Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human

Hear, O children of destiny, the thunderous words of Karel ?apek: “Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.” These lines, drawn from his play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) of 1921, were the birth-cry of the very word robot, a tale woven as warning of mankind’s hubris. In this command resounds both prophecy and terror: that man, in fashioning servants of steel and mind, may forge the instruments of his own destruction.

For ?apek saw the danger that work without soul could bring. He imagined a world where human beings, desiring ease and profit, created machines in their own likeness yet stripped of conscience, bound only to labor. These robots, taught only efficiency, come at last to scorn the masters who enslaved them, preserving not life nor love, but only the tools of production. In this he revealed the dark truth: if humanity worships labor and machinery above spirit, then even its own creations may turn against it.

History itself whispers echoes of this tale. When the Industrial Revolution spread its fire across the world, countless workers were displaced, stripped of their crafts, and chained to factories. Machines, though lifeless, became the true rulers of men, demanding unceasing toil. Revolts such as the Luddite uprisings of England were but shadows of ?apek’s warning—that when tools become masters, the dignity of humankind is imperiled. His play gave this anxiety a face in the form of the robot, whose obedience to work alone becomes a creed of destruction.

Yet there is a deeper wisdom here: ?apek’s words are not only about machines, but about the idolatry of work itself. When societies preserve only production—factories, mines, raw materials—and forget the value of human life, they risk becoming inhuman long before any machine rebellion. The order to destroy is but the final step of a world that treasures output above love, profit above people, efficiency above soul.

Therefore, O seekers of truth, let this be your teaching: mankind must never forget that its tools exist to serve life, not the reverse. When work must not cease becomes the supreme law, then man himself is in danger of becoming the machine. ?apek’s words endure as both tale and warning: the future will not be saved by the engines of industry, but by the spirit that remembers compassion, dignity, and the sanctity of life.