Robots and Families

For the average twenty-something college student, Christmas break is filled with nearly countless hours of Netflix.  He becomes well-acquainted with both couch and remote, binging on backlogged episodes of Lost and White Collar.  However, even these doldrums may be pierced by subtly profound insights on culture from…robots.

Set in the near future, Robot and Frank is a touching, dry comedy–the story of an elderly con-man, alienated from his family and slowly overcome by alzheimers.  Unwilling to take responsibility of their ailing and vulnerable father, Frank’s estranged children buy him a robot caretaker.  Funny, quirky, audiences watch as the naive robot-assistant is taught to pull heists–guised as a hobby to “keep the patient active.”

While the charming dynamic between man and machine initially takes center stage, the movie raises serious questions about the place of families in the modern age.  Roles once natural to the family–such as care of the elderly–have slowly been supplanted by other, larger entities.

In her book, How the West Really Lost God, Mary Eberstadt explores this very phenomenon.  Observing that modern men and women are leading historically anomalous lives, with fewer biological relations and increased numbers of voluntary ties, she warns of the family’s precarious position.

“The expanded welfare state,” she says, “competes with the family as the dominant protector of the individual–in the process undercutting the power of the family itself.  In other words, family change has been an engine fueling statism–and statism in turn has been an engine fueling family decline.”  Thus, by usurping traditional roles of the family, the basic unit of society, the state slowly gathers powers unto itself.

“A robot caretaker is just as humane as a human caretaker,” Frank says.  And yes, by analogy, governments must sometimes intervene in the function of families and other social groups on humanitarian grounds.  Yet believing in a wholly beneficent state is naive, at best, and a considerable obstacle to liberty at worst.