Story Background
“The Little Black Box was originally published in Worlds of Tomorrow in August 1964. It can now be found in The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick on pp. 19–39.
Plot Summary
1 – Bogart Crofts—a State Department official—instructs Joan Hiashi to go to Cuba to work on spreading Zen Buddhism among the local Chinese population there. Although an Asian-American, she is chosen for her ethnic background and her specialty in East Asia. She later discusses her orders with her lover Ray Meritan. Meritan turns on the television just in time to watch Wilbur Mercer, the visible face to a new religion spreading across the United States, with the potential to replace Zen Buddhism. Meritan hold the handles of a black empathy box so he can experience Mercer’s suffering as he walks to the place of his death. He holds it for 45 seconds. None of the 20 million followers of Mercer will know what happens when he finally reaches the place of his death.
2 – Bogart Crofts is expressing his concern over the rise of Mercerism with Douglas Herrick, the Secretary of State. They know that Meritan is sympathetic to Mercerism and Herrick has concerns with Hiashi’s mission. Since both are telepaths they must know about each other’s loyalties. They are also trying to figure out where Mercer’s broadcasts are coming from. They meet a Chinese agent, Mr. Lee (also a telephath), who is going to work with Crofts to find out what Hiashi knows. He reports that the Communist Party thinks that Mercer may be non-Terran.
3 – Joan Hiashi meets Mr. Lee at a Chinese restaurant in Havanna. Lee is the head of the Havana Institute of Asian Studies, which is one of the few places that allows the study of Buddhism in the Chinese Communist world. After discussing a Zen paradox, Hiashi suggests that Lee is a telepath, but Lee denies this. Hiashi, knowing he is lying, goes on with the meal.
Ray Meritan is preparing to play his harp on the radio, but is quite shook up from a rock that struck Mercer during his last use of the empathy box. The jazz commentator at the station pries into Meritan’s beliefs. Meritan denies being a followed of Mercer. While playing the harp for a live broadcast, Mercer uses his psychic ability to collect news that the Mercer has been seriously injured, that the government is outlawing Mercerism, and they are also banning the use of empathy boxes. Instead of reporting this news after his performance, Meritan confesses to the public his support for Wilbur Mercer.
4 – Back in Havanna, Mr. Lee arrests Hiashi on behalf of the US government for her knowledge of Meritan’s participation in the Mercer movement and her own sympathies toward the cause. He explaisn that the Communists are working with the US government to suppress the Mercer movement. She announces to the people in the restaurant that she is being kidnapped for being a Mercerite. She sees an old Cuban with a black empathy box and uses it. She feels that she is in a desolate area and a man is standing before her. It is Wilbur Mercer. He tells her that she is not alone. When she releases the handles, Lee scorns her for her belief in such a dubious man.
Later Lee is reporting to Crofts and Herrick about the arrest of Hiashi, who Lee thinks converted to Mercerism in front of him. Croft volunteers to try to empathy box and reaches for the handles.
5 – Meritan is walking in the rain, knowing he cannot return to his apartment without being captures. He goes to a bar where he is known as a jazz musician. He desperately wants to use an empathy box since the news that Mercer was injured. He gets a hold of one from a woman and it allows him to listen into the conversations of Herrick.
Crofts releases the handles and announces that he did not Mercer, but did make contact with Meritan. He confirms that Meritan is not Mercer, and that he does not seem to know much about him. He tries to convince them that Meritan is not a threat or the center of the movement and resigns. Herrick realizes that the Mercer movement just gained another follower.
6 – Meritan and Hiashi (who was released as part of a scheme to trap Meritan) meet at the airport and purchase tickets to Los Angeles. They plan their escape, hoping to use their telepathy. They are given a sample of cereal from a vender. He looks strangely like Wilbur Mercer. In the box of dry cereal is the instructions on building an empathy box.
Empathy box is a real thing I guess.
Analysis
“The Black Box” is an important story both on its own and for its connection to Dick’s most famous novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Thematically, “The Black Box” and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are tied around an exploration of empathy as a means to challenge an unjust world. Empathy is institutionalized in the form of a new religious movement called Mercerism, but since it is a decentralized movement, made up of networks of solidarity, it can best be understood as a form of bottom-up resistance. Let me make my case for Mercer being a bottom-up religion first.
Wilbur Mercer is never seen in the story, except through the eyes of the major character Joan Hiashi. She seems him twice, first when she uses an empathy box, the major tool of the religion and second as a street vendor smuggling to her the instructions about how to build a new empathy box. Mercer is never seen, but he is recognized immediately when he is seen. The government debates where he can be found and wants to suppress the movement by crushing its head. This is a futile strategy because in practice Mercerism has no single head. It is a hydra or a web instead. I am not even sure that the empathy box is a technological device. It can be constructed with things found around the home. It may just be an aid to a collective delusion.
People are drawn to the religion for the feeling of solidarity it brings to people sharing an experience. In contrast, the ruling regimes is a highly individualist form of Zen Buddhism, which encourages solitary reflection and meditation. Even Hiashi admits that Zen Buddhism is a form of stupidity, extoling the virtues of being easily manipulated. The Chinese regime is communist, but also opposes Mercerism because it is a threat to their monopoly on collectivist through. It exposes the hypocrisy of state socialism. Mercerism provides a more authentic solidarity than anything that can be provided by the state. It is actually an unstoppable force. The ending scene, where a street vendor smuggles instructions on building an empathy box show that the web is alive and well despite government repression. As we learn when Meritan and Crofts use the empathy box simultaneously, the device seems to create unity among all the users, not simply between the user and Mercer. This also suggests the networked nature of the religion.
New religions movements in “The Black Box” (as well as elsewhere in Dick’s work) is a threat to the hegemony of the ruling regime. Dick sees ideological conformity as the key to social control. New religions are not the only, but still a significant, means to undermine that ideological superstructure. This does not necessarily mean we should sympathize with the values of each religious movement just because they promote diversity. Many are reactionary or authoritarian. Mercerism, however, seems to be a religion that emerges from Dick’s real values and his emphasis on the human need for empathy.
Through the empathy boxes, Mercerism creates a type of alternative media. Ray Meritan’s career as a live broadcast radio musician suggests the limits of traditional media. It can only carry one message at a time. He cannot announce the news about the suppression of Mercerism without interrupting his broadcast. It is also susceptible to government control. The truth of the message is not even very clear. Mercerism promises a more networked and diverse method of communicating across society. Not just a new religion, Mercerism is a form of Internet.
Resources
Philip K. Dick Fan Site review.
Why religion is not the best path toward empathy.
Philip K. Dick Review 
I’m not sure what your definition of religion is in regards to what Dick wrote.Of course He didn’t usually write of instituted religion,but rather the experience of it in the external world,as he did here.This can’t really be called religion then,but is rather,as I specify it,pseudo religion for want
of a better term or word.
Of course,there is here,a rare example in this case,the orthodox state religion of Zen Buddhism,that requires no outer experience such as felt by mercerism.It is therefore,a repressive,political regime,rather than a knowledgeable philosophy,one grounded in ignorance and intolerance,which is needless to say,one whose rulers lacks the human benefit of empathy.
Is this what you mean by religion then,something governmental?The phenomenal contact with Mercer is actualized,and will never become a political movement of state power,but it also depends I suppose what you mean by politics.It is certain though,that empathy is the true realization of real humanity,one that will crush a totalitarian empire.
These omnivorous individuals,are comparable to the androids in the novel derived from TLBB,”Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep”,in that they have no possession of comprehension of empathy.The radio DJ Buster Friendly,is cynical of Mercer,and exposes him as a political fraud,but the power of empathy is authentic and transcendent,and brings salvation.It prevents “us” from sinking to the same inhuman level as them.
I do not disagree. I probably would still say that Dick’s sociology of religion includes both the manipulation of state power and a certain respect for new religious movements (although “The Transmigration” does a good job of showing how ridiculous that subculture is).
As far as this post, I suspect I was commenting on religion as it appears in the text, not generally in Dick’s writing. Here the state religious is strongly felt, which is why I focused on it here. As far as this post was concerned, I cared little about Buster Friendly, or the I Ching, or the UFO cult in “Confession.” For all that, you can see chapter six of my forthcoming book.
I wrote these posts one at a time, story by story, sometimes the analysis part looks more broadly, but that was not generally my intention here. And as always, I am an anarchist so I am interested in power and how it functions. My interest in Dick’s sociology of religion pretty much stops when it gets loopy.
I have to say,that the Mercerism experience is as “loopy” as it gets,especially when a fictitious messiah comes to life.This does happen in the pages of his literary fiction,and is experienced by his world-at-large in a positive and sanguine manner of acceptance,rather than by a lot of drug addled hippies expostulating with comments like “wow man,that’s really far out”,”cosmic” or “jeez,I don’t believe it,really freaks me out”!His societies are peopled with earthly individuals trying to succeed in the quotidian world,not “way out freaks”,although there are a few,but I suppose he liked multifariousness.The fact that they have to come to terms with weird occurrences,sometimes for their benefit,as in DADOES,is an inevitable consequence of change and discovery in what you call the liquid world.Kipple I suppose in DADOES,is another good example of this.
Of course,even to the worldly,these experiences can sometimes be frightening,and veiled deception can be a blessing.An excellent example of this,happens to the ordinaty “hero” of “Faith of Our Fathers”,where after encountering “absolute truth”,wishes he was back on the hallucinogenic drug that “protected” him from a ghastly reality.I assume that such a genuine epiphany can be an uncomfortable experience in the search for truth,but seems yet another factor of “your” liquid world.I can’t say the same for the diabolic stigmata that will be his nemesis though at the end,which definitely sounds loopy,but happens within the pages of the novella!
The religious subculture as you call it,seems to lie with Zen Buddhism,whose followers have no idea of actual religious experience other than what their leaders have told them,who unfortunately have no more idea than them it seems,just more power.These are the ones who are loopy,not the sane,non-institutionalized individuals who profess to actual divine encounters.The same can be said of the spurious UFO cult in COACA.
I’ve always liked Dick’s “loopiness”,it’s part of his style and character.This isn’t to misunderstand me,it gives a unique feel to his world superstructure that you want to write about.It really just adds spice to the whole work.I think what you are doing is excellent.
Glad you like it. I think this blog has more mature ideas about Dick than the stuff in “Neither Kings nor Americans”, which is really about American writers more broadly. I really do plan to get serious about the novels after Nov. 1. (Currently I am preparing two public lectures for the end of the month.)
See my Otaku article on Malthus (It is in the current issue) for my grounded reading of kipple. I suggest kipple is a metaphor for the wasted lives of late capitalism. The people on Earth in “Do Androids” are themselves “kipple.” Not a loopy concept for me, indeed it is the central question of post-scarcity and technological unemployment.
You remember I compared “kipple” to Gubbish and Manfred to John in “Martian Time-Slip” and DADOES ? It has to do with entropy,a natural process,but unlike Manfred or perhaps John,we can’t view it in action.It seems then it takes different forms,such as social decay.The more scientifically advanced we become,the more it seems society declines.
The empathy box has no scientific reasoning to ground it,but like Ubik,it works by faith,and the results are salvific.It seems it will protect “humanity” from the technocracy that is making “us” more inhuman.