Values Of Humanity Essay, Research Paper

Values

Does humanity really need to be improved? Has our society gotten so bad that we need to make changes that will supposedly make it better? There are definitely problems that need to be dealt with. We have a lot of violence, education problems, as well as other crimes in our society, but overall, I feel that humanity is doing pretty well at this point in history.

The improvements that definitely need to be made are being worked on throughout our society. The violence in our schools is a major problem that needs to be addressed. Most people blame video games or music lyrics for corrupting the young minds and turning them into violent criminals. I feel that the parents of these children are where the blame should actually be focused. The parents should pay more attention to the lives? of their children.

The changes proposed by Grant Fjermedal in his short story, Artificial Intelligence, are not even close to being good ideas. I could not believe that a person could actually come up with the insane ideas that Fjermedal did. He feels that we should all let a robot surgeon scan our brains, and turn our minds into computer programs. These computer programs would then be downloaded into a robotic body that the person chose before the surgery was performed. This would supposedly give all humans eternal life. We would also then be able to make backup copies of our minds or computer programs, so that we could live our so-called lives, or certain moments of them, again and again, making changes that we feel could improve them.

This really irritates me in a lot of different ways. The fact that you would have to abandon your human body to enter into that of a robot is just frightening. This instantly limits your sense of touch, smell, taste, and sight. What kind of a life would that be? This also changes humanity. If everyone in the world was a robot, the interaction between each other would not be nearly the same as it is with humans. Robots cannot do the same things that humans can. For example, how would two robots kiss? Kissing is a very passionate feeling, and metal touching other metal certainly wouldn?t be as passionate. The lack of feeling is another thing that bothers me about the proposal by Fjermedal. No more taste, no more sight. Those lives would definitely not be for me.

Aldous Huxley also feels that humanity needs to be changed in his short story, conditioning the Children. In this story, a doctor shows an experiment that electrically shocks innocent babies if they touch roses, and blazes sirens and bells in the babies? ears if they look at the books, which he set up in the middle of an empty room. This seems very cruel and unusual. Huxley gives the idea that it is a good way to get people to behave the way that their elders feel they should. That takes away from the freedom of thought from the babies. It teaches them false lessons that will affect them for the rest of their lives. What is wrong with books and roses in the first place? Absolutely nothing. There is no reason for taking these items away from the babies in the first place, and Huxley gives no explanation for the idea of taking them away.

Both Fjermedal and Huxley have their own ideas about improvements that they feel need to be made to humanity. They think that by making these changes, they will improve our society greatly. Both authors presented outrageous ideas that I feel would hurt our society a lot more than improving anything. There might be a few things that seem to get improved, but there would definitely be a lot more things taken away from humanity.

There are definitely problems in our society, and both authors may recognize some of the same problems that I have seen. The authors however propose improbable solutions that would affect society and lifestyle in a negative way, rather than do them any good. We have a good society right now, and I feel that we should make only minor changes, rather than the dramatic changes proposed by the authors. Maybe we should take Fjermedal and Huxley and have their mental statuses checked.