Westworld is bleak. For fans of the show, it surely isn’t the first time reading a sentence to that effect, but it’s a popular refrain for a reason. The wealth and depth of themes are scattered all through the show, be it the nature of humanity as both creator and destructor, the illusion of free will, how people are shaped (or not) by their relationships, and the list goes on, but very few of them are hopeful. There is no shortage of literature on any number of themes or symbols offered in the show, and that makes for a robust online community. Almost regardless of the theme, the outlook of humanity is the same: doomed for self-destruction because, simply, that’s our nature.
Perhaps the most prevalent, and important, theme we have is how people make choices/decisions, how those choices/decisions affect their behaviour, and the cascading effects that result.
It’s crucial to distinguish between what is a choice and what is a decision. While those terms might be used interchangeably in everyday conversation, they’re not really the same thing. Decisions, generally speaking, are influenced by external forces, while choices stem from true freedom.
The distinction is important. We like to think we all have freedom. No one likes to think our lives are beyond our control. But think of everything we do on a daily basis, as human beings, and ask whether we’re really free to make these choices:
A lot of people drive to work. Very few people drive to work down the wrong side of the road. That’s not really a choice, because we know doing so would likely result in property damage and injury, and potentially even death. To avoid those negative outcomes, we make the decision to drive down the correct side of the road.
That’s obviously an extreme example – most people don’t have a particular hankering for driving into oncoming traffic – so let’s think of something a lot of people have experienced:
An undergrad gets out of university and has a hard time finding a job. In the meantime, student loan interest is accumulating and bill collectors are calling. After six months, they get an interview for a job for which they’re wildly overqualified and will be underpaid. Does the person keep letting the bills pile up and look for a better offer elsewhere, or do they take this job because they need the income immediately? Many (most?) people would choose the latter.
This undergrad made the decision to work for the company, not a choice. They needed the money and the stability to satiate their finances and self at the time. Now, can they keep looking for another job? Of course, but the decision to take the first job has already been made.
We can say this person has a choice; they could simply let the bills pile up in search of a better opportunity. But what if they have a spouse, or a child, or an elderly family member they’re looking after? Do they let them go without food, without shelter, without medicine? Of course not. They are not really free to pursue their dream job, regardless of their desires. (We could argue for days whether those are external forces, or whether the desire to care for our family is an internal expression of will. We’ll get back to that.)
That decision, in turn, will affect this person’s behaviour. After months of being unemployed, now they have to get up at 6:30 AM every morning, they have to go to bed earlier every night, they have at least appear to be cordial with colleagues, they have to dress appropriately, and so on. And then there’s the cascade effect beyond that: do they look for another job, or stay there and hope for a quick promotion? Do they get a second job to supplement income? Do they save for a house, or save for retirement? There are also the micro-decisions that come with that particular job when it comes to transit routes, favourite lunch places, joining a company gym, or any number of other decisions people make daily without really thinking about it. From one decision to take a job, where the person didn’t really have the freedom to make a choice, a host of new behaviours and new decisions are introduced that were not previously considerations. That person’s future has been fundamentally altered forever.
It’s a fundamental ‘Westworld’ question: do we really have a choice? In fact, William (The Man In Black) asks this exact question in the penultimate episode of season 2:
What is a person but a collection of choices? Where do those choices come from? Do I have a choice? Were any of those choices ever truly mine to begin with?
As we ponder what William means here, let’s remember how his story, as we know it, began. He hopped off the train on his first visit to Westworld, and early in his visit, he picks up a can of food dropped by Dolores, the future de facto leader of the host revolution. At the time, it was simply William being William; he’s described as a kind and caring person earlier in his life. He was just picking up something a stranger dropped and returning it to them, like a good person would.
Was it his choice to make, or was Dolores directed by her masters to be in the street, loading her food on the horse at the exact time William himself would be in the street, thereby ensuring their ‘chance’ encounter? If it’s the latter, was it still William’s choice to make? Remember, he’s described as someone who cares for others. Extrapolating from that, we can assume that William wouldn’t walk by a stranger who had just dropped their groceries. If it’s in his nature to help people who need it, and Dolores was programmed to be in need in William’s view as he’s roaming Sweetwater, did he really have a choice?
From that point, the cascade of decisions follows: he starts to care for Dolores more than his betrothed back on the mainland; he helps her on her quest to get to the centre of the maze – which we would find out is a symbol for the hosts’ awakening consciousness – wherein he gets obsessed with the centre of the maze itself. That leads Williams on a lifetime of mass murder and abject cruelty of the hosts as he becomes fixated on beating Ford’s game. His nature and life completely change, and it all stemmed from the ‘choice’ 35 or so years ago to help Dolores pick up some dropped groceries.
(As a sidebar, one of the major themes of the show is how the Westworld park reveals a person’s true nature, which leads us to wonder if William was ever really a good person at all, or if it was a decision influenced by external forces like parents and teachers. It’s something his brother-in-law-to-be Logan brings up as well. It’s a fascinating topic but it’s for another day.)
That one small decision leading to large ripple effects is also often discussed. In the season 2 finale, Dolores has dialogue about replicating humans as hosts, and how a very small, almost indecipherable change in a human being’s personality or speech pattern has significant reverberations down the line. As Dolores says, “A tiny fracture that grows into a chasm.”
Do we really have a choice, or are we being thrust into a series of decisions? And do we understand all the consequences, intended or otherwise, that result from those decisions? The future is so murky for most people that it’s hard to predict what people may or may not anticipate, but it’s a chilling thought: are we really in control of our lives? If we’re not, are we solely responsible for the consequences of those decisions, or do our external forces share the blame?
These are not easy questions with which to grapple. Again, we all like to think we have some modicum of control in our lives, but do we really? Do we really have a choice about going to work at all for a month? Do we really have a choice of not feeding our pets? What about filling our cars with gas so we can get to a doctor’s appointment two hours away? How about simply buying groceries? We like to think these are all choices, but it’s not easy to say they are.
As Westworld is wont to tell us, the nature of the person determines their decisions. Would you or I have made the same decisions (choices?) as William when he first set foot in Westworld? I’d like to think I wouldn’t, but I’ve also never been in his situation. Regardless of that, even if we like to believe we have choice, if our very nature influences that ‘choice’, then is it really a choice? Or is our nature a force applying pressure on us to make a decision? Is that nature ‘our’ nature, or is it a conglomeration of teachings from parents, professors, peers, and other authority figures? If we never really have a choice, are we really responsible for the consequences?
Again, these are not easy questions to answer, but it does force the viewer to challenge their outlook on life. It forces us to think of what choices we make, whether they were really choices, and how much responsibility we should bear.
One last question: given how we’ve organized society, is having a choice ever possible?
Cliffy's hell-hole 