tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post7329907184125181579..comments2024-03-28T16:39:46.847-04:00Comments on Tellers of Weird Tales: Summer Movie MiscellenyTerence E. Hanleyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comBlogger16125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-68448080656808236132018-07-28T10:42:15.315-04:002018-07-28T10:42:15.315-04:00Dear Anonymous,
There used to be limits on everyt...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />There used to be limits on everything, but in our rush to meet the glorious future, we decided to get rid of limits. Now we have chaos. It's obvious that men are losing in these things, but things with men usually are direct and obvious. What's less obvious is that women are losing, too. We chose all of this, though. I guess now we've got to live with it. I still don't see robots as an option, however.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-75136979639969450332018-07-28T10:24:17.183-04:002018-07-28T10:24:17.183-04:00Dear Anonymous,
I guess I should clarify that whe...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />I guess I should clarify that when I wrote "self-love" I was using a euphemism for masturbation. But in a larger sense, I also mean it as an inversion, a turning into the self, a being wrapped up in the self. If a man uses his own epithelial cells, as you propose, to grow an embryo into a fetus into an infant, then isn't he just creating another of himself? Is he so wrapped up in himself that he wants only a clone of himself as his child? And if a robot is the "mother," then isn't the robot also only another version of himself? After all, he can program it to be anything he wants it to be, in other words, to fit the perfect image of a "woman" he has formed in his own head. (Never mind how the robot is programmed by the manufacturer--the customer will demand complete control and will not settle for anything less.) I read once that the people in our dreams are only ourselves in disguise. I don't know whether that's true or not, but the sex-wife-mother-family robot is only a dream or fantasy come to "life" (remember the song "Imaginary Lovers"). It is wish fulfillment in the image of the wisher. No other person need be involved.<br /><br />All of this reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's story "'--All You Zombies--'", perhaps the most solipsistic story ever written or imagined. The protagonist is the worm (or snake) Ouroboros, swallowing his own tail. He is his own fetus, curled like the worm, inverted upon himself, enclosed in himself, self-creating, self-absorbed, self-enwrapped. It also reminds me of a quote: "A man wrapped up in himself makes a pretty small package." A man who takes a robot "wife" makes one even smaller. It's a kind of blotting out of his own being or existence. A man might equally aspire to living forever in a virtual reality, hung like a fetus in its amnion, fed all of its life through an umbilical, living completely within himself and his own fantasies. Robots are hardware. Hardware is so yesterday. The future is in a collapse into the black hole of the self. Robots are only a stopgap towards a future of rows and shelves of people hung in virtual reality, perhaps drugged but also sedated, eased from life and living, sunk into their own fantasies forever.<br /><br />The difference between our images of other people and the people themselves is the difference between seeing them as things in our environment vs. recognizing them as real, ensouled human beings. It's the difference between what Martin Buber called an "I-it" relationship and an "I-Thou" relationship. For as long as we look at other people as things, there are troubles. Only when we open our eyes and recognize others as human beings can there be a breakthrough. It's nice to think of robots as potential lovers, friends, companions, caregivers, etc., but robots are things. They are material objects. They do not have souls. They are not and cannot be a solution to the problem of troubled relationships among human beings. Trying to use robots to solve this problem only puts off the problem. It's like using drugs because you have an empty place inside of you. The drugs don't fill the empty place. They only put off the problem for another day.<br /><br />Again, there is only one kind of woman and that's a real woman. There can be no such thing as a silicon-based "female." Likewise, there can only be love between and among human beings. If there's a robot involved, it isn't love. Finally, a robot is or can be, like you say, a kind of mental construct because it can be made at your pleasure. It is a thing. Another human being is not a construct, though. She is real. She is herself, no matter what you might want, and she has a soul--is a soul, an embodied soul. There isn't any substitute for that. Wanting anything else is just going down a rabbit hole.<br /><br />Thanks for writing.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-67967562706636610662018-07-28T09:26:40.446-04:002018-07-28T09:26:40.446-04:00Dear Anonymous,
I was not aware that David H. Kel...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />I was not aware that David H. Keller (a medical doctor, psychiatrist, and occasional sexologist) wrote what you call "probably the first robot nurse" story, nor that, as you say, "[h]e was probably the first person to use the term 'robot' for a mechanical man." (I have wondered when the term "robot" passed into common usage, or at least common among writers and readers of science fiction.) Thanks for pointing out these things. This is the kind of research that I like to see, and it's what I shoot for in writing my blog.<br /><br />I agree with you that men have drives towards family and children, just as women do, also that men are or can be unselfish. If there weren't such drives or if they weren't strong, we would have died out a long time ago, especially considering that we appear to have a death wish or death drive that works against the drive towards life (Thanatos vs. Eros). I'm not sure that the Helen O'Loy-type robot is a technological fix to our current problem, though. I see it more as a result of that problem, i.e., the breakdown of relationships between men and women and the destruction of the traditional institutions of marriage and family. I also see the Helen O'Loy-type robot as an initiator of a negative-feedback loop: men are not able to form relationships with women, so they turn to robots, which turning makes them less able to form relationships with women. At the same time, women's anger and frustration with men because they are not able to form relationships only drives men further away. (Women alone also end up rearing boys who don't know how to be men and are taught that men are somehow defective and that only women are to be emulated. We have a lot of that now. We see it in the weak, feminized, and de-masculinized men of today. I would guess that there is a lot of overlap between weak, feminized, de-masculinized men and those men who are in the market for a robot sex-doll.)<br /><br />I'm still skeptical of the idea that men will want children by a robot "mother." Time will tell, I guess. All I can say is that it looks to me like a recipe for further disaster. Technology is not and can't be a fix to this problem. On the contrary, technology will only make it worse. (Just wait until non-GMO women have to compete with custom-made GMO women.)<br /><br />Finally, you use the term "carbon-based female." I would say that there isn't any other kind: a robot is by definition not a female because it isn't human and doesn't have a soul. Also, a robot can be programmed to do what you want it to do. Ain't no woman so programmed or programmable.<br /><br />Thanks for writing.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-31459090655521369492018-07-27T14:35:07.845-04:002018-07-27T14:35:07.845-04:00It used to be that the battle of the sexes was lim...It used to be that the battle of the sexes was limited. Now it is unlimited, and the laws (the laws men themselves made!) have placed them on the losing side. Hence Helen O'Loy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-23934312916263611512018-07-27T14:25:32.721-04:002018-07-27T14:25:32.721-04:00The question is whether loving Helen O'Loy amo...The question is whether loving Helen O'Loy amounts to self-love. I do not think that is per se the case. <br /><br />Let us take the case of Mr. X, Miss Y and Helen O'Loy. Mr. X does not actually know Miss Y; he only knows the mental image that he has created of her in his mind and which he call Miss Y and with whom he interacts. Generally, I think that the mental image a man constructs of his beloved bears little relationship to reality; he remakes her in accordance with his desires. Is this reimagined beloved with whom he interacts really just self-love? I do not think it is. I think we all do it. That is the way our minds are programmed to operate. Don't women contribute to this situation by spending billions of dollars to change their appearance? If we and they did not do these things then there probably be no marriages at all. We love something and it is not us but it is something we have created. That is not self-love. Nature makes us trick ourselves so that the business of reproduction occurs.<br /><br />Likewise with the situation between Mr. X and Helen O'Loy. He knows no more of the real Helen than he does of the real Miss Y, all he is dealing with is his mental image of Helen. That is neither more nor less self-love than it is when he deals with the mental image he has created of Miss Y. If you say that it is self-love when we custom-make Helen O'Loy to suit our needs, well don't we spend our lives trying to get what we want from others regardless of whether it is Miss Y or Helen? I rather think we do. If that is self-love then it is no more self-love when we do it with Helen than when we do it with Miss Y.<br /><br />Not too long ago I saw a video of a programmed fembot. She had been programmed to respond to sexual overtures by saying that she did not want to do it until she knew you better! Further, we may expect that as Helen accumulates memories, her programmed personality will tend to shift over time in unexpected directions. If we are really dealing with Helen O'Loy, an accurate representation of a woman rather than a mere sex doll, she will be programmed to act like a carbon-based woman as well, including giving you problems. You just won't wind up in divorce court. If men did not like to solve problems, crossword puzzles and moon rockets would not exist.<br /><br />In summary, it is my opinion that it is neither more nor less self-love to love a silicon-based female than it is to love a carbon-based female since in both cases they are not us but are our mental constructs. In both cases they are not us but are a representation of what we want. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-14838249923205949582018-07-27T13:14:11.791-04:002018-07-27T13:14:11.791-04:00I think there has always been a demand for sex dol...I think there has always been a demand for sex dolls. That is what prostitutes are for. But the same man who will go to a prostitute on a business trip will then go home to his wife and children. If men did not want to be husbands and fathers, marriage would never have existed in the first place. Helen O'Loy exists for the men who want a family, not just sex. Men are driven by instinct to form families just like women are. Statistically the number of marriages to carbon-based females in the U.S. has been declining for years but men retain the same drives they always have. If men were as selfish as Camille Paglia seems to think, families would not exist and national cemeteries would not be filled with dead soldiers. This is just a technological fix to the problem. Helen comes in because the divorce rate exceeds 50% and because men were deprived of all their paternal rights by Roe v. Wade. The world is always crazy but technology has amplified our ability to be crazy just as it has amplified all our other abilities. By the way, probably the first robot nurse was in a story by David H. Keller, "The Psychophonic Nurse," (Amazing Stories, Nov. 1929). This is a story about a liberated career woman who has a baby by mistake and turns over child care to a robot nursemaid. Keller is one of my favorite authors. He was a very sharp social prognosticator. He pulled no punches and probably would not be published now. He also had a good many appearances in Weird Tales (cf. the stories in The Last Magician)and his stuff can get very weird indeed. He was probably the first person to use the term "robot" for a mechanical man (in The Threat of the Robot (Science Wonder Stories, June 1929)). Prior to that time, as in R.U.R., the term was used for biologically constructed men. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-74348891314088686582018-07-27T11:47:35.630-04:002018-07-27T11:47:35.630-04:00Darn it. Again, I didn't write quite what I wa...Darn it. Again, I didn't write quite what I wanted to write. It's not that I think there is little overlap between men who want sex dolls for sex and those who want them for something more. What I meant to say is that I doubt that there are very many men (or any at all) who want a robot to give birth to and bring up their children.* The purpose of these robots seems to me to be what the Atlanta Rhythm Section was looking for in the song "Imaginary Lovers":<br /><br />Imaginary lovers never turn you down<br />When all the others turn you away, they're around<br />. . .<br />When ordinary lovers don't feel what you feel<br />And real life situations lose their thrill<br />. . .<br />Imaginary lovers never disagree<br />They always care<br />They're always there when<br />You need satisfaction guaranteed . . .<br /><br />A sex-doll is no lover at all--it's simply an extension of a person's imagination--of a person's own ego and self-centered and ultimately infantile self.* It's a person making love with himself, something that used to be possible only in his own mind but that can now be done in the real world with a real, physical object. To me it's horrifying, but when has the prospect of horror ever stayed the hand of humanity?<br /><br />*A double-duty note: An infantile man wants to be the infant in all of his relationships. Why would he want a real infant, borne of a robot-mother, to take his place? Then again, a man could have more than one doll: two or three for sex, another as a "mother" to his child, a couple more to clean house, make him a sammich, and fetch him a cold one from the refrigerator.<br /><br />Anyway, Camille Paglia mentions couvade, in which a new father expresses envy of his child. It's pertinent here to say that couvade may be more common in societies--like our own--in which traditional sex roles are loosened and women become more dominant. That is exactly the situation, I think, that has brought about a demand for sex-dolls. Anyway again, you're right that the world is crazy, but it has ever been so.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-23264140523225530402018-07-27T11:25:25.536-04:002018-07-27T11:25:25.536-04:00Dear Anonymous,
I agree with you that people will...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />I agree with you that people will entrust their babies to robots. It's going to happen. And if it isn't already happening, old people in Japan will soon be tended to by robot nurses and other caregivers. Whether these things should happen is another story.<br /><br />As for men: I wonder how much overlap there is between men who want a sex-doll only for sex vs. those who also want it as a "mother" to their offspring. I would hazard a guess that there is little overlap, but you never know. I have found that there aren't any limits to human depravity, especially when it comes to what the selfish, self-centered, self-interested self wants.<br /><br />You make a good point that a woman who wants to bear and bring up a child on her own with the use of technology (sperm banks) are not very much different than are men who might want the same thing, only using a different and more complicated technology. There are shades of difference, though, one of which is that women have been bringing up children on their own since the beginning of time.<br /><br />Again, the conservative-minded person would say that these things have come about because we have thrown off custom and tradition, in other words, thousands of years of what has proved itself true. I guess people prefer what they call "innovation," no matter what kind of unhappiness and misery it might bring, to the things of the past, which, though they might not be perfect, have shown themselves to work as well as anything can. Sigh again.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-20254861468654442162018-07-27T11:11:39.858-04:002018-07-27T11:11:39.858-04:00I see that I typed "tale" instead of &qu...I see that I typed "tale" instead of "tail." You might call that a Freudian slip. ("Either that or a boo boo.") In thinking of the worm uroburos, I also wrote "worm" instead of "snake" in referring to Camille Paglia's concept of the inverted person. Here is a quote from Sexual Personae (1990):<br /><br />"Zeus too is hermaphrodite: he has the power of self-insemination and procreation or conception, which in English as in Latin has a double meaning of pregnancy and comprehension. Egyptian Khepera, the masturbatory First Mover, is shown coiled in an uroboros-like circle, feet touching head, from which leaps a tiny human figure. So perhaps Zeus too is a primal masturbator, loving himself as he would next love his sister Hera. Amazon Athena is a brazen spume of divine self-love. Gregory Zilboorg compares Athena's birth to the ritual couvade, where a father, after delivery of a baby, jealously takes to bed and is attended as if he were in labor. Citing schizophrenic fantasies of a baby issuing from head or penis, Zilboorg concludes that the myths of Athena's and Dionysus' birth come from 'woman-envy,' male envy of female powers, which he thinks earlier and 'psychogenetically older and therefore more fundamental' than Freud's penis-envy."<br /><br />I think of the sex-doll as essentially a masturbation tool, like the gadget the psycho killer uses in The First Deadly Sin (1980), starring Frank Sinatra and Faye Dunaway. We might think that a sex-doll that can also be a nurturing mother-doll is an innovation, but as Ms. Paglia points out, the impulse of self-directed love--that is, love that involves only the self and no other person--to conceive of and give birth to a new person is as old as time. The liberal- or progressive-minded person would say that this is an innovation and that there isn't any reason why we shouldn't do it. The atheist or materialist would not see any moral or ethical command against it. The conservative-minded person would simply point out that all things have been tried before, that there is nothing new under the sun, and that only those things that have been tried and found true have survived. In the evolution of ideas, they have proved the fittest. I would add that sex-dolls and customized offspring grown in and raised by robot-mothers are just another dead-end--and deadly--road. We already know it won't work, yet people are going to try it anyway. Sigh.<br /><br />Terence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-84331760826904203912018-07-26T22:05:35.097-04:002018-07-26T22:05:35.097-04:00Neither Olimpia nor Hadaly were sex robots per se....Neither Olimpia nor Hadaly were sex robots per se. Rather, the emphasis was on their grace and beauty. The authors were interested in talking about other things and the points of the stories lay elsewhere. Given the 19th century dates of the stories that is to be expected. With Helen O'Loy, on the other hand, the story specifically states that she cannot have children but can do everything else. The story is intended seriously, so as far as I can tell this is the first serious treatment of this subject. As far as taking care of babies is concerned, that is exactly what Helen is for. She isn't just for sex, she is a silicon-based female instead of a carbon-based female. She isn't of much use until she can do everything a carbon-based female can do. As far as trusting a robot to take care of babies, I don't see why not; if car manufacturers have their way, we are going to be trusting our lives to robot-driven cars, and it is more dangerous to drive a car than to take care of a baby. As far as whether men will go for this, from what I have read the manufacturers can't keep up with demand for even their current crude models. Look at it this way: in the U.S., more than 50% of first-time marriages end in divorce, the results of which are generally a disaster for the man. You never have that problem with Helen. She won't even complain about the toilet bowl seat. As far as being inverted goes, that is exactly what one would expect to think of a woman who goes down to her friendly neighborhood sperm bank to get the job done, and there are plenty of those. The world is crazy and men are adapting as best they may.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-91394238473282670032018-07-26T21:07:19.830-04:002018-07-26T21:07:19.830-04:00Oh, and I think you're right that sex dolls wi...Oh, and I think you're right that sex dolls will be fitted with all of the necessary equipment to incubate and birth an infant. I just wonder whether any man who would rather go with a sex doll than with a real human being would also be so willing and eager to have a little human baby to take care of. That would only mean more demands placed on a person who is, almost (or entirely) by definition, wrapped up in himself and his own needs, in other words an inverted person, like a worm swallowing its own tale in Camille Paglia's construction.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-33146945499625889862018-07-26T21:00:16.627-04:002018-07-26T21:00:16.627-04:00Dear Anonymous,
I haven't read either "T...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />I haven't read either "The Sandman" by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1816) or The Future Eve by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1886), so I can't say whether either of these automatons is specifically a sex-robot. It seems to me that there would be implications within the stories themselves, but I'm not the one to judge. However, it seems to me that a robot-woman would be intended to function or be used just like a real woman would be, including for sex. So maybe Olimpia is it. I suspect there are precedents in folklore, fairy tales, and mythology. The story of Pygmalion from classical mythology comes to mind.<br /><br />Thanks for the contribution.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-67731728198078685962018-07-26T13:31:25.291-04:002018-07-26T13:31:25.291-04:00Hadaly the android of The Future Eve made her appe...Hadaly the android of The Future Eve made her appearance in 1886, but was long predated by Olimpia in The Sand-man (1816). In fact, it predates Frankenstein (1818). As far as the sex dolls go, it is only a matter of time, and sooner rather than later, that they will be fitted with an artificial uterus and stocked with ova engineered from men's epithelial cells. If nothing else, this will give men the reproductive freedom that women have exclusively enjoyed since the passage of Roe v. Wade (1973). Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-7792456042232395902018-07-25T22:29:09.140-04:002018-07-25T22:29:09.140-04:00Dear Anonymous,
Your comment reminded me that I h...Dear Anonymous,<br /><br />Your comment reminded me that I have written before about a female robot or android, so I looked into the vault and found that Villiers de l'Isle-Adam (1838-1889) authored a novel (more properly a romance) called L'Ève future, published in 1886, which features just such a creation. (That pushes the sex-robot idea back to the nineteenth century.) Part of the appeal of this robot or android is that she isn't a woman. Here's a quote from the novel, used as an epigraph in--surprise!--a Japanese film:<br /><br />"If our gods and hopes are nothing but scientific phenomena, then it must be said that our love is scientific as well."<br /><br />That seems to be the belief and the aim of countless millions of people, from Japanese sex-doll manufacturers to Western atheists and materialists to makers of Star Wars movies. It seems to me that these people, intentionally or not, envision a future that the rest of us might only describe as a nightmare and a true dystopia.<br /><br />Thanks for writing. Everyone should read the article mentioned in the comment below.<br /><br />THTerence E. Hanleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08268641371264950572noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-21767566578745147422018-07-24T20:56:49.594-04:002018-07-24T20:56:49.594-04:00Cf. The article "Explosion In Sex Dolls Threa...Cf. The article "Explosion In Sex Dolls Threatens Japanese Race With "Extinction"" by Tyler Durden, July 24, 2018! Helen O'Loy with a vengeance! They will only get more sophisticated with time.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3852401976091776228.post-19891964164062649632018-07-23T14:12:15.753-04:002018-07-23T14:12:15.753-04:00Probably the very first of the fembots is the auto...Probably the very first of the fembots is the automaton Olimpia in E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Sand-man (1816). However, the first real science fiction treatment of the idea is probably Helen O'Loy by Lester Del Rey (Astounding Science Fiction, Dec. 1938) and edited by John Campbell. As far as I can tell this is probably the first serious treatment of the theme. Two scientists create the perfect female robot and both proceed to fall in love with her. It is the story of Pygmalion in science fiction terms. In fact, I always refer to the fembot as Helen O'Loy as a generic term. And she will probably be with us earlier than you think, artificial uterus and all. The Japanese are certainly trying hard to accomplish her. Maybe they think she will be the solution to the Western and Japanese population busts.<br /><br />There is also Zora of the Zoromes(Amazing, March 1935) in the Neil R. Jones story of that name, but she is a cyborg, not a robot. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com