Sadistic enjoyment requires victims who can really suffer yet lack full moral status

Evidence

Much of the park’s allure rests on the gap between the hosts’ capacity to feel suffering and their legal status as mere machines. Many of the hardened repeat visitors to the park — especially the so-called Man in Black (a superbly menacing Ed Harris) — specifically enjoy the pain and struggling of the androids. … It has been said that the fantasy underlying sadism is of a victim that can endlessly suffer. The hosts materialise this fantasy: they can be repeatedly brutalised, repeatedly “killed”, in an infinity of suffering. … If the hosts were nothing more than empty mechanisms, what enjoyment could be derived from humiliating and destroying them? Yet if the hosts were accorded equivalent moral status with the guests, then how could their abuse be justified? — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 782

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The double-bind of the sadist’s victim — must genuinely suffer yet be denied full moral standing — is a dense philosophical knot worth sitting with, and it presses directly on the ethics of Westworld’s premise.
• XREF: Connects to Fisher’s earlier chapter 10 claim that the deepest desire is to be objectified, and to Sadean libertine literature themes. — connects to: Sadomasochism entails enjoyment, so a sadomasochist cannot also be repressed — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 162; Dehumanizing portrayals can lead victims to be seen as less capable of suffering and less deserving of humane treatment. — 5 Reasons Why People Blame Victims; Sadism is an illusory attempt to capture freedom through flesh (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Sadism is an illusory attempt to capture freedom through flesh #responds-to (0.85)
• Moral disengagement reduces victims’ perceived suffering and thus the desire for justice #expands (0.80)
• Sadism fails because the victim’s transcendent freedom fundamentally escapes capture #qualifies (0.80) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 999
• The worst human pleasures, including cruelty and power, are mental rather than physical #expands (0.80) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 615
• Devaluing victims enables harm without guilt or remorse #expands (0.75)