ROBOTICS AND ZOROASTER

ROBOTICS AND ZOROASTER

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© January 17, 2013

Yesterday, I posted on my e-mail a sensible article on the sensible application of robotics to science, and in this particular case, on the robotic application to medicine.  I used the caption of my subject “Madness and Sanity, Science and Zoroaster.” 

People are always in a hurry, and complain about my e-mails and missives being too long, but I persist in writing them as they are felt hoping they will make some connection, never knowing what connection that will be, which is okay.

My hope was that in mentioning “Zoroaster” there would be some curiosity as to what this strange name had to do with anything.  I have failed.  Responses to this missive were mixed, as always, which again is okay.  My purpose was to get people to think about something they are more likely than not to take for granted as a given, especially something related to technology such as robotics without any concern about a possible downside.

BACKGROUND TO THE USE OF ZOROASTER

When I was a boy from the ages of ten to twelve, each summer I would join my uncle, Dr. Leonard M. Ekland, a professor at the University of Detroit, a Jesuit university, and his son, Robert, and go to his summer retreat for two weeks at Higgins Lake in central Michigan.  It stopped after three years because I got involved in summer baseball with the Courthouse Tigers in my hometown of Clinton, Iowa.

Robert and I were about the same age, and would argue about major league teams and players at meals to the distress of my uncle.  I say distress because one day he said, always a quiet man, that henceforth he would use mealtimes for him to acquaint us with the great religions and religious leaders of history. 

The one that has stuck with me all these years was the Persian mystic, Zoroaster.  I ran into him again when I read Nietzsche’s “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” realizing that this sixth century B.C. man had influenced Judaism, Islam and Christianity to a remarkable extent, and that what he had to say those many centuries ago has remained relevant to this day. 

We know that Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” but failed, at least many of us, to understand that he was seeing the crushing acceleration of secular society at the expense of spiritual society.  He could envision how facile the notion of selfishness, self-interest, and egoism, and their opposites, altruism and self-sacrifice would clash like thunder against each other. 

Nietzsche was a wonderer asking such questions: is there much difference between self-serving and altruism when it comes to motives.  A saint may be egoistic when he is faithful to serving God, while a hero may be avoiding a display of cowardice when he fights bravely. 

In “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” it is clear that Zoroaster hopes for a rebirth of spirituality, crucial to a transformation from material fixation to a sense of the sacredness of and the meaning of the earth.

WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH ROBOTICS?

We keep cutting and controlling and sacrificing what shall never return for some future gain without assessing what is lost forever, that is, the ultimate long-termed consequences of this obsession with progress at any price.

Zoroaster, a man in the desert those many centuries ago, had that same concern.  We would likely think he lived a primitive existence, but we would be wrong.  He was in touch with nature and not running from it.

Thoughtful readers see, on the one hand, how these new machines are far more capable than humans and provide benefits that exceed their possible damages. 

A reader proffered the wonder of laser non-invasive surgery as an example.  Yet only this past week it was reported in the newspaper that a man, who had laser surgery on his back, gained no relief of pain, but was far poorer, and is suing.   Is this the exception?  Obviously, I don’t know.   

Advanced societies, particularly in the West, have essentially cradle to grave security now, and the wonder is whether this a good or bad thing.  For me, to be human is to be in touch with one’s nature and the force of that Free Will.  Stated another way, to be human is to know pain, struggle, failure and consequence as normal fare in a life worth living.

Another writer informs me that robotics in automobile manufacturing since 1950 have contributed as much as anything to the value/profit differential that has seen the UAW collapse from some 200,000 to 150,000 autoworkers sixty years ago to 52,800 union workers in 2011 to 49,000 in 2013.  Is this a good or bad thing?

A more basic question: what will be left of man when his actions are irrelevant?  You doubt this is a concern?  Look at young people today as they escape into their handheld devices and avoid the fundamental conditions necessary for moving from children to adults. 

What will be the relevance of man when machines do everything?  You say he will turn to creative leisure?  The evidence suggest otherwise as his orientation leans towards materialism and concrete material devices to displace his angst and not to spiritualism and abstract expression necessary to escape the prison of self.

My concern is that robotics, and our increasing fascination with them, finds us going pell-mell into the future not only with robotics but also on automatic pilot.

Zarathustra didn’t look at only one side of an issue but both sides.  Should you question where we are going, or why, or what are the long-termed consequences of such projections, you are likely to be labeled a pessimist. 

We don’t have much patience with pessimists.  We believe if you think happy you’ll be happy; if you are positive, positive things will happen; if you question where we are or where we are going, you’re a spoilsport.  It never occurs to us that in this heady advance into futuristic technological bliss that it is a form of being stuck in a collapsing eternal now.

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