https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman#Religious_themes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6hsbpL-A_E

(POV: you live amongst the flotsam of a vastly greater civilization.)

Barbie’s original design was the “Lili” doll of 1955 Germany. It might have been innocuous in that context. However, an exceptionally capitalist woman called Ruth Mosko (a.k.a. Ruth Handler) turned it into a culture-destroying, soul-destroying, environment-destroying weapon of mass distraction that corrupted the youth and then poisoned the landfills.

Phil K. Dick’s story offers a possibility of redemption. The story centers on a particularly degraded, degenerate denizens of the once-proud ruins of civilization. This particularly degenerate tribe is disrupted by cultural contact with a less-degenerate tribe. (I will spoil the ending of the story for those who have not read it. Spoilers below.)

*Spoilers below.*

In the middle of the story, Fran is terrified that they might lose their Perky Pat doll, to which Norm replies that he can make another one — they have thermoplastic and fake hair and paint, and it would only take a month’s labor to hand-craft a replacement.

However, Norm wins a differently designed doll: Connie Companion. Connie is married and three months pregnant with a tiny doll-baby. When this is explained to the degenerate denizens, they are shocked and do not want to look at the doll-baby. Norm says, “…you have to follow the logic. Why, eventually Perky Pat–” He gets no further, because the degenerates pick up rocks from the ground to use as weapons. They would rather murder Norm — to whom they ought to be grateful — than confront the limits of their own soul-destroying consumerism. Dick is alluding to the Gospels, in which Jesus prevented an adulteress from getting stoned to death. The allusion to stoning suggests that the degenerate denizens are like the Jews who wanted to stone the woman caught in adultery.

The degenerates exile Norm, but he retains a sense of hope, saying about the other tribe that was less degenerate: “…their particular doll, it taught them something. Connie had to grow and it forced them all to grow along with her.” IMHO, Dick is holding out hope that humanity will be delivered from the evil of consumerism.