“Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world. The disarray. I choose to see the beauty” (“The Original”). These words, spoken by an actress playing Dolores, a being created and scripted by humans, encapsulate the complexity of Westworld. Dolores’s statement simultaneously challenges us to make sense of the series, and to make choices about how we think about the hosts, humans, and the world. Dolores says she chooses. But do we choose to believe her or not? The show calls for a response from viewers based on our own notion of what counts as choosing. We are thus reminded that a simple word such as “choice” has a meaning that, paradoxically, we might have to choose.
Beyond, the writing, acting, filming, composing, editing, and directing, is the forcing. Westworld brilliantly forces the viewer to take sides: Not just in terms of whether we’re rooting for the humans or the androids, or for the Man in Black or against him, but to take sides at a deeper level. Westworld forces viewers, for example, to say not just what we think about choice, but what we mean by the word choice. That is, we find ourselves agreeing and disagreeing about the notion of choice based on how “we” use the word. Yet by calling into question fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human, Westworld makes that very “we” unstable and uncertain.
The chapters that follow in this book confront the reader in much the same way the show confronts the viewer. In the “brave new world” in which we cannot tell the difference between a human and host, the series continually requires us to check our assumptions at the door. As Robert Ford says, “’Cause you don’t want to change. Or cannot change. Because you’re only human, after all” (“The Bicameral Mind”). If you’ve accepted Westworld’s challenge, then you’re ready to explore fundamental questions about what it is to be a human in the world. We hope you enjoy reading the chapters and exploring the questions as much as we enjoyed editing the book.
A final note: One of the original co‐editors of the book was Susanne E. Foster. She died, unexpectedly, before the book was ready to be edited. But she was involved in the inception, invitation, and selection of the chapters. This volume belongs as much to her as it does to Kimberly and James. Susanne was someone deeply pained by the injustices she saw around her, especially environmental degradation, the continuing injustices done to Native Americans, and the mass slaughter of animals for human consumption. She still sought to see some beauty in this world, as Dolores does, but would also have agreed with Robert Ford’s words: “We murdered and butchered anything that challenged our primacy. Do you know what happened to the Neanderthals, Bernard? We ate them. We destroyed and subjugated our world” (“The Well‐Tempered Clavier”). In our many discussions about the show, we talked about an insight of Cora Diamond’s, namely that there can be “experiences in which we take something in reality to be resistant to our thinking it, or possibly to be painful in its inexplicability, difficult in that way, or perhaps awesome and astonishing in its inexplicability.” 1 Susanne saw the pain inherent in the questions Westworld raises, but also relished the idea of a group of philosophers addressing that pain and, in accord with her favorite philosopher, Aristotle, recognized that it is wonder and astonishment that prompts us to try to understand.