Progress, like R.U.R?

Firstly, I’d just like to begin with: I loved R.U.R! Upon reading Capek’s R.U.R and the other two articles, I was interested to think on the topic of whether progress towards a greater technological world, where there is a development of robots, is needed, or whether we are attempting to progress an imperfect society unnecessarily, as surely evolution will continue to drive out these apparent imperfections, if we let it? Why then, do we attempt to play God ourselves and twist nature, when it could all turn back on us as shown through Capek’s play?

The story of R.U.R focuses on many things that I worry about regarding the so-called ‘progression’ of the human race and its development of artificial life. For this reason, Capek’s focus on the creation of life and the difficulties this can cause ensured that the play was one which I could identify with. In the play Capek highlights the initial development of the robots and the reasoning behind this move to ‘perfection’. Domain explains to Helena the ways in which Rossum thought that man had too much to do, think and feel; “A working machine must not want to play the fiddle, must not feel happy… the process must be of the simplest, and the product of the best from a practical point of view… he [Rossum] rejected everything that did not contribute directly to the progress of work. In this way he rejected everything that makes man more expensive… he rejected man and made the Robot.” (page 9) This explanation is fascinating as it describes man’s attributes, and individual qualities that set us apart from other species, as seemingly too complicated because we, as humans, have too many qualities? We can argue then that in Rossum highlighting that he rejects everything that doesn’t contribute directly to work; he rejects part of mankind, thereby creating a clear divide between the humans and robots in the play. Furthermore, Fabry’s remarks on page 21 that “Nothing is more unlike a man than a robot… the human machine…was terribly imperfect. It had to be removed sooner or later”, effectively raises the issue of progress and makes us question whether it is inevitable?

This rejection of mankind’s attributes is shown through the lack of emotion had by the robots. For example, when Sulla is asked what she feels about death and other issues, she can only reply “I cannot tell” (page 13). This lack of emotion once again demonstrates my argument, previously raised in my blogs, for there needing to be a definite sense of feeling felt by a robot for them to be compared to a human.  It would appear that Rossum’s robots are manufactured initially not to feel, and only to work, understand orders and therefore serve a purpose. Yet, their appearance is seemingly human-like, shown through Domain’s request that Helena touch the manufactured skin of their creation. It made me question why, if Rossum thought there to be so many imperfections with humans, why would he model the robots on humans so much so that Helena confuses the robots to be humans and humans to be robots?

Capek also highlights how the development of the robots is unnerving. For example the initial description of the factories and machines which make the robots; “What spinning-mill?” “For weaving nerves and veins. Miles and miles of digestive tubes pass through it…” (page 15) For me, the idea of constructing artificial nerves and veins through spinning them through a machine is immoral. Furthermore, Capek’s description of how the robot’s faces all look too similar is unnerving. This is mentioned when the robots have surrounded the house, creating a barricade in Act III. The appearance of these ‘expressionless bubbles’ all staring at Domain and everyone else is indeed equivalent to a nightmare, for this lack of expression means that there is no sign nor indication of the imminent attack. There is just silence – and it is therefore perhaps the inability to show these emotions that makes the robots so frightening towards the end of the play?

The idea that progression will occur is a scary thought, as from reading Capek’s play, you can only think of what if it all goes wrong? What if we start off small, through the development of artificial limbs? (as mentioned in On the Marionette Theatre), yet from this we continue to develop new ways to ‘perfect’ humanity, each time thinking it is progression, yet each time we are heading slowly but surely towards the destruction of humanity as we know it? (dramatic I know!) So is progression good? The play has me a little worried that this will be our future.

Jenny

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