This article isn’t about artificial intelligence (AI). I’ve written about that before (https://uktm.org/hu/Konyvek-93/Rhasoda-Varga-Margit-Illuziok-nelkul-18). Instead, it’s about why and how we humans become robots even without AI. I used to think that to become a robot it is enough to work on an assembly line, where the monotony of the work results in robot-like behavior. I tried this myself. When I was a student, I worked at a canning factory for a month during one summer break, and sure enough, after a couple of weeks, I was even packing cucumbers into jars next to the assembly line in my dreams. That’s how programmable the human mind is. Back then, I thought that “intellectual” work would be different.

In recent months, I’ve come into contact with “intellectual” robots on two separate occasions. These incidents are worth mentioning because they disrupted my otherwise harmonious outlook on life—one I’d spent decades working to achieve. If something disrupts that balance, it needs to be addressed; if it recurs, analyzing the situation becomes all the more necessary. It was impossible not to notice the parallel between the two incidents.

First incident:

I had to go for lab tests to renew my driver’s license. The referral form didn’t specify why the tests were being requested. The results came back, and I saw a diagnosis that the head of the lab had made based on the results. A doctor who had NEVER seen me in his life made a diagnosis about me! Afterward, I had to take this to another doctor, who was seeing me for the FIRST (and presumably last) time in his life. And together, they determined that I was sick and that I needed to take medication for it. Just because. Even though I have no significant symptoms and am not even feel myself to be ill. According to the doctor, I’m playing with my life. Most people react to this by obeying, because that’s how they’ve been programmed their whole lives. How can I explain to him that I can’t die—neither sooner nor later than the prescribed time—because I’m bound by my “contract”? He cannot imagine such a thing; it is missing from his mental programming by factory-design. He is a robot who carries out his duties as programmed by lab results and diagnoses, without seeing the HUMAN BEING behind them with an open mind.

Second case:

I filed an application to register a foundation with the competent court. There, of course, people with law degrees oversee compliance with the law. The foundation must list a registered office. The activities of the foundation in question—by their very nature—are not tied to a specific location; the actual work does not take place there, so the registered office is merely a formality. Given all this, on what grounds is the registration being rejected? The registered office is deemed unsuitable because it has too many owners. What lies behind this decision? Prejudice. “Don’t even think about founding anything, you penniless fool—you can’t even produce a decent piece of real estate! You must be up to something shady, but I’m on my guard!” Yet the judge was wrong. The situation isn’t what she thinks it is. There are de facto (factual) and de jure (legal) situations, and facts are generally stubborn things. She, too, made a decision like a robot, who, programmed by the legal regulations, did not see the situation clearly—neither the PERSON nor the intent.

During the processing of the experience, I had to address the question: why did these two incidents unsettle me? In such cases, according to the method I developed, we begin to look back on life to find the root cause that led to this effect. At such times, the power of recognition eliminates the root cause, thereby breaking the chain of causality. I had to go back quite far, to a situation that evoked an archetypal pattern of behavior. The image that appeared was that of *Ecce Homo!* Jesus stands before Pilate. Pilate points to Jesus: “Behold, the man!” Then he asks the gathered crowd what he should do with this man. And the majority of those present shouted, “Crucify him!” Yet they didn’t even know him! They judged him based on their prejudices. Standing before them was a tortured MAN, about whom the news spread to be the Son of God. This threw their mental frameworks into disarray, leading them to an insoluble contradiction. In such situations, the mind’s default response is to blame the other person, who must be ostracized or eliminated because they cause disruption.

We can all find ourselves in a small-scale “Ecce Homo” situation. We are judged by people who, without any precise knowledge of our situation, either do not know us at all or have seen at most a single document about us. Even if they see us face to face, they do not know who we are or what we want. But what is truly sad about this is that they do not even care, because for them, the only reality is the one that exists in their own minds about the world and about us. I say about them that they have become programmed human robots, whose thinking can move only along a few narrow paths; they cannot stray from these paths because they lack of broader perspective.

Yet God did not give human consciousness—nor did He shape humanity in His own image—so that humans might exist as programmed human robots. But those who cannot even make use of the opportunity for intellectual development, let alone spiritual growth, will still receive what they create for themselves. Sooner or later, they will indeed become robots. For now, they are still programmed by parents, school, work, religions, politics, and so on, but this still results in diversity. In the “Brave New World,” they will become robots controlled by artificial intelligence.

There is a way out! “Let it be done for you according to your faith.” (Matthew 9:29)

Margaret Rhasoda Varga
guru of UCCM
Budapest, Hungary