Page 28 - NAMAH-Oct-2024

Namah Vol. 32, Issue 3, 15th October 2024

as demigods find their profession degraded, precise and exact and perfect in output and
the white-coat dishonoured and what was false. For the heart goes to sleep and love
once revered has become the object of public and wonder take the toll, where quest
ire. Isn’t it time for us to look within and and seeking is replaced by an answering-
see what ails us and heal ourselves first of machine and the joy of service is replaced
the disease called as greed and lust before by fast foods, ready to serve meals and
we heal others? After all, what we saw in fabricated products. Whatever may be the
the recent gory event in Kolkata involving gain in terms of saving time and energy in
doctors is an extreme spill-over of the rot favour of material efficiency, it comes at the
that has set into this once noble profession. heavy expense of certain deep civilisational
Perhaps it is time to look within and do values.
some course correction lest, we be reduced
to become yet another machine among other
machines. For machines are not respected.
They are bought for a price, used by their
owners to earn money and cast aside when
their utility or ability is over.

Factors that impact

Of course, this civilisational decline is not limited
to doctors alone. Every field of activity,
professional and otherwise, shows this The new buzzword
general decline, a loss of human values.
Two factors that seem most important Artificial Intelligence has brought in a
in causing this downslide are firstly, the newer dimension to the crisis of human
almost exclusive importance given to values. On the one side, it has tilted the
money and material success in measuring balance of power. Or rather, it has given
the worth of a human being. Owning power into the hands of the unchaste. It is
the latest car and phone, expensive dress, power without accountability. In the field
corporate position, value in terms of wealth of healing, it means even lesser contact with
are signs of success and, by default, the human beings. The art of medicine and its
signs of an eelite. It is the philistine, the human side is likely to be replaced more
barbarian in the garb of the civilised and more by an analytical science which,
man. Secondly, another important factor for all its advantages, reduces a human being
responsible for the degeneration of human to a bundle of chemicals and a sequence of
values is the rise of machines. Machines not genes. The danger anticipated in the novel,
only make life mechanical and, in a sense, Rise of the Machines is perhaps not so much
too predictable (thereby robbing the charm about the machines becoming conscious and
and danger of the unexpected), they also taking over the human world, as much as
mould our heart and mind, turning them it is the predominance of the machine-like
into a robot whose sole purpose is to be intelligence, turning living thinking and

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