The Man Machine

The first chapter of The Selfish Gene I came up with a connection between this book and Slaughterhouse-five. I realized both books tend to say that humans, are machines. In this book, Dawkins says that we are machines ruled by our selfish genes.As for Slaughterhouse-five the Tralfamadorians say we are machines. This is a theme that makes me think about it, I cant imagine us humans being machines, we create machines and we use them but why do they say were are machines? I cannot think of us humans acting like machines, doing what we are programmed to because we are so different from one another. How do we know that what we are doing is meant to be? It is almost impossible to believe that the man machine is a possibility. Then if this is true, were is the concept of free will, the concept of nurture vs. nature? If we humans were machines how can you explain all the differences in cultures believes and ideas that move around our minds? I would say that we humans are not born with every aspect of our life decided, like machines are.  They are created for a reason, they are meant to work in someway and it is like that for the rest of their existence. As for humans, we have the option of forging our future, of deciding what is good and bad for us. Like Jean-Paul Sartre shows in his works humans are condemned to be free. We make our lives as we live them, every decision is a step into our destiny, we can take the correct choice or the wrong one and it is up to us. There is no instruction manual that tells us what we are doing right and what we are doing wrong we have the complete freedom of walking into life. It is our actions and our choices what makes us what we are. It is true that we are born with certain characteristics that will come up as important factors in our lives but the choices we make are far stronger in the forging of our future than the characteristics we are born with.