I HAVE been watching the anime “Neon Genesis Evangelion”. It’s an old anime that’s about a boy who was enlisted by a United Nations-supported organization called NERV to pilot an “Eva”.
An Eva is a giant machine used to fight alien monsters called “Angels”.
In the beginning I thought it was just a Mecha anime about giant robots fighting aliens. As the story progresses, however, I realized it could be something more sinister. As I haven’t finished it yet I can’t make any conclusions.
What I think though is that NERV may not really be manufacturing these “Evas” to protect humans. It was found out that the “Angel” DNA is 90 percent compatible with human DNA. The “Eva” units are not just giant machines. They can develop their own consciousness just like the humans who pilot them.
I realized that perhaps both the “Evas” and the “Angels” actually are something similar to humans. NERV isn’t protecting the human race, they’re playing god.
There was one quote from the anime that I find interesting. “Man made the city a sanctum when they were kicked out of the garden of Eden.” Whatever your religious or non-religious views may be, we can agree that the city is something man created for man. It is a place where we feel protected from the forces of Mother Nature and the beasts of the wild.
Since ancient times a city has been a place holding man’s ambitions, comfort and power. The city is what birthed the seemingly endless possibilities that man could achieve with its first born child – technology.
Technology has gone beyond the entertaining apps of your smartphone. Man has explored space, combated Mother Nature itself, even made “life” from test tubes. We definitely seem to have become our own gods.
When is it too much, though? The technological advancements definitely have benefits. A machine can replace a lost organ. A machine can take the place of people in some dangerous jobs due to the fact that it has its own intelligence.
When will the intelligence be too much though? What if one day the machines develop their own consciousness? Right now NERV has lost control the of “Evas”. If you’ve watched the “Terminator” you will see what will happen if machines have the ruthlessness of humans.
Playing god has its disadvantages and its risks. Just like the way Adam and Eve defied God in the biblical story, machines one day, too, may defy their creators, their “gods”. When that day comes who knows if man will have the power to “kick them out” of the metropolitan Garden of Eden?
Even then, machines may inherit the stubbornness of humans and make their own sanctum. Eventually they will overpower all other life forms that walk the Earth just like what humans are doing now./PN
