Wanted: Robot Minds for Today
GOD did not create man with a robot mind. But the masses of people today often act as if they were mental robots. Why? Because of fear. In Communist countries there is fear of death. In the West there is fear of Communists and fear of losing prestige. Where there is fear people seek the reassurance of conformity. The result is the machine mind. Nonconforming minds, if not regarded as “security risks,” are at least subjected to mounting popular disfavor. In the news of late has been the name of Dr. Albert Einstein, the man who may have peered more deeply into the secrets of the universe than any other living man. For long Dr. Einstein was a unanimous shining hero. But Dr. Einstein’s latest pronouncement, in particular, displeased the public mind; yet it gave thinking persons a sad commentary on what is called the “free world.”
Said Dr. Einstein: “If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”—New York Times, November 10, 1954.
Many other men with keen minds have pointed out the danger that lies in the tyranny of robot minds. President James R. Killian, Jr., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently deplored “what sometimes seems to be a preoccupation with security procedures and policies at the expense of scientific progress.” The president of the National Academy of Sciences, Detlev W. Bronk, said that “exploitation of fear and misunderstanding by those who seek selfish or unwholesome ends are creating an environment unsuitable for the furtherance of science.” On this same point the New York Times Magazine of April 25, 1954, commented: “The scientist should not be singled out and ‘cabin’d, cribb’d, confined.’ Especially not the scientist. If he is, he may not flourish.”
But there was more to the matter than just that of scientists’ not flourishing. Declared the executive committee of the Federation of American Scientists: “The danger lies in the discouragement of independent minded men, including many scientists, from lending their talents to government.” (Science News Letter for June 12, 1954) And mathematician John von Neumann of the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, who was just appointed to the Atomic Energy Commission, declared: “Very many people who have some trivial blot way back in their past do not know whether they can take a chance on getting into sensitive work.” Dr. von Neumann admitted that the security system as now applied could well result “in thought control.”—Time, November 1, 1954.
Showing that the present security system was indeed producing injurious results, Dr. Vannevar Bush, president of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, said in Science News Letter for November 6, 1954: “I met a week ago a man who was a member of the scientific committee that is advisory to the Security Council, and he said to me, ‘Well, we have practically stopped working. It is quite impossible to accomplish anything in this atmosphere.’ Now that is the sort of reaction I would get out of three out of four scientists today. . . . The basic fact is that this country has been going through a wave of hysteria. When people are afraid they do strange things. One of their immediate responses is a tendency to abandon their liberties.”
So the scientists are not alone in their plight. As Dr. Einstein indicated, the scholar and teacher are feeling the python of conformity constricting their freedom. Thus not all the pronouncements exposing the state of mental freedom today have come from scientists. Writers, teachers, lawyers, statesmen and other intellectuals have decried the persistent demand for robot minds. Adlai Stevenson recently declared: “Even conformity—thought control—has reappeared in our land just at a time when we are exhorting the world to stand fast against the tyrannies of Soviet fascism. And it looks as though we are in more danger nowadays of exploitation of the mind than the body, of becoming mental robots than economic slaves.”—Look, November 16, 1954.
This is the age of fear. As Harold E. Talbott, secretary of the air force, put it, we are “living in an atmosphere of menace unprecedented in the history of mankind.” (New York Times, November 12, 1954) This unprecedented fear has spawned the age of conformity, the age of thought control, the age of robot minds. Man is now seized by such a mind-benumbing fear that he dares not even try to wake up the robot minds. In his recent book An Almanac of Liberty, Justice William O. Douglas of the United States Supreme Court said: “Those who speak out against the neurosis that has seized us in mid twentieth century risk much. But if they stay silent they are unworthy of their inheritance. . . . If a few sick minds can transfer their psychosis to the whole community, anyone can readily become a victim of the calumny and lies which the modern hunt for heresy has produced.”
Why is the world so sick that even the “free world” enslaves itself in a tyranny of hysteria, fear and robot minds? Because the whole earth is being misled by a superhuman sick mind, Satan the Devil. This is a fact that is kept from the people. But the Bible is clear: “Satan, who is misleading the entire inhabited earth.” So not only Communist countries but the entire earth is under the fiendish influence of this master wicked spirit. Those who value their life must wake up their mental faculties. This is the time for clear thinking, not apathy. Wrote the apostle Peter: “I am arousing your clear thinking faculties.” And what does clear thinking reveal? This: a new world is at hand.—Rev. 12:9; 2 Pet. 3:1, NW.
For the “last days” of Satan’s world Jesus foretold the sign of men’s becoming “faint out of fear.” Men “faint out of fear” readily become robot minds. True Christians will wake up their minds to see that the end of this age of fear and thought control is near. The great war of Armageddon impends. At that battle Christ the King will wipe out Satan and his hordes of robot minds. A new government will control the earth. It will be one government for all the people. The king of that new world, Christ Jesus, will not allow fear or robot minds to mar the peace of a paradise earth.—Luke 21:26, NW.