Machines vs. Humans

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Natural human behaviour is built on the premise of freedom; freedom of thought and action that give the human race limitless capabilities. For the most part, human behaviour and thought are very spontaneous in nature and do not follow a step by step or calculated process. Nor, can the actions of humans be easily predicted.. The freedom inherent in humans is undeniable. Human beings work in a way completely opposite to machines and computers. Machines have no freedom to think, speak, move or have feelings. Freedom is not a trait pocessed by computers because they are governed by mathematics, programs and by someone else - human beings. What happens if humans begin to take on computer like traits and figuratively morph into machines? Applying mechanical traits to a person or mechanizing them, ultimately results in the dehumanization of humans because it eliminates many of the innate attributes that are instinctive; expression, feelings, freedom of thought, mind and body and the spontaneity that defines humans. Therefore a loss of anyone of these traits could be considered inhumane. Humans can become mechanized like a computer; processing infjormation and producing the desired output. This concept is evident in literature, especially in the dystopian worlds of George Orwell’s 1984 and Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which show that control is detrimental to the human race.

1984 and A Clockwork Orange act as examples to demonstrate the extent to which governments will go to improve a dystopian society. Like the “real world”, both novels illustrate that attempts to improve decaying worlds move towards employing means of control and constraints over the human race. Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange and George Orwell’s 1984 show that psychological and physical controls placed on a society will improve efficiency and order in that world. However, the improved society has serious repercussions. Ultimately, both novels illustrate that when measures of control are placed on a society, the human race is dehumanized.

Methods of psychological control and physical control are used commonly in both novels and ultimately mechanize the characters . Although each method works in a different way to command others, these two techniques are intertwined and would not work without the other. Control is achieved in 1984 as well as A Clockwork Orange due to the interrelationship between the mental and physical; O’Brien illustrates that “we control matter because we control the mind” (Orwell, 227).

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