Automaton

Lately I've been thinking about automaton's. They are really quite beautiful. Intricate pieces of machinery woven together; and when in working order, create a being nearly completely self-sufficient. Di Vinci, in 1495, sketched his plans for an automaton that, when built, moved its arms, turned its head, and could sit up all on its own. In 1739 Jacques de Vaucanson built a duck that could eat a grain of wheat, and then defecate. Voltaire is quoted as saying without the duck, there would be nothing to remind you of the glory of France. Automatons have only become more complex and developed. There are robots to sweep and mop your floors; disarm bombs; build cars. It's amazing how much time, energy and expense we are willing to put into these machines.

But are we devoting too much time to these pursuits? Are we becoming a society that is so desirous of the perfect being, that we are willing to loose the relational aspect that makes us human?

I think it can be seen in the things that we have, the stuff that we use. Our iPods, our computers, even our phones. We can check the weather, a baseball score, or who has been kicked off American idol, all with out leaving the comfort of our homes, or our heads for that matter. Perhaps we are inadvertently creating a generation of human automatons through our technological advances; by providing ourselves with technology that allows us to function with little to no assistance from others.

At times I feel a bit like a machine. I'm constantly being fed a stack of information, expected to process and file, and start again; all this with little to no human interaction, just me and my old think pad. But is this how it should be? I don't think God created us in the image of the Defecating Duck. As a matter of fact, I know he didn't. He created us to be in his image; a piece of him.

I'm currently reading Searching for God Knows What by Donald Miller. I just finished the chapter entitled Naked. In it, Miller talks about the beginning. About how God created Adam, and had him name all the animals. And the whole time Adam kept looking for a helpmate, but he couldn't find one. And he was lonely. So after he was finished naming the animals, God put him to sleep, and created Eve. Moses sums up this information in two chapters, but Miller speculates that it probably took nearly a hundred years. Adam and Even were over 100 when they had children. This would mean, that for nearly 100 years, Adam searched the planet looking for someone else. Looking for his helpmate. Now, Adam was the first man. The first perfect man. Created in God's image. His DNA and soul, at this point, hadn't been mucked up by sin. So the man that we see wondering the garden with God, and searching for another, is in fact the most concentrated version of God that a human has ever been, (well aside from Jesus). He was what we were to be. And he had a desire, a need for someone else. If Adam was lonely, and needed someone to help him, to help complete him, then why should we expect to be different?

It is a shame that we are striving to live in a self-automated society. We should throw technology to the side, even if only for an hour, and embrace the need for others. I'd much rather be an image of God, then of a defecating duck.