Recently, billionaire and inventor Elon Musk made the claim that humans have to become cyborgs or “risk irrelevance”.

I am not sure about you, but, to me, that kind of world sounds absolutely boring.

As of late, the issue of automation in the economy has come front and center. For many of us, we are wondering what our purpose in society is; robots seem to be rapidly replacing many of the jobs we once knew.

The idea of humans having to adapt to robots is somewhat nonsensical to me, since humans are the ones responsible for creating these machines. Progress and innovation have their places in history and we should always strive for these things, but at what cost are we willing to sacrifice our humanity in the name of “progress”?

Human interaction cannot be replaced. Or if it can be replaced, human connections will be irrevocably altered, since one can ostensibly maintain the same kind of relationship with a robot that they can with another human being. Forget subtle romance, robots lack all nuance and sentimentality that makes each and every relationship unique.

The way in which humans think has and always will be a subject of interest. If we reduce ourselves to thinking as robots do, are we really thinking? Technology improves our lives but it also creates a sense of detachment in everything we do. There are multiple ways to approach a question, create a solution or look at a problem. A homogenous world is inevitable should we all become like robots.

If we relegate ourselves to thinking in a way that is more amenable to technology, then what beauty can we find, if any? The inherent complexity of each and every human should be encouraged, not destroyed.

America, though I love her to death, has a problem with commercialism. Some of us, conservatives in particular (which includes myself), tend to think of the free market as the panacea for all problems.

While I am no advocate of socialism, there are still flaws within the free market as there are with any other system. If this is the direction the free market is taking us, if the world is meant to be filled with humans who have to think more like cyborgs and less like humans, then something must be done.

This is by no means meant to be a veiled suggestion to abandon all technological innovation and replace it with some form of socialism. It is meant to remind us all of our humanity and that regardless of where the economy takes us, we must not forget that humans and their souls have some timeless truths.  

We are not just cogs in the machine.