Human
I was inspired by a speech delivered/preached by my parish priest (we call it a sermon) in yesterday’s mass – Sundays’ obligation masses. He touched on the topic of humanity; and also on the parable from the bible which talks about the famous Good Samaritan who actually went out of his way to attend to an injured man by the roadside. During those early days, the Samaritans refer to people who originated from mixed marriages and thus were regarded as half-breed. The Jews consider themselves as the pure bred and the People of God and thus despise the Samaritans.
To cut the long story short, this man who was traveling was robbed of his money and belongings and the robbers even stripped him of his clothings; leaving him naked and injured by the roadside; with the heat of the sun shining upon him. As he was writhing on the grounds, a priest walked by. Now we all know priests and all religious men were highly regarded since those days and still are until today. However, in this story, the priest did a surprising thing; he turned and walked on the path, leaving the man as he did not want to have dirty stains on himself since he was a person of God. Next, a Levite (regarded as the teacher of Law) came by and saw the man in pain. He also strode in his path and left the man there. The next person who came by was a Samaritan, the race which everyone scorned upon as lowly. This man saw the injured man and immediately rushed to his aid; checking to see if he is still alive and further attending to him through the medication and then bandaged him. He carried the man on his own animal and brought him to an inn to take care of him and then even paid the innkeeper to take good care of the man when he left; promising greater returns if he fulfilled his deed when he returns.
This story is one that touched many; as who would have thought that the most lowly despised and even the enemy of the race would lend a helping hand in times of distress? The war between the two races was not the barrier for the Samaritan to reach out to someone in pain without further hesitation. Simply deciphered as compassion; the Samaritan has performed a human deed; based on instinctive feelings for another man who has fallen.
Compassion; a word so simple and basic yet seemed so foreign in the contemporary generation. Human beings are distinguished from the animal kingdom and other beings created by God in the aspects of the grant of mind and feelings.
Being human, we supersede the other beings because of our brain and our living heart where we are blessed with the ability to think and feel to experience the evolving world around us.
Sadly, today, we see this virtue of mankind diminishing with time; replaced by the advancement of technology and knowledge.
The priest also raised an interesting comparison with respects to the parable; the movie Transformers. A sci-fi based story which had its long-time legacy in its creativity; talking about robots and their mission and their transfiguration ability with respects to the situation requirements. The storyline is pretty simple; where it was a battle between the good and the evil robots (not exactly evil but they had a mission to accomplish). Both robots were from the other space or dimension and they had a quest to seize and obtain something which could grant them the highest and most powerful ability to reign other races of their own kind. The mission takes them to planet Earth where the object of their quest is and this has led them to the intervention with the other kind; humans. During their quest, they had to come in live contact with the humans. This is where the robots were distinguished between the good and the bad. The Optimus Primus; termed as the good robots actually fought for their quest but in the mission of doing so, they had another objective; which is protect the humans.
Depicted in the poster which was interestingly divided into 2 sides; the one on the left; with the blue hint represents the good robots who want to protect the humans during their mission and quoted “ We must not hurt the humans”.
On the contrary, since we have the protectors, we also have the destructors; the other side of the poster where the Megabots with the black sting were depicted with their tagline ‘To Destroy’.
Analyzing the movie, the robots both wanted to accomplish their mission by all means but the good robots showed compassion; which brought them out as the protagonist which overshadowed their protagonist counterpart. The Good Robots are also set with the intent of a successful accomplishment but at the same time, they do not want any innocent or others to be hurt or sacrificed in the process; a noble thought which even turned out to be sacrificial when they lost one of their kind during this quest to protect mankind. The Bad robots; set out with the same objective but their mindset was tuned to only accomplishing their mission and the others do not matter; as long as they accomplish their mission and anything that stands in their way will be removed; including innocent humans who were oblivious to their quest.
At this point, my parish priest also raised a food for thought; robots (referring to Optimus Primus) were acting compassionate in a manner which surpass even of mankind. They were intent NOT to hurt anyone in their quest; but back to Earth, how many times have we hurt or been hurt by others of our own kind?
How many have suffered from the tyranny and selfishness of others?
How many has been the “rock” or stepping stone for others’ success?
What has happened to our society? Is life no longer an asset? Except when it is your own?
Have we transformed ourselves into Megabots; just intent on achieving our own missions to fulfill our own happiness that we are not bothered by others who suffered in the process?
Are we comparable to robots? We do not even have feelings anymore and only move in the direction of our mission?
Compassion can be depicted in robots; it may be a movie but are we certain that today, we are still surrounded by compassion and love?
The answer lies in the rates of crimes; murder, robberies, abuses, fights, abortions, which are revolving around us every day when we flip the newspaper pages. Is this still a caring society? Do you stop by to lend a hand to someone in need or in pain if you happen to see them by the roadside?
Everyone is too encompassed with their self-interests that they overlook others beside them; or deemed as not important. If they face obstructions in their path, the only way is to remove them and move ahead with our path. Putting ourselves at risk of danger is simply not worth it for others; furthermore with the ugly sides of the society which has also taken the turn in taking advantage of sympathies and empathies to put themselves at danger when they stretch out their arm to help. Today, if you were to stop your car at the side of the highway to help another car which appeared to have broken down, you may appear in the headlines the next day as a victim of a mob gang or even killed mercilessly for your help which was not needed. Thus it is no wonder most of the people have turned themselves into the priest or Levite who ignored an injured man by the roadside.
Being human is also not easy; there are lots of points which you are looking at to be simply human. You will need to put yourself at risk of danger and to put others ahead of self interests; which may require yourself to put that foot forward to help. How many are willing to do that anymore?
As we upgrade with the evolution of the technology and the status of the society, we notice the increasing rates of crimes in parallel as well. Perhaps compassion has vanished along with the upgrade in the brain; perhaps they are inverse in relation.
Stripping off the compassion and humanly figure as of the priest and the Levite, we may be just mere Megabots in disguise.
It is a CHOICE for you to make that core within you a Optimus or a Megabot.
