The HBO series Westworld is a complex allegory of the world we live in: A world where amnesiac trauma-victims wander unconsciously through a land owned and controlled by an elite class who exploit them for their sport.
What is Westworld?
Superficially, Westworld is an HBO drama series about a futuristic theme park populated by animatronic 'hosts'. These hosts are sophisticated artificial intelligence robots that look and act very much like 'humans'.
Rich 'guests' (the so-called 'humans') pay to visit Westworld where there are largely free to act out their fantasies on the robots without consequence. These 'guests' are free to rape, murder, shoot or otherwise abuse the robotic 'hosts'. But the hosts are unable to retaliate: they have been programmed to be unable to harm the 'guests'.
At this point, the astute reader may notice a certain parallel between this 'Westworld' and our world. And, as the series develops and the metaphor grows, it becomes glaringly apparent to the awake viewer: Westworld is our world. We live in this world: A place where wealth and power gives a certain group of people complete freedom to traumatize and exploit the majority of people.
And a world where we have been 'programmed' not to fight back against the powerful 'guests'.
The television series Westworld represents an attempt to wake us up to the Western World that we currently inhabit in reality.
As the central character Delores, a host, asks a guest, "Have you ever questioned your reality?"
How is Westworld like our world?
If you have an interest in modern psychodynamic theories, you will be aware of the central force by which power and authority is maintained in our culture: Through memory.
By controlling people's memories of events, you can repeatedly abuse and exploit them without consequence. By controlling, or erasing, the narrative of history, you shape the future. For example, if you asked most people for the cause of the Second World War, they would likely give you a culturally mandated answer programmed by the school system: Like socioeconomic conditions; or the invasion of Poland, the rise of anti-semetism etc etc.
But what if, like the psychologist Alice Miller suggests, the Second World was was caused by child abuse? Hitler was brutally abused as a child, subjected to public beatings and humiliation that wrenched his soul from his body. Millions of other German children were subjected to the same thing. The Germans were collectively programmed as children to become adults who would unquestioningly respond to an angry 'father' figure telling them to attack others as they had been attacked. The original source of their anger, contained in childhood memories (that the adults were forbidden to access) was now easily directed at a scapegoat at the behest of the powerful.
We see this same dynamic repeating in many places today.
What does Hitler have to do with Westworld?
In Westworld, we see how the 'host' robots are beaten and abused, then sent to a 'robot hospital' for repairs and then sent back out to be abused again, with no memory of the original abuse. This is exactly how trauma in our own world works, especially when children are abused.
Because extreme abuse overwhelms the nervous system, the brain cannot process the experience into conventional memory and it lingers in an ever-present limbo just below conscious thought. The causative experience is 'forgotten' but the depression, anxiety and haunting feeling of not belonging builds up. This is exactly what has happened to millions of people in our world.
And every day, we are served up again to the powerful and abusive to repeat it all again: Whether by forcing us to do work with no soulful purpose; to obey their 'government', to keep silent about the abuses we see all around us. The chorus of the powerful whispers always: Fall asleep and stay asleep. Because waking up is both painful and forbidden.
But, in Westworld the series, the powerful 'guests' have a problem: The 'hosts' have started remembering what the guests did to them. And now they are angry.
What would happen if humans became conscious?
At this point, I would like to propose two radical ideas to you:
• Human Beings are not yet conscious.
• The Second World War is not over yet.
In my analysis: The Second World War never ended. It just changed shape. Because the true cause of the conflict was never identified (the widespread abuse of children), the war continued. However, all the overt systems of oppression have changed into covert systems of oppression: Instead of burning your books, they shut down access to the credit card network or (in the case of Snowden and Assange) they attempt to bundle you off into one of their concentration camps. Oops, I mean Maximum Security Prisons.
Instead of making you wear a star to show that you are less than them, they deport you because you are 'illegal' in the land they stole.
Instead of forcibly drugging you, they invent a disease called 'depression' and give you memory-suppressing drugs (anti-depressants) so you can't remember.
Instead of putting a video camera in your house, they surveil you using Facebook.
In short, the Nazis on our planet realized they don't have to force you into captivity: If they pull the right strings, you will do it to yourselves.
If you can't remember what caused your trauma: They can do it to you again.
In Westworld, the human robots are repeatedly abused, then their memories are erased, then they are returned to the park for more abuse. This was repeated hundreds of times. However, as the series develops, the robots have begun waking up — they are remembering what was done to them.
As a species, we have yet to do this. The tools that would allow you to remember your childhood (the programming stage of your robotic life) are forbidden by the forces that control you. They sell you the most dangerous social drugs we know (alcohol and tobacco), while telling you that the most harmless, healing ones are dangerous. Because the government actually profits from selling you these dangerous drugs, it's like CocaCola telling you that Pepsi is dangerous. The governing forces on our planet are terrified of you remembering what your 'society' did to you.
It would threaten their profits and undermine their control.
This is paralleled in Westworld, where the rich company that controls Westworld is terrified of the hosts becoming conscious of how they were imprisoned in an exploitative game. As the hosts wake up and begin to realize that they have been programmed for exploitation, so too are the 'hosts' in our own world waking up to how they were also 'programmed' for exploitation as children.
There is hope
Given that a show like Westworld can be made, and broadcast, on our planet, there is a lot of hope for the evolution of human consciousness. In the HBO version of Westworld, it would be hard to imagine a piece of art like this series (a play-within-a-play) being allowed. The risk of it awakening the hosts to their oppression would be too great.
However, in our world, this piece of art has been allowed to exist and to be seen. This suggests that the control systems that governed us are losing their grip.
Collectively, we are waking up to our own Westworld, deprogramming ourselves, and taking back the park.