Robots and spirituality

By Felipe Vera

Robotics will be more present in the lives of all humans in the near future. Factories, stores, supermarkets, auto-operated cars, cooks, surgical operations almost completely made by robots are already something real and far from science fiction. This causes much concern to sociologists, psychologists, religious, trade unions and many people because the number of jobs can be drastically reduced in the short term.

According to data from the World Bank, the proportion of jobs threatened by automation is 69% in India, 77% in China and not less than 85% in Ethiopia. Some important proposals have come up to solve this problem.

One of the most important is that of Bill Gates, he has proposed to create a tax on robots that allows to distribute the wealth generated by them in a more equitable way among humans.

Another is that of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO at Facebook who proposes the creation of a universal and equal wage for each human.

The wealth generated by the robots will be so great that the creation of this universal wage seems possible. This will allow all humans to have sufficient income to live comfortably but what will happen when people work only a few hours a week? Here are some opinions:

1-Excessive boredom. If boredom is associated with depression, it can be inferred that people who are bored frequently are more likely to suffer heart attacks due to the release of certain dangerous hormones that are generated in those states by forcing cardiac functioning.

Dr. Daniel López Rosetti, president of the Argentine Society of Stress Medicine, says that being healthy means having the right level of stress, which means having a normal level of enthusiasm for life and the desire to live; And calls Hypostress the constant state of boredom, and lack of interest in things. Dr. López Rosetti also maintains that depression is related to boredom because it has the same symptoms, such as sadness, melancholy, pessimism, and a level of pathological stress.

These levels of boredom can even lead to suicide, as in many European countries.

2-Leisure. Laziness (in Latin, Acidia) is the most "metaphysical" of capital sins, since it refers to the inability to accept and take charge of oneself. The Franciscans consider laziness as the mother of all vices (alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.)

Undoubtedly the idea of ​​a society of general well-being is attractive in a world full of inequalities, poverty, and violence, but the problems that this can bring are many in the human psyche and its behavior or perhaps we are entering an era in which humans will be more spiritual and worshipers of God.