Endhiran, The Robot: A commentary on freewill.

TipriTV.com  Robot, Enthiran in Tamil and Robo in Telugu, is a mega-budget movie that was released in over 3000 halls worldwide.

In the first fifty days the Tamil, Telugu and Hindi versions have collected over three and half billion rupees (350 crores). The sensational success of this scientific fiction extravaganza is attributed to the South India demigod, Rajinikanth. The other factors that contributed to the success of the blockbuster were Aishwarya Rai, the former miss universe, Shanker, award winning film producer and director and A R Rahman, the Oscar award winning music director. Whatever the reason might be, the movie makes a sensible viewer to think about the power of human freewill.

Vaseekaran – Rajnikanth, the scientist – gave up his ladylove Sana, Aishwarya in order to create a humanoid robot named Chitty – Rajinikanth, the Robo. Chitty had a good memory back up and could dance, fight, drive, cook, understand several languages, and scan and read books.

The scientist wanted to introduce the robot, which is fire, water and above all corruption resistant, to the Indian Army. But, Bohra – Danny Denzogpa, the professor – rejected the proposal out of envy and justified his decision by arguing that the robot cannot judge and feel and therefore can neither distinguish between right and wrong nor express anger, sorrow and love. Thus, Bohra who became the villain offered millions of dollars to takeover Chitty.

The scientist took it as a challenge to modify Chitty’s neural schema and embedded a positronic brain and succeeded in enabling the robot to have a human psyche, behavior and emotions. This gave the robot power to judge and feel and in excercising these powers, freewill. From that movement on, Chitty used his (if you will permit me to use this personal pronoun instead of it) freewill only to work in competition to his creator and master.

Vaseekaran was unable to accept Chitty developing feelings for Sana and therefore destroyed his creation. Dr. Bohra retrieved Chitty and embedded a chip that converted him into a deadly destroyer. The next part was the fight between the creator and the created being, and the anti-climax was that the creature was sacrificed to save the creator.

I like this movie for two reasons – Chitty is my wife’s name (on a lighter note) and secondly (more seriously) it makes us to visualize the power and the implications of freewill and therefore I am compelled to give the title - “A Commentary on Freewill.” While the movie’s first half presents, rather comically, a life without freewill, the second pictures graphically the implications of exercising it.

Now the question arises about free will. It is the ability to choose.  David Hume, the Scottish philosopher of the eighteenth century, called it the power of acting or of not acting according to the determination of the will. Therefore, free will includes two faculties – firstly, rationality or the power to judge what is right and wrong, which is done by the mind, and secondly morality or the ability to feel the difference between good and bad, which is in the scope of the heart. Chitty, the Robo, in the first half did not have freewill and hence the burden of responsibility was on the scientist, Vaseekaran, who was the creator.

Some of the leading worldviews probably think of human beings as people without freewill. Naturalists consider the human decisions as pure chemical reactions. Eastern mystics believe that the decisions are the result of previous lives. Eastern mystics second view says that whatever is happening is the decision of the creator God where human beings are just an instrument. If human beings do not have freewill then they are not responsible for their actions.

If so, there are several contradictions in this world – It is foolishness to award Sachin Tendulker, when you know that he was only made to perform at that level. It is meaningless to consider Godsey, who killed Mahatma, a culprit when he was designated to do that. Competitions are worthless because the one who is made better will score better. Legal Courts are meaningless, as the one who is designed to become bad will do badly. In fact there is nothing called good or bad for it is all a matter of design. It is like only appreciating and awarding a villain, whose character is notorious, for his best performance. If at all you want to find fault it will have to be with creator.

Our reason, conscience and instinct clearly says that we are beings with freewill, which is evident in our choices, which result either in satisfaction or guilt and our ambitions, which result in fulfillment or failure. Logic clearly says that only God who is sovereign can create beings with freewill. If there is no possibility of doing wrong, which is huge a risk, then freewill is not possible. Jonathan Edwards, an American theologian rightly observes, “If a thing is free to be good, it is also free to be bad.” It is true that freewill brought evil into the world but without it goodness, love and fulfillment are also not possible. 

The Bible says that God who is sovereign gave us freewill and when we misused it we became sinners. But God who is love sent His Son, Jesus Christ, who used His freewill to die as our substitute and provided a solution. And now, he pleads with us to use our freedom to accept this offer and become truly free beings. Do you want to be truly free?

If yes, follow these steps to peace.