Serving The Hospitals That Build Machines

In response to Diana Huggins’ Efficiency Vs. Human Contact, longtime Gnomie and occasional contributor Stu Kopelman writes:

Dear Diana,

One day I heard that one could finish his work in half the time using a
computer. For the most part, this is true; however, when one finishes his
work after four hours, is he allowed the leisure of going home to his
family, or socializing with his friends? The answer is always a resounding
“no.” Instead, he must produce twice as much work in the same time frame. We
are forced to learn more, do more, and be more in so much less time than
human beings were ever designed for. In such a pressured state, the only
thing in return we receive is making sure the boss is financially
compensated.

Efficiency? Yes. But at such a pace, we only serve to finance the hospitals
that build machines. Our broken faces are remade into other images that the
latest and greatest, efficiently designed machines created. Billions of
dollars are spent on plastic surgeons to help us become someone else. The
result of efficiency is that my face is no longer important… only the mask
I am wearing. Worse, it has designed a new heart. There is a forgotten sense
of what it is like to step outside and cast your gaze on the moon and stars,
breathe the thin air from mountain heights you struggled to climb, or
lovingly embrace your once treasured family. I have not heard a bird sing
in years, and beneath fresh air, I sit surrounded by colorless walls with my
computer, trying to get another key pressed. I am fatter, with milky white
skin. There are no calluses on my hands any longer. Exercise is a thing of
the past. I am stressed, sick, and have no money. Who for? What for?

Einstein could have been the smartest person in the world, but if he could
not share what he knew, what value did it have? People had to listen, plan,
and execute together, the real meaning of someone’s idea. Islands we are,
and like Paul Simon said, “Islands do not cry.” It is bone chilling to
listen to men play cards while there is someone yelling for help in a lake
drowning, while you hear one of them say, “hold on, I’m coming. Just let me
finish this hand.”

Efficiency without human safeguards has given life a twisted meaning. We
have become a people hardened, without mercy nor manners; the words
“please,” “thank you,” or “you’re welcome” are almost a novelty at best. Our
doors are locked because we no longer desire the company of friends, much
less strangers. And if we look at ourselves in the mirror, we see nothing
different; nothing has changed, because slowly, imperceptibly, we have done
whatever it took to become exactly like we are - sightless, and without
purpose, and we have become committed to the institution we created. The
name, under whose entrance we walk, is called, “the world.”

Without social interaction under an umbrella of love, we are doomed. A
young student at Cal-Tech asked Richard Feynmen, the late, Nobel-Prize
winning physicist, to write his mother a note, explaining that when he came
home to tell her about all the wonderful and marvelous discoveries they were
making in physics, that she should listen to him instead of being so bored.
Dr. Feynmen did indeed write his mother a note: “Dear Mrs. ( ), please
disregard your son’s attempts to teach you physics; the most important thing
in life is love,” signed, Richard P. Feynmen.

We are the only species who has this gift; if we replace it with efficiency,
we replace the very fiber and heart of who we are.