ON THE BODY AS A MACHINE

I was once told, "The human body is a machine. It needs to be maintained." The comment was made in reference to the importance of adequate nourishment and rest, but I immediately applied it, just for fun if for no other reason, to other aspects of the human being. The idea of the human body as a machine both disturbed me and comforted me. Perhaps the disturbance that I felt was partially due to my awareness of the latter of these two emotional responses (the comfort). 

It is easy to see where the feelings of comfort stem from. The machine is something that we are very familiar with. It is what we rely on when our own abilities to lift or process or manufacture fail us; or when we want to transfer a number of tasks to another [entity] in order to give ourselves more time to do what we choose. Not only does the machine fill in for us when we are incapable or unwilling; it also serves as a companion of sorts: one whose failures have a specific cause that might be investigated and eventually rectified. The shortcomings of the machine are never the machine's own fault. They come about due to the passage of time and time's wear on the machine, or inadequate maintenance on the part of whatever human being serves as caretaker to the machine. We are forced to see our own mistakes through the failure of the machine: either we did not take decent care of it, or we did not build it correctly in the first place, or we bought the wrong part for it, or something of this nature. As opposed to the exposure of mistakes that comes about through interaction with other peers (friends pointing out shortcomings, inability to reconcile differences, inability to make a significant other happy, or inability to express one's thoughts lucidly), the machine's exposure of human error is kind and impersonal. The human seems happy to acknowledge his errors when it is a machine that exposes them to him; whereas he resists acknowledging individual flaws that are pointed out by a friend or coworker. Perhaps this is because the machine does not judge. The awareness that another living individual can see one's flaws - especially when that which is visible on the surface is probably far less severe than that which exists internally - is quite embarrassing or frustrating. Perhaps because others are, in many ways, mimetic representations of ourselves, the awareness that another sees our flaws is similar to our own eventual awareness of our flaws. We are hesitant to become aware of our own flaws because such awareness or acknowledgment is admission of some failure. It makes sense to guess that the human psyche has a natural aversion to the admission of defeat. It seems that such an aversion might be necessary, taking into account the evolutionary goals of mankind, to progress as individuals and as a species. If the human race is less willing to accept that it functions within boundaries - that it has limits and is capable of failure - it is less likely to give up on whatever endeavor it undertakes. 

The transfer of tasks from mankind to machine-kind is an interesting transpiration for a number of reasons. Does this transfer actually benefit mankind by giving the human mind more time and space to roam? Or does it just allow the mind to be free of preoccupations that it perhaps should not be free of: That is, necessary ideas that should be taken into consideration and applied frequently to all cognitive processes? Are there certain thoughts that we should hold on to as our own and avoid surrendering to the machine?

(July 2006)