Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
C. Virgil Gheorghiu
From The Twenty-Fifth Hour (1949)
Translated by Rita Eldon
“…The mechanical slave has proved both more efficient and less costly than the human slave and is rapidly superseding him…The mechanical slave is a perfect servant. He tills the soil, wages war, manages political complexities, keeps order, and runs the administration…”
“This slow process of dehumanization is at work under different guises, making man renounce his emotions and reducing social relationships to something categorical, automatic, and precise, like the relationship between the different parts of a machine…Men are becoming the apes of robots…”
“All the armies of the world will be composed of mercenaries fighting for the consolidation of their robot society, from which the individual is excluded. Up to now armies have fought to conquer new lands and new riches, to satisfy their national pride or the personal interests of kings and emperors; the ultimate aim was loot or glory. All these ambitions were human. But now armies fight for the interests of a society which scarcely tolerates the proletariat, humanity, even on its most distant borders. It is perhaps the blackest period in world history. Never before has man been so utterly despised…”
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“All I know is that to subject man to mechanical laws and standards – which are excellent so far as machines are concerned – amounts to murder. Any man forced to live under the conditions and in the environment suited to fishes will perish within a few moments, and vice versa. The West has evolved a society that is analogous to a machine. It is now forcing men to live in it and to adapt themselves to its new laws. For the time being, the West still has hopes; at times even, it deludes itself with the mirage of success. But men who are treated according to laws governing motorcars or chronometers must inevitably perish. ‘People are not alike…Nations are not alike. Everybody is not the same or as clever or strong as everybody else!’ (Jawaharlal Nehru) Only machines can be perfectly alike; only machines can be replaced, taken to pieces, and reduced to a few essential parts or movements. When men and machines will be identical, then there will cease to be men on earth.”
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