Modern man has turned into a machine.

By
Syed Ali Mehdi
Today we witness violence, brutality and inhumanity of such an extent that we are forced to question the basis of humanity and consider, have we become what we created? An emotionless, insensitive piece of equipment that cares about no one and does nothing except what it is commanded to do. There are those who would, reading the above statements reject them with disgust and claim that man is still noble, wise and humane and there are those who would agree that indeed man has become so egoistic, so acquisitive that, to differentiate between him and machine, has become a task nigh impossible and that once humane and kind creatures that we were, has now become a slave, a slave not of another master, but a slave of its own psychology and that psychology is identical to that of a machine.

Let us examine the characteristics of a machine, let us examine what used to be the differences between man and machine? Kindness, creativity, spiritualism and emotions. These were the essence of humanity and what differentiated us from the rest. We must all, ask ourselves, have we lost all these things.

We have become so violent that most of the videos on current affairs carry a warning “THE FOLLOWING VIDEO CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES” in reality this warning is a sign, a sign of the horror and brutality that is about to unfold. When I look at the things that happen in the world today my head goes down in shame and my heart weeps. Weeps at our insensitivity, our brutality and our violence. Imagine the darkness of the soul of the people that watch an infant, an infant in pain, an infant brutally injured and walks by without the slightest of care and kindness? Imagine the barbarity of the heart which can rape a five year old girl? Are these men worthy of being called a human? Are they not as insensitive and emotionless as a machine?

Let us look at the people that work in our offices today and the normal students that populate our schools. Most of these people are not creative anymore, we have become conservative. Most people today have learned to accept reality for what it is and that ability to think outside the box is rapidly becoming an obsolete art. We have in essence become machines, machines that have been put on a task and we are grateful as ever for being given those tasks. A common man goes to work at eight in the morning, comes back at six in the evening, eats his dinner and then sleeps. What is more appalling is the fact that this man would be happy, happy to work like a machine, happy that he can survive. You look at the common man and you wonder where that inquisitiveness is? Where that desire to achieve something new is? Why has he turned into a machine?

The defining problem today is our psychology. We might say that we believe in something beyond matter, that we believe in god but are actions speak differently, we have in effect, become slaves of materialism. We think that material is all there is in this world, and so we are ready to become its slaves, and to earn that money we are willing to work day and night like machines, to become insensitive like machines, to become emotionless like machines.

I believe that some people even today are free, free from the slavery of materialistic ambitions and are governed not by wealth but by their conscience and their conscious minds. These people are true humans and they have remained humans. But most of the people today have transformed, the qualities that separated us from machines exist in us no more and hence most of us have become machines, if not worse, for a machine does not chose to be insensitive but that is how it was made. However as humans we had the choice and we chose to be what we have become. Physically we are as different from machines as we ever were but, for most of us, that is all the difference that remains.