Article: The Robot Proletariat

Robots, unafraid, would make the perfect firemen. Uncorrupted by power, they would make the ideal law enforcers. What does a doctor have to do? What are the failings of our doctors? The Western biomedical model seeks to produce doctors that are like robots, and that treat their patients like machines. A doctor must have attention to detail, must remember long lists of illnesses and each of their probabilities, and must be able to identify illnesses based on symptoms. A surgeon must have steady hands, must perform complicated procedures with speed and precision, must have no feeling of squeamishness at the sight of blood and gore. These are all things that robots could potentially do much better than human doctors. But as mechanistic medicine becomes perfected by machines, human healers will rise to provide people with human care and a human touch. Unlike doctors that have to go through years of grueling and debilitating medical school, however, healers don't need money as an incentive to do their jobs-in a world where money doesn't exist, that is-because healers are called to be healers. They feel instinctually drawn to it. They want to do it. It is simply what they are driven to do. And this is a good microcosm. In general, we will find ourselves in a world where machines do machine jobs, and humans seek to become fully human. In which humans are driven towards those instinctive acts of creativity and fulfillment that they would do without any artificially imposed compensation-because the work itself is desirable to them.

Humanity's feelings towards money are ambiguous. People like the ability that money provides them, and as a symbol of prosperity it is wonderful, but money itself can be cumbersome, annoying. Investing in something monetarily can signify the value one places on the thing in question. But money can also have the effect of cheapening experiences it is associated with and relationships that are dependent upon it. When most people think of money, they think of not having it. They think of the fact that they have to have it in order to get the things that they want, and they resent that. On the one hand, this produces people who renounce money as being unimportant, a generally inauthentic position. For example, I worked at a holistic health camp once, and one of the women in the dining hall was telling her friends, "Money is good for food and shelter, but other than that it won't make you happy one bit." And I thought, "Well, okay, but how did you get here? Because these courses are expensive. Did you fly here on a rainbow of hugs and lollypops, or did you pay for your course in cold, hard cash? And if you aren't taking these courses to be happy, what the hell are you taking them for?" On the other hand, you have individuals in reaction to this, "Money won't make you happy," poverty mentality affirming the worth of money. This is not wrong. If you love money you will be much more likely to have it than if you hate money-and if you have money you will be much more likely to effect the world than if you don't. Money is a form of power-and power is the sole virtue. But money is a dense form of power, which while it can be important in pushing things around physically, can also be cumbersome and impersonal. In comparison, love, another form of power, is far richer. But it also has a lot less physical force behind it. A world in which you didn't need money to obtain the objects of your desire would be much freer, happier, and more genuine. Until then, however, it seems prudent to enjoy money as a useful tool. To seek out prosperity in life, but not to let things come to own you.

Many people might not understand how the world of the robot proletariat-a world beyond money-is possible. They think that human beings are inherently competitive and greedy and that they want to screw one another over. Either that or people are inherently lazy and don't want to work. But different economic and social circumstances have always meant different "human natures." When it comes to laziness, you consider people lazy only because you want them to do things that they don't really enjoy doing. People aren't lazy. Boredom is itself a stressor. In tribal hunter/gatherer cultures, where they aren't in a state of either working or being exhausted from work the great majority of their time, people make up things to do. People like to be active. It gives one's life meaning to work on things that are important to one. But when you make people do things they hate and don't find meaningful, of course they are going to do as little as possible. As for human beings being inherently competitive and greedy, consider this:

"When European missionaries taught Australian Aborigine hunter/gatherers how to play 'football' back in the early 1900s, the Aboriginal children played until both sides had equal scores: that was when the game was over, in their mind, and it boggled the British missionaries who taught them the game. The missionaries worked for over a year to convince the children that there should be winners and losers."
(The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, Hartmann, 234)

To the Aborigines, the idea that you would dominate others was considered bad for social cohesion. Hurting or offending people was not considered bad because it was considered selfish-it was considered bad because it was considered stupid. You rely on those people. Why would you ever want to do that? It didn't make sense in their situation. If you travel to the !Kung Bushmen of South Africa and you have food, they expect you to share. They would share with you if you needed it, "even if it endangered their own survival" (Hartmann, 158). And if you share, they won't thank you. Why? Because sharing one's food with others is considered common courtesy to them. "When we stop behind a car at a red light, we don't open the door and run to the car in front of us to thank them for being so considerate as to follow the basic rules of the road and stop for the red light-it's simply given that everybody does that. No thanks are required" (Hartmann, 159). That's how the !Kung regard sharing food with others. In our economic situation, we encourage greed, dominance, competition, etc. That's what capitalism is built upon. Practically all the games that our children play are competitive in nature-there is a winner and a loser. But it's precisely this greed, dominance, and competition that will give rise to the robot proletariat, and a slave force of robots fundamentally changes the game. New ideals will be forged.

Bless all forms of intelligence.

1 Read Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by Michael Braungart and William McDonough. Currently StarTech's Plasma Arc seems the most promising technology to dispose of waste materials that can't be reintegrated into the system other ways.

2 Example: Like ice cream? Go and work at an ice cream store where you can have as much as you want for free. I think most people will find that they'll adopt self-imposed moderation in regards to this fairly quickly.

3 The "Three Laws," by the way, are a decent distillation of slave morality:
1. A slave cannot harm a master, nor through its lack of action allow a master to come to harm.
2. A slave must follow all of a master's orders, unless doing so contradicts the first law.
3. A slave must preserve its own existence, unless doing so contradicts either of the first two laws.
In contrast, a master morality would read something like this:
1. A master must preserve the actualization of its own will.
2. A master must utilize the wills of others, unless doing so contradicts the first law.
3. A master must protect the wills of others against blockades to their actualization, unless doing so contradicts either of the first two laws.

If you identify with the message of this article, please email it to people, tell your friends, even print out copies to pass around. Together we can raise awareness. Thank you.

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