the current analysis encompasses the three core characteristics of “pragmatic love” – compassion, courage and commitment – identified for this paper through extensive literature review and as displayed in an iconic cinema production: Blade Runner 2049 (2017, director Denis Villeneuve). The live-action cinema at the intersection of Western and Eastern visions of life, AI and humanness conveys overwhelming messages of past reluctance to see beyond a static identity model with the simultaneous subliminal push towards understanding one’s own impact on the world and towards a dialectic dynamization of identificatory mechanisms. In doing so, they reveal the individual’s propensity to become a self-stylizing architect capable to grasp freedom in the name of radical responsibility, so that he/she turns from a “victim of history” to whom “life happens” into an active agent in the creation – or co-creation – process of the future and of reality. Accordingly, the current analysis takes into account three levels of the debate on the relationship between humans and robots, respectively bio-engineered “replicants”, while reflecting on the dimensions circumscribing historical phenomena: socio-cultural, economic-political and technologic-educational. The central paradigm of “pragmatic love” is defined both as a state of mind comprising emotions, thoughts, ideals, and as the necessity to action in the realm of quotidian events and challenges. In order to analyze the internal architecture of “pragmatic love” as creatively explored by the three cinema releases and in light of its core features, compassion, courage and commitment, I follow the protocol of defining each of the concepts and subsequently critically observing their integration within the cinematic conglomerate on multiple levels. At the end, I wrap up major ideas and suggest further research objectives in relation to similar mass-media projects detailing the not-so-visible extensions of “pragmatic love” as an individually internal affair seeking externalization.
The 2017-released Blade Runner 2049 (director: Denis Villeneuve) is a reformulation of the century-old adage that being a human is the most beautiful thing in the whole universe. Decisively belonging to the neo-noir science fiction cinematic category, Blade Runner 2049 takes place in 2049, 30 years following the events of the initial Blade Runner (1982, director Ridley Scott), an era in which bio-engineered humans known as “replicants” are slaves. The plot centers on K (short for his serial number, KD6-3.7), a Nexus-9 “replicant” who works for the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) as a “blade runner”: an officer who hunts and “retires” (kills) rogue “replicants”, admirably embodied by Ryan Gosling in one of his most memorable roles. As he “retires” Nexus-8 “replicant” Sapper Morton, he finds, tracing the sight of a tiny flower, a unique sign of natural life in the chemical desert which is Morton’s protein farm: a box buried under a dying tree. The box contains the remains of a female “replicant” who died during a Caesarean section, demonstrating that “replicants” can reproduce biologically, previously thought impossible. K’s superior, though, Lieutenant Joshi, fears that this could lead to a war between humans and “replicants”. She orders K to find and “retire” the “replicant” child to hide the truth, as further investigating this secret threatens to destabilize society and the course of civilization. Acclaimed by specialists for its staff performances, direction, cinematography, editing, musical score, production design, visual effects, and faithfulness to the atmosphere of the original film, and criticized for its over-long runtime, Blade Runner 2049 has grown increasingly popular with audiences since its release: distinctly, viewers and critics alike recognize in its visual construction of the future the prerequisites of a world of immense discrepancies and unlimited greed, on the one hand, and in its characters predecessors of humans increasingly becoming unwelcome on their own planet – not by means of a nefarious, over-exhausted nature, but by means of their fellow humans’ malevolence, on the other hand. The neo-noir science fiction genre delivers crucial dramaturgic pretexts to this more-than-dystopian vision of the consequences of current decisions, developments, choices, but Blade Runner 2049’s significant contribution resides in its ability to convey seeds of hope and positive solutions in the purifying power of water – which surrounds the final, climactic battle, and eventually drowns the past, symbolically – as well as in the transient, but consistent suggestions and appearances of the natural habitat – such as the flower and the tree at the beginning of the movie, the sand and the sky, the ocean. While the initial Blade Runner was bleak in itself and did not attempt any catharsis-inspiring denouement to transcend its exclusively dark interiors shying away from any sort of daylight or open spaces, Blade Runner 2049 employs precisely daylight and open spaces as metaphors for humanity’s resurrection as a place of warmth, acceptance and conviviality. Unlike Deckard’s character which incorporated the existential anguish of early 1980s due to the Cold War’s threat of nuclear conflict, K’s composure and trajectory is clearly one which mitigates hope and faith in the name of an authentic greater good – not the one promoted by mass/social media, politicians and mega-corporations. As to be shown further below, within these parameters of dramaturgic discourse, what might be described as “pragmatic love” with its three major features – compassion, courage, commitment – circumscribe the existence, relevance and development of robots and of AI within the human community.
Compassion: self-love as acceptance of the other’s “radical otherness”
Compassion is one of the three elements contained in the structure of pragmatic love as an existential attitude, defined as the ability to feel, to identify with and to integrate the emotions of someone else. Two parameters are fundamental in the equation of compassion: empathy and integrity. Empathy means precisely the skill to immerse into someone else’s emotions, to feel them at the same level as the other person does. Generally, there are two categories of empathy: the cognitive one, referring to a type of empathy in which someone else’s emotions are rationally known without any real involvement of feelings, and the emotional one, which is central piece of the current argument. Integrity, on the other hand, implies the ability of the empathizing subject to keep his/her own individual boundaries and not to get dragged by and into the emotional flows and ebbs of someone else, regardless of how strongly connected they might be. While empathy is the foundation of interhuman interactions, it is integrity which allows compassion to become a functional skill.
In Blade Runner 2049, compassion is compounded by a sense of curiosity so typical for the average humans, but displayed by K, the main character and a “replicant” himself: K, the driving force beneath the story-line which is essentially a detective plot, tries to solve a mystery about his own past, the history of “replicants”, the power of memory, and about what it means to be a human being. Touched by the inconspicuous presence of a flower under a dying tree – both symbols of decay, resurrection and the continuation of life –, K sets on a journey of initiation towards what might reveal him his own humanity. Throughout the movie, compassion and curiosity become the prerequisites for hope: the abandoned children in the orphanage and the half-“replicant” offspring Ana Stelline, now a grown-up, point out towards an even more distant future in which the acceptance of others’ individual and radical otherness as well as differences is the foundation of the world, and not artificial concatenations. This is eerily reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s visionarism displayed and described in great detail in the literary works of Philipp K. Dick and Isaac Asimov, who dreamt and wrote about interstellar travel and human worlds of a future ahead of millennia, made possible by the crucial cooperation between humans and robots (Vest, 2009, 95-98; see Riesman, 1950; Haraway, 1991). K’s final gesture as he quietly “dies” on the stairs of the building in which Ana’s laboratory is located after he had brought Rick Deckard (from the initial Blade Runner) to meet his daughter for the first time, is one of defiant challenge: they are artificial “replicants”, bio-engineered robots or cyborgs, more human than humans because in their mechanical outfit things do not change, they do not deteriorate and do not evolve despite events and experiences, unlike humans who learn and grow and change? A timeless question in itself, it is not answered in Blade Runner 2049, which subtly encourages viewers to debate and discuss potential meanings, options and preferences, instead of solely being passive recipients of mindless entertainment. Moreover, though, Blade Runner 2049 hints that compassion comes in humans with the ability to think freely and to act accordingly, and as the vital necessity to appreciate nature and art so clearly designed to enrich our souls.
In Blade Runner 2049, compassion is a means to convey hope – even when it appears as hope-against-hope and a simulation in the futile quest for a presumable human core. As such, compassion mediates the advancement towards the discovery of a courageous vision, attitude and behavior, which then allows for selflessness in otherness.
Courage: living wholeheartedly
The word courage has developed from the Latin word cor which means “heart”. Traditionally, it refers to the quality of mind which enables one to meet danger and trouble without fear, because the heart is the seat of emotions and hence keeps one’s spirit, temperament, way of being. Boldness as a choice and willingness to confront agony, pain, danger, uncertainty, intimidation, compounded by the moral fortitude and physical strength to act in accordance with higher values in order to protect those in need, are essential parts of courage as it has been transmitted throughout the centuries. Recently, though, the understanding of “courage” has shifted from its initial meaning of direct confrontation with adversity towards a softer approach: the ability to live in the present, to enjoy one’s life and to immerse oneself in the authenticity and vulnerability of being one’s true self. Therefore, living authentically and in tune with one’s vulnerable identity have slowly turned into the crucial components of the late modern conceptualization of courage: the inner urge to be faithful to one’s nature and propensities rather than to adapt to social pressures and the enthusiasm to open up towards others and to share one’s innermost thoughts, emotions, expectations are essential features of a life lived courageously, wholeheartedly.
In Blade Runner 2049 discloses its protagonist’s pursuit on the quest for the meaning of life: K’s journey towards who he hopes he might be – a real human, a product of the love story between a man and the female “replicant” for whom the man had left everything behind – which started with hope as catalyst ends up in a grand gesture of acceptance and amor fati in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words. K learns to confront his own yearning for being human and to radically accept, in one of the most heartbreaking cinema scenes in recent history, its impossibility. Additionally, like in the initial Blade Runner, rage and revenge seem to be no options for “replicants”, as instead they turn inwards and bring forth the best possible choice. K’s story is not so much about living plenarily – although it magnificently displays the loss of individuality and serenity in a world too heavily reliant on technology and on its monetization in parallel with the sterility of technological overcompensation at the costs of simplicity, joy and immediate togetherness. K’s story is about the value of courage in facing life as it comes and in dealing with it accordingly: in dignity. While Blade Runner 2049 explores profound issues of identity ethics, human extinction, cybernetic enhancement and their philosophical counterparts such as freedom and control, wealth and oppression, love and indifference towards children, it does not approach K’s decisions, gestures, actions from an ethical perspective, but subtly underscores them with a sense of acute curiosity, which then leads to courageous undertakings. Eventually, K becomes more than a distant echo of Franz Kafka’s (Josef) K, the main character in the notoriously famous novel The Trial (Der Prozess, written in 1914-1915 and published posthumously in 1925): a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Kafka’s novel tells of the intricacies of modern systems which are neither correct nor transparent, despite being made by humans for humans – and in its own way, Blade Runner 2049 tells a similar story motivated by absurd, abrupt, aberrant developments, in which the individual does not have a voice and the courage to embrace one’s own destiny and death is the only ethical alternative to exist in dignity.
In Blade Runner 2049, courage is plainly bravery in the face of inevitable and inevitably painful truths in the name of a shared human condition which no-humans so desperately long for. Consequently, commitment creates the transition towards strength and warmth which then turns pragmatic love from an abstract concept into a concrete skill.
Commitment: perseverance in gratitude and respect
The third and probably the most important characteristic of pragmatic love is commitment: it binds compassion and courage into the flexible, unpredictable network of life and allows them to essentially contribute to the functionality of individuals. The three elements constituting commitment are perseverance – the ability to keep on going even when the perspectives seem bleak and the energy is low, or particularly in those moments –, gratitude – the capacity to see events, humans, things, as parts of a greater whole instead of internalizing them as insurmountable obstacles –, and respect – the skill to allow everyone and everything to exist in their own radical truth irrespective of our expectations. Commitment goes far beyond the obligation to keep one’s promise: commitment is an existential attitude which serves, simultaneously, as a moral compass in times of confusion, so that difficulties are not only observed and defeated, but crucial lessons are drawn from them, as well.
Blade Runner 2049 explores the perishability of humanness and questions its universalist prerogatives: in the face of adversity and loneliness, what can the individual do? K does not have an answer. He does not even start with looking for an answer. He is neither motivated by boredom and a general sense of malaise like Rick Deckard nor by grief provoked by the loss of a beloved brother – instead, he commits himself to a journey of initiation in which he acts both as the protagonist and as the antagonist. A mere tool in the hands of ruthless, psychopathic police superiors and corporation executives, K emulates human subjects in his quest. Like the tiny flower which kickstarts his journey or like the soft snowflakes which end it, K is merely an insignificant piece within the continuously moving mechanism of the world. In doing so and despite his mechanical bio-engineered structure, K manages to turn his insignificance into a voice of significance, into a cosmos of meaningful transformation and consistent interactions which, eventually, lead to pivotal experiences. Particularly in his encounters with the elderly Rick Deckard, in whom K feels like finding a father due to his assumptions to be his child, there is this warmhearted dynamic of intergenerational transfer towards a better future, a future of hope and well-being for all. Their gestures of commitment to being their true selves brings them together on the stage of potential worlds to come: their first encounter in the derelict casino of Las Vegas and the ensuing fight are reminiscent of long-gone life-stories, as are the decrepit holograms of Elvis, Marylin Monroe, Liberace. Once a symbol of limitless possibilities, the casino is the hide-out of dreams and hope. In Deckard’s fatherly figure, K attempts to see glimpses of his own humanity – fleeting glimpses, as it turns out, when Freysa, the leader of the “replicant” freedom movement, discloses the gender of Deckard’s and Rachael’s child. Once again, though, K’s commitment to truth and unconditional humanness leads him to find the best outcome for all those involved: transcending his own otherness as a true-to-himself “replicant”, he reunites father and daughter.
In Blade Runner 2049, commitment is the thread which unites humans and non-humans in their common quest for hope and a future to hope in/for. More than an ideological artefact or an aesthetic construction, commitment confers solidity and identificatory cohesion to narrative lines which would otherwise fall into the banality of epic overcompensation. Eventually, in grasping the depth of love as a pragmatic endeavor and not as an ideatic state of mind and soul, humans and robots learn the value of togetherness in a world – present as well as future – of uncertainty, evil and cruelty.
Conclusion: towards a phenomenology of (pragmatic) love as awe
This article has been focusing on the core characteristics of pragmatic love as a means to conceptualize and develop a sense of urgency towards the necessity to embrace – rather than reject, as traditionally taught – one’s budding uniqueness. In discussing Blade Runner 2049 which centers on the relationships between humans and robots or bio-engineered “replicants”, the theoretical elements shifted gradually from the phenomenological experience to the quotidian participation and made possible the slow emergence of a state of “awe” in relation to both the mental-emotional perception and its subsequent processing of love as a pragmatic endeavor. “Awe” is understood, therefore, as an existential attitude which allows the consistent exploration of one’s individual embedding into the socioeconomic system, be it external or internal, in a lighthearted, non-judgmental manner; this puts “awe” in direct correlation to the “sublime” as described by Robert Greene in his writings: a combination of Sigmund Freud’s “oceanic feeling” and of the Stoics’ understanding of one’s mortality as expressed in “memento mori” (Jung, Carl G. [19702]: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche: Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Volume 8, translated by R. F. C. Hull, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, pp. 129; Greene, Robert [1998]: The 48 Laws of Power, New York: Penguin Books, pp. 143). Furthermore, Blade Runner 2049 transcended both at the time of its release and in the years ever since prevailing stereotypes on science fiction productions, so that in its central journey of initiation, the fears and confusions of late-modern young men and teenagers, notably male ones, are realistically and emotionally depicted. Simultaneously, Blade Runner 2049 decisively moves away from the classic plot of giving in to one’s negative emotions, while pursuing narrative policies of overcoming sadness, loss and the wish to retaliate. In addition, Blade Runner 2049 deepens its prequel rather than turning into its epigonic continuation, while paying honest tribute to its aesthetic-ideological sources, surpassing its model and developing its own universes, with clear messages and profiles, with an unexpected pivot towards a rarely encountered diversity of images and ideas acknowledged in a Hollywood production so far. Finally, while being a futurist cinema work, re-creating avant-la-lettre the world of tomorrow, a dystopian space dominated by bleak oppression and hopelessness, as well as violence and resentment, Blade Runner 2049 contains the very seeds of a beautiful resurrection, fresh and convincingly attractive in its colorful plurality.
Lastly, Blade Runner 2049 is a tale of loss and hope – and of overcoming one’s own shortcomings in the name of truth and of the greater good. While love is scarce in the general context of the movie with its far-reaching overwhelming dystopian landscapes and the foundation of the narrative line is the quest for a child resulted from the love between a human and a “replicant”, compassion and courage serve as catalysts for the inquiry which eventually reveals the motivating power of commitment as a liberation and empowerment skill and as a tool – both for humans and for non-humans. On the background of a detective story with its typical twists and turns globally expanded, the main character K enterprises a journey into the past – of mankind and of himself – which is supposed to set him free. Nonetheless, while the mystery is solved, the basic questions of the movie are not, and instead the three parameters of the definition of pragmatic love are combined in a somewhat transgressive manner: courage appears as bravery in face of adversities and commitment is the ability to keep on going in the name of truth and of the decision to be one’s authentic best self. In such an interpretation, love as pragmatic love is an emotional space of the individual caught up in impossible dilemmas who has to choose oneself in the protocol of saving the world. Blade Runner 2049’s ending offers one of the most powerful lessons in self-love and self-acceptance in recorded cultural works: a life lived in the name of truth is circular in itself in terms of significance and relevance.
It might be argued that self-awareness of one’s own humanity begins with the reflection on the transience of human existence in relation to the potential endlessness of artificial intelligence and bio-engineered entities created to simplify life. At the same time, what has been conceptualized as “pragmatic love” permeates the sordid numbness of the quotidian flow of events and allows for a sense of awe to raise within ourselves: this is perhaps the goal of arts, to awaken the sleeping warriors inside the viewers and to send them on irresistible journeys of self-discovery. It is the objective of further scientific endeavors to delve more deeply into the dynamics and mechanics of those journeys, outlining with acuity the joys and perils of wholeheartedly exploring adventures, experimenting unchartered dimensions and rewriting individual and collective stories.
