How lonely do you have to be to hold hands with a robotic hand? How lonely do you have to be to buy a robotic hand to hold? Survey says: pretty, incredibly lonely. Of all the sad things I’ve seen in the world, one of the saddest most certainly must be the new Osampo Kanojo “walk girlfriend” robot hands that were invented in Japan. Apparently there are a lot of lonely men in Japan who want to hold hands and go for a walk. Enter: Science. Science decided that what these sad and lonely Japanese men needed wasn’t to make changes in their lives to make them boyfriend material. Nope. What they needed was a robot-hand that is warm and perspires.
This is next level pathetic.
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m not trying to shame these men. I don’t need to. Simply purchasing and utilizing a robot hand as a simulacrum for female companionship comes with its own special sense of shame that, even if I wanted to, I couldn’t add on to. Some crimes are their own punishment. Some sins come ready-made with the pain that sin causes. It’s the nature of folly – it is inherently self-destructive. And this…phenomenon…obviously brings a hefty helping of hopelessness along with it.
I can think of few things more emasculating than buying a robot hand to hold – it’s at once innocent and depraved, which makes its depravity all the more depraved. Japanese scientists have found a way to make hand-holding creepy.
Forgive me for a second, but there is something to be said about this and why I think this might actually be worse than pornography (at least in some ways). Pornography is objectification and fantasy. So is this. Pornography, even the stuff that doesn’t actively involve physical violence against women, is not supposed to be meaningful. Porn doesn’t represent meaningful passionate sexual intercourse (at least not that I’m aware of). Porn represents tawdry, depraved, acts of sin, that are wrong and that are known to be wrong. There is the inherent sense of conquest. Pornographic sex is, fundamentally, adversarial. Or at best mutually parasitic. Both people are using eachother to get something. It’s vulgar and low and tries to erase meaning from sex – which is horrifying, but at least its honest in its animal promiscuity.
But fake hands to hold replace partnership. Hand-holding is one of the most powerful forms of physical intimacy because it symbolizes mutual trust, common goals, a willingness to go together! You can’t go farther ahead or fall farther behind than arm’s length and hold hands. When my wife and I hold hands on a walk we’re agreeing to go together to the same place at the same pace. Holding hands, in many ways, is more intimate than kissing or even sex. Sex can be perfunctory. It can be animal. Hand holding rarely is. There’s something even more vulnerable about hand-holding, perhaps because it is non-coital. Perhaps because it’s pure partnership. It’s not two people looking into eachother; but two people looking out at the world – but together.
And Japan just ruined it. Japanese scientists saw this empty gaping hole in the lives of lonely Japanese men and decided that the best way to ease the existential anxiety of living alone was to give them a robot hand…seriously. I mean, first of all, and not to be crass, but if you think these things are only being used for hand-holding, then…well, you can have your delusions. Secondly, how is this fixing anything?! This is only making things worse – and moreover, it simply furthers the objectification of women.
We’re finding ways to make the partnership of marriage or a committed relationship into a commodity. Wives and girlfriends aren’t sought because people want a companion, but because they want the emotional benefits of companionship. They don’t want to put in the work of becoming someone worth dating or marrying, or to change their lifestyle to have time for a relationship, or to put in the effort to meet the right person, or lower their standards to a realistic level, or get in shape, or improve their hygiene, or get a better job, or develop courage, or to grow and develop morality and character, or just plain grow-up. Cause that’s hard work. No, the solution isn’t becoming someone worth dating – it’s getting a robot-hand and holding it on walks.
I’m not sure that I could come up with a more apt image of the self-loathing narcissism that our age is embroiled in than a young professional taking a walk with a petite, slightly sweaty, body temperature, robot hand. And of course in the minds of our secular, and moronic age, people have decided that this is the kind of things we can’t judge people about. One writer even allowed this vacuous thought to escape their brain and pollute the souls of others:
“Sure we could sit here only in the judgment of this hand. It’s weird, yes. Really weird. But who are we to judge these people. They’re lonely. It’s a different culture. And, unless some Skynet stuff goes down and the hands start strangling their owners, these robot hands aren’t hurting anyone either. They’re harmless albeit kind of weird inventions from a country that routinely invents kind of weird stuff for better (Pokemon! Anime!) and worse (used panty vending machines).”
Except they are hurting people. They’re hurting the people who buy and use them to narcotize the crisis of their souls. It’s not only not helping them grow as people, but it is actively reinforcing the thought that wives and girlfriends, and by extension women in general, only exist as a means of satisfying a man’s emotional and physical appetites. It’s gross.
This is simply more evidence of why the Church needs to focus on anthropology and actually demonstrate how Christ and His Wisdom offers answers to the problems we face as societies and as individuals. But mark my words – wherever Christ is absent, so will be real human love. Sex robots are already here, and soon and very soon they will replace actual women as companions. When Lars’ Real Girl gets Alexa in her circuit boards, actual woman will be the Happy Hunting Ground of Alpha males only. We’re going to see more polyamory and I think bigamy and trigamy and all the “gamies” once the technology is there for Betas and Gammas to have a maid/ mommy/ mistress that has the body of a ten and whose demands and needs can be satisfied with a USB port. Men too weak or cowardly to become actual men will live their pornographic fantasies with their sexbots; spilling their seed in a dishwasher safe robot recepticle; giving their best strength to circuitry and their years to a computer. These men will finally get what they always wanted – a beautiful “woman” who adores them and cares only for their needs and makes no demands but only wishes to be a doting, ever-ready slave. A woman who wants a real man is gonna have to choose between the classic-jerk (whose species will rapidly be expanding) and the man of character (who will soon be on the endangered species list).
I could talk on this issue for a long time. But I don’t want to, because it’s simply too depressing. Long story short: robot girlfriends are always a bad idea. Robot girlfriends hurt men, hurt women, and hurt society. Also…it’s just gross.