Quo vadis, Homo?
Where are we humans going?
Dr Abe V Rotor
Auguste Rodin's The Thinker Quo vadis, Homo sapiens? Where is man gong?
A young man who was in love asked the computer, “What is love?”
Whereupon, came a prompt answer – in a number of definitions, technical and literary.
“How does it feel to be in love?” the young man continued. This time the computer did not respond. He entered his query once more, but still there was no response. After several attempts, the computer finally gave up, and printed: I cannot feel.
Spending more time with the computer deprives millions, mostly children, of participating in health promoting games and resistance-building exposure in nature. Our children are no longer children of nature; they are captives of education and media, of malls and cafes.
They like to think that the mind is like the computer, that the more information it acquires the better it is to the person.
This is not so. Not when it pertains to health, not with the ability to arrive at correct decisions, not when and where survival is needed. And not when it comes to matters of love.
And here are our children spending most of their waking hours with an “intelligent” thing in the shape of a box, a thing that has no feeling at all!
Even when the computer can tell us of all kinds of ailments in the world, it cannot comfort us. It cannot cure us. It will only worsen our allergies, our asthma.
It cannot reciprocate our friendship, our love, our compassion. Because a robot is a robot is a robot.
Diseases and many forms of human misery are masked by the Good Life. These are surreptitiously spreading around the world causing many complications, untold sufferings, and death. They turn into pandemic as they merge with other diseases – HIV-AIDS, obesity, diabetes, accidents, are becoming common cases.
The success of human beings and all living things today depends on fitness acquired through Evolution and Adaptation. Evolution refers to the “Survival of the Fittest,” through eons of time; while Adaptation is the ability of organisms to adjust to dynamic changes of the environment.
The Four Attributes of Man
• Homo sapiens “Man the Wise”
• Homo faber "Man the Maker” or “Working Man"
• Homo ludens “Playing Man” or "Sportsman"
• Homo spiritus “Praying Man” or "Reverent"
(Deus faber “God the Creator”) Should Man also play the role of God?
Homo sapiens, the Patient
(From The Men Who Play God by Dr Arturo B Rotor)
“Of all God’s creatures, there is no species more guilt-ridden, confused and self-destructive than man. Fear, remorse and frustration underlie his basic behavior probably as a result of his forbears having been driven out of the Garden of Eden…”
A corner of Eden, in acrylic by Abe V Rotor
“Man kills not for food, he eats when he is not hungry, he mates in and out of season. His suicidal tendencies are unique. While the lemmings drown themselves as a result of reduced food supplies, man will willingly cultivate cancer of his lungs by smoking poisonous plants, convert his liver into a hobnailed atrophic mass of dead tissues with alcohol, or remove himself from the control of his mind with narcotics…
“An important feature of his personality is that the more developed the creature and the more successful, the more likely is he to suffer of neurosis.” The genes bearing these characteristics have not been identified, but seems to be transmitted paternally and maternally.
“While among all other species, infection heads mortality and morbidity lists, among Homo sapiens, neurosis is the underlying cause of ninety percent of all illnesses.”
"As a matter of fact, in the big cities and centers of population, the archetype of the successful executive in the hypertensive, the ulcer-patient, the tranquilizer-dependent. We believe that for an in-depth study of tension or anxiety, in all its typical and atypical manifestations, man is a better subject to study than any other organism.”
