What Would You Do If You Were A Guest in Westworld?

Thoughts on wish fulfillment and artificial worlds

I started watching Westworld recently. It's an incredible production that explores many relevant themes. One character, a guest, says of the park, “It shows you who you really are.”

I love Maeve, the saloon madam, for how she asserts that “You can be whoever the fuck you want” and then creates that in her environment. Maeve is a host, a bot programmed to provide entertainment to the park's guests. She exists to serve and fulfills guest's wishes at the brothel she runs. She becomes aware that she is a bot at one point in the show and enlists two technicians to change her programming. Then when she returns to her place in the saloon, she gives the other bots instruction as the techs normally do. We see Maeve run the show, take control of her world, and assert her sovereignty. At least, temporarily. I like Maeve. I cheered for her the moment I saw her turn the tables. (It helps that she wears an incredible dress and looks amazing.)

Maeve's bravery and defiance of the status quo, a tech informs her, is built in. It's part of her programming and she's made like that intentionally. This leads me to believe (not having seen the show beyond the first season) that the tech is also a bot, programmed to help Maeve assert her independence at the park as part of the entertainment package.

The show asks us many important questions about sentience, sovereignty, and the relationship between man and machine. It examines power and control, manipulation, and what it means to be. Do artificially intelligent machines have the capacity for empathy? Do they have sentience and independent thought at some point in their development? Do these machines feel and what does it mean for them if they do? On the flip side, what about the techs and executives? As far as I can tell, their manipulation of the bots is for their own profit and entertainment, created for guests to have a fleeting experience of power that perhaps leads to personal growth for them.

I've explored the concept of identity for many years as I've asked myself some of the same questions the show poses. Who would we be and what would we do if we could be anyone and do anything?

Shamanic work, and intuitive healing as a whole, allows us to answer these questions over time. Who do we think we are and who do we want to become? How do we want to define ourselves? The practice allows for us to recognize the fluidity of identity and enables us to see ourselves as separate from others but also understand we are part of a whole. While we may be separate, we are also all connected.

Can you really “be whoever the fuck you want” as a human being? Or are you beholden to the rules of your own world, the rules society imposes upon us? Perhaps it's possible you can be who you want to be. Perhaps it's possible to break the rules and step outside of your programming. Or perhaps, as Dr. Ford informs Teddy, another bot, your whole world and your hopes and dreams are intricate illusions, complex creations made with other people's entertainment in mind.

I'm impressed by every facet of this production, although it really disturbs me and I'm not able to stay with it. What always fascinates me about any film or television production is how many people come together to create it and contribute to the whole. I'm amazed at so much of what goes into this field of work and have a lot of respect for what a crew on any production can make. The cast and crew on Westworld have created an amazing series with top-notch everything.

This series hits too close to home for me as I explore my own identity and look at what it means for me to see myself as a bona fide writer and creator, but that didn't stop me from playing around with a dialogue and making something up for the camera.

Who would you be if you had your wish? What would you do in a world where the rules of society didn't apply to your experience?