The Lathe of Heaven takes place in a dystopian future where climate change, overpopulation, food scarcity, and global conflict wreak havoc on the world. Meanwhile, George Orr, a man who possesses the strange ability to have “effective” dreams that change reality, finds himself increasingly at odds with Dr. William Haber, the psychiatrist Orr solicits to cure him of his peculiar condition. While Orr is a passive man who thinks it’s wrong to use his effective dreams to play God and meddle in the natural order of things, Haber adopts an opposite stance, arguing that Orr has an ethical obligation to use his ability for the greater good of humanity. Haber’s reasoning draws heavily on Utilitarian ethics, which argue that people should strive to act in ways that maximize well-being or happiness and minimize suffering for the greatest number of people. Motivated by an exaggerated Utilitarianism, Haber increasingly exploits Orr’s powers, using hypnotic suggestion to make Orr dream into existence a utopian world—or, at least, what such a world looks like to Haber. However, Haber’s attempts to maximize universal well-being often backfire, creating new, previously unimaginable forms of suffering to replace the old forms he wished to eradicate. For example, Haber’s attempt to eliminate overpopulation results in Orr dreaming of a deadly plague that effectively murders six billion people. The novel uses Haber’s failed attempts at altruism to criticize Utilitarianism—specifically its failure to account for the unpredictable consequences of even well-intentioned actions—and the inability of any single person to define what happiness and suffering mean for the totality of humanity.
Orr’s interpretations of Haber’s hypnosuggestions show that Haber’s vision of a better world is oversimplified, and that happiness is relative. Orr technically follows Haber’s hypnosuggestions, but he does so in roundabout ways that reveal how subjective Haber’s suggestions really are. When Haber gives Orr a vague hypnosuggestion to improve the quality of life by eliminating overpopulation, Orr’s unconscious responds by creating a deadly plague that kills six billion people. Orr’s macabre solution to overpopulation emphasizes the suffering Haber’s well-intended vision imposes on a significant portion of the population. While eliminating six billion people from the planet improves the quality of life for those who survive the Plague, the opposite is true for those who perish. In other words, the maximized happiness the Plague creates for survivors happens at the expense of victims’ suffering. This consequence shows that Haber’s Utilitarian ideology requires a person to make uncomfortable, highly subjective decisions about whose happiness matters most, and when the amount of happiness achieved is great enough to justify the suffering that also results. Calculating the utility of an action (in this case, eliminating overpopulation) is highly subjective and not as unambiguous as Haber would like to believe.
Haber’s attempts to make the world a better place, which just so happen to disproportionately improve his social position, suggest that his supposedly objective vision of a better world is biased toward subjective self-interest. At the beginning of the novel, Haber is a mediocre, not particularly well-known sleep researcher. His relative unimportance in the medical world and society at large is reflected in the unimpressive state of his office in the Willamette East Tower: he’s not even important enough to snag an office with a window. However, all this changes once Haber starts influencing Orr’s effective dreams, feeding Orr hypnosuggestions that improve Haber’s status. Over the course of several sessions, Haber acquires an office in the HURAD Tower, the most important building in Portland, which features an enormous window overlooking downtown Portland and distant Mount Hood. Haber becomes a well-respected doctor with important government connections and, eventually, the director of HURAD (Human Utility: Research and Development), which makes him the most important man in the world. Though Haber might pretend (or really believe) he’s using Orr’s effective dreams to make the world a universally better place, the fact that Haber benefits most from the changes Orr’s dreams bring about suggests that Haber is conflating what’s best for the world with what’s best for him. Haber’s vision of a better world can’t be objective since it’s so clearly influenced by his thirst for power. Beyond this, Haber’s dream of making the world a better place is itself self-serving, since it’s (at least in part) motivated by Haber’s desire for fame. “We’ve made more progress in six weeks than humanity made in six hundred thousand years!” Haber excitedly tells Orr after Orr confronts Haber about exploiting his dreams. Haber frames the role he plays in saving the world as a personal accomplishment rather than a selfless act of humanitarianism, which serves as additional proof of self-interest’s influence on Haber’s Utilitarian ideals.
Haber’s Utilitarian aspirations rely on the impossible premise that one person can quantify happiness to determine what’s best for the masses. That Haber’s initial altruism ultimately becomes corrupted by greed and self-interest illuminates not only the subjectivity of happiness (Haber’s idea of maximized happiness for the masses and maximized happiness for himself are mutually exclusive), but also the inability to predict that the consequences of one’s actions will correspond to one’s intentions. In the beginning, Haber really does strive to make the world a better place, and he sporadically succeeds in doing so. However, Haber’s actions nearly culminate in the destruction of humanity, creating an irreconcilable asymmetry between Haber’s intentions and the consequences of his actions.
Related Themes from Other Texts
The Limits of Utilitarianism ThemeTracker
The Limits of Utilitarianism Quotes in The Lathe of Heaven
Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. The light shines through it, and the dark enters it. Borne, flung, tugged from anywhere to anywhere, for in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways; pulses move slight and quick within it, as the vast diurnal pulses beat in the moon-driven sea. Hanging, swaying, pulsing, the most vulnerable and insubstantial creature, it has for its defense the violence and power of the whole ocean, to which it has entrusted its being, its going, and its will. But here rise the stubborn continents. The shelves of gravel and the cliffs of rock break from water baldly into air, that dry, terrible outer space of radiance and instability, where there is no support for life. And now, now the currents mislead and the waves betray, breaking their endless circle, to leap up in loud foam against rock and air, breaking… What will the creature made all of sea-drift do on the dry sand of daylight; what will the mind do, each morning, waking?
“And the events of the mind, believe me, to me are facts. When you see another man’s dream as he dreams it recorded in black and white on the electroencephalograph, as I’ve done ten thousand times, you don’t speak of dreams as ‘unreal.’ They exist; they are events; they leave a mark behind them.”
“Who am I to meddle with the way things go? And it’s my unconscious mind that changes things, without any intelligent control. I tried autohypnosis but it didn’t do any good. Dreams are incoherent, selfish, irrational—immoral, you said a minute ago. They come from the unsocialized part of us, don’t they, at least partly?”
Goddamn but he wished he could afford an office with a window with a view!
That geniality was not faked, but it was exaggerated. There was a warmth to the man, an outgoingness, which was real; but it had got plasticoated with professional mannerisms, distorted by the doctor’s unspontaneous use of himself. Orr felt in him a wish to be liked and a desire to be helpful; the doctor was not, he thought, really sure that anyone else existed, and wanted to prove they did by helping them.
“I am sure now that your therapy lies in this direction, to use your dreams, not to evade and avoid them. To face your fear and, with my help, see it through. You’re afraid of your own mind, George.”
“I know he means well. It’s just that I want to be cured, not used.”
A person is defined solely by the extent of his influence over other people, by the sphere of his interrelationships; and morality is an utterly meaningless term unless defined as the good one does to others, the fulfilling of one’s function in the sociopolitical whole.
“To a better world!” Dr. Haber said, raising his glass to his creation, and finished his whisky in a lingering, savoring swallow.
He must act, he had to act. He must refuse to let Haber use him any longer as a tool. He must take his destiny into his own hands.
“You speak as if that were some kind of general moral imperative.” He looked at Orr with his genial, reflective smile, stroking his beard. “But in fact, isn’t that man’s very purpose on earth—to do things, change things, run things, make a better world?”
“I don’t know. Things don’t have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What’s the function of a galaxy? I don’t know if our life has a purpose and I don’t see that it matters. What does matter is that we’re a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.”
The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.
“Things are more complicated than he’s willing to realize. He thinks you can make things come out right. And he tries to use me to make things come out right, but he won’t admit it; he lies because he won’t look straight, he’s not interested in what’s true, in what is, he can’t see anything except his mind—his ideas of what ought to be.”
“You are afraid of losing your balance. But change need not unbalance you; life’s not a static object, after all. It’s a process. There’s no holding still. Intellectually you know that, but emotionally you refuse it. Nothing remains the same from one moment to the next, you can’t step into the same river twice. Life—evolution—the whole universe of space/time, matter/energy—existence itself—is essentially change.”
“That is one aspect of it,” Orr said. “The other is stillness.”
“Volcanoes emit fire.”
“They are of the dream time. I don’t understand it, I can’t say it in words. Everything dreams. The play of form, of being, is the dreaming of substance. Rocks have their dreams, and the earth changes … But when the mind becomes conscious, when the rate of evolution speeds up, then you have to be careful. Careful of the world. You must learn the way. You must learn the skills, the art, the limits. A conscious mind must be part of the whole, intentionally and carefully—as the rock is part of the whole unconsciously. Do you see? Does it mean anything to you?”
Destruction was not his line; and a machine is more blameless, more sinless even than any animal. It has no intentions whatsoever but our own.
After a while the big body moved, and presently sat up. It was all slack and loose. The massive, handsome head hung between the shoulders. The mouth was loose. The eyes looked straight forward into the dark, into the void, into the unbeing at the center of William Haber; they were no longer opaque, they were empty.
