Ramblings on Robots, Rulers, Rules and Regulations

I’ve always been fascinated by robots, not that I’m technically inclined in the least.  C3PO and R2D2 were my favorite characters in Star Wars as was Gort in “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”  I remember the first Superman show I watched, the black and white version made in the 1950’s, which had a robot in it, quite unsophisticated, but still something that intrigued me.  As television became more advanced, so would robots.  I would come to fantasize about Cylons, the later version.  Who wouldn’t want a gigantic metal contraption that said, “By your command?”  Even though I consider my husband Superman, he still can’t lift a lot of those heavy rocks out in the woods that I would love for building projects.

This morning I woke up thinking about all the rules and regulations we have, not just the ones that are handed down to us by those supposed higher authorities who know best, but also those we impose on ourselves.  Life can get so complicated as it is, without rules and regulations greatly oppressing individuality and the freedom to truly flow from the heart.

Rules and regulations can be written down as law, as well as obscured and hidden from sight.  The hidden ones can be the ones carrying the most force, the ones you don’t dare oppose.  Lao Tzo said, “The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished…. The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.”

I asked my husband this morning who the rulers of the world were.  He replied, “Vishnu.”  That’s not exactly what I meant though.  I said would you say that Monsanto, General Electric and the Roman Catholic Church were the rulers of the world?  And then there are the oil companies and pharmaceutical companies.  Corporations basically rule the world.  We may have what we call world leaders, but I feel they are wearing invisible straight jackets for the most part.

Possibly soon robots will be ruling the world.  Hopefully, it won’t come to the same scenario as in “Terminator.”  I write this using Word, which does a great deal of the work for me with the thesaurus and dictionary at my side and spell check.  With calculators everywhere I’m not sure I could add up numbers on my own anymore.  Everything we buy is coded and scanned with cards slid through.  There is no thinking process at all involved. We move along like the cogs in the wheel, or more organically or biologically like sheep.

There obviously was once or many times before us advanced civilizations.  We see the proof in the pyramids and at many other ancient sites.  Were these people(s) great thinkers and mathematicians?  They would have had to have been to have had such high development.  I see the Sphinx, which in my own observation appears to the be the head of an African woman, the Oprah of the day.  I see the resemblance myself.  Could we have come full circle?  How did these vast civilizations fall?  Could robots and corporations have been the culprit?  Thinking disappeared. Flowing from the heart disappeared.

Las Tzo continues, “The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world “stabilizes itself.” As Lao-tzu put it, “Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves….”

I’m thankful I still have some thought process left.