Monday, March 31, 2014

Plan A or Plan B

Playing God is always a dangerous game, yet somehow we, as human, never cease to strive to create and command beings who are far more perfect than we are. Pursuing to create flawless creatures that are able to do all of men’s “heaving lifting,” both the young and old Rossum created the robots. The robots were perfect machineries until they were given emotions by Dr. Gall. Filled with emotions, pain, and soul; the robots turned human. But before the rise of the “human” robots, Domin’s plan was to create national robots. By dividing robots into different ethnic groups with different languages, the robots would worry too much about their differences to even think about conspiring against humans. If this was Domin’s grand plan, can it also be our “creator”’s grand design? If we are indeed the “robots,” was God’s plan all along to create conflicts base on the differences in our characteristic to keep humans from uprising against God? If this is so, then it has work perfectly, we divided ourself in different boxes carrying multiple labels that we gave ourself as well as receiving labels from others (both biological and social): sex, religion, ethnicity, social class, interests, etc. 

Rossum's plan is to create superhuman with no emotions for the labor. These robots are exactly alike with no conflict among them. But after Domin steps up to managing the robots, the robots were deemed useless without emotions/pain as they breakdown (as they hurt would themselves unintentionally). Domin’s plan A would be creating robots with emotions/pains to keep them from breaking down. But by giving robots emotions, they would revolt against human. Domin’s plan B is to give the robots both emotion and biological characteristics to create conflicts and ideas (free will) between robots and keep them at bay. The contradiction here is to create flawless beings but going backward and make them flawed. This is backward with God’s plan. Where God would start with Domin’s plan B giving the different characteristics and emotions first creating both conflicts and ideas (free will). Then by introducing moral teaching (Bible), God would create the perfect human — Domin’s plan A and ultimately Rossum’s original plan but with emotion and freewill. 

1 comment:

  1. Minh, your interpretation of God's role in "R.U.R." is very interesting to me. It is interesting that you have related Domin's creation of the robot race to God's creation of the human race because I have never thought to question God's creation of the human race in any of the texts we have read until now. "Frankenstein" made me question science and technological advancement, but "R.U.R" does a nice job of exposing flaws in the creation of man. However, I do not think we can make assumptions about God's plan in human creation, but it seems like the novel wants us to ask ourselves the very question you have posed: Was God's plan to create conflict based on difference? The novel urges us to question religion and to see ourselves in the robots, but in the end, the human race appears different from the robot race because of man's ability to experience religion and believe in God. Helena is an example of humans' faith in God. While the robots are guided by a leading robot, the human race is guided by God. We are only robots in the sense that we are motivated to reduce difference.

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