Dick’s Gnosticism

Philip K. Dick, Sci-Fi Philosopher, Part 3 - NYTimes.com

Ask yourself: what does one do in the face of a monistic all-consuming naturalism? We can embrace it, hoping to wrest whatever shards of wonder and meaning we can from inquiries into the brain or the cosmos sold as brightly colored trade hardbacks, written by reputable, often prize-winning, scientists. Or we can reject scientific determinism by falling back into some version of dualism. That could mean embracing a spiritual or religious metaphysics of whatever confection, or — if one is still nostalgic for the disappointed modernism of, say, Kafka or Beckett — by falling back upon a lonely, alienated self in a heartless world of anomie.