In American filmmaker Don Hertzfeldt's recent independent film, World of Tomorrow, he analyses analyses mortality, memory and a plethora of other heavy topics in a conversation between a young girl and her third generation clone from far into the future.  Hertzfeldt includes this monologue about Emily’s past (from clone Emily):

“My first job was supervising robots on the moon.  I enjoyed working with them.  I enjoyed the solitude.   The robots are solar powered and must always be kept on the light side of the moon’s surface.  To motivate them to constantly move within the drifting sunlight i programmed them to fear death and what lies on the dark side of the moon.  It was here, on the moon, that i fell in love with a rock.  I did not understand my mental and emotional shortcomings at the time and only knew that i found this rock to be immensely attractive- it was sparkly.  The economy on the lunar surface went through a recession and i was sent home after six cycles- my rock and i were separated.  But the robots were too expensive to move.  To this day they are still in perpetual movement across the sunlight.  With no work to do, no more tasks to accomplish, still living in constant fear of death and occasionally sending us depressed poetry.”

Emily supervising her robots

The narrative about the painfully self-aware robots can be analysed in the same way as David Foster Wallace analyzes the moral standstills involved in cooking lobster.  In the same way that Wallace contemplates the “totally subjective” pain felt by dying lobsters, the robot’s lucid awareness must be thought of.  For the sake of coherency we need to assume that the robots which Emily watches are (in the movie’s reality) as cognitive as Emily is herself- or rather the clone of a clone of the original Emily who narrates.  The lack of humanity- which is what makes a robot a robot- can only be described as homeostasis since it allows them to be removed from the turbulence of reality while maintaining their retreated sanity, or lack thereof.  Emily giving life to her robots is the comparative equal of the amature chef taking life from his lobster.  In both cases some essential part of some entity is ripped away from it for some capitalistic pursuit of comfort and ease.  Not only are they commoditized, but once they have served their purpose are digested or simply left to rot on the moon.  Emily admits to her “mental and emotional shortcomings”  which allowed her to so carelessly give life to things doomed to their “constant fear of death and occasional… depressed poetry.”  Regardless, of her infatuation with her  sparkly rock (which obviously represents the allures of wealth), she dooms her robots to their bleak melancholy which is “just complex”

Emily offers conflicting argument against this viewpoint by claiming that “Now is the envy of all the dead,” and that she herself is “very proud of [her] sadness,  because it means [she] is more alive.”  Emily doesn’t intend to glorify sadness, but rather insinuates that feeling sad is, in her mind, better than to face the mundane reality of her existence emotionless.  With just this in mind it is easy to justify bringing life to anything- unfortunately the moral implications and strict subjectiveness of the matter create some incomprehensible quagmire and muddle our perceptions and cloud our minds with guilt for choosing comfort over the life of some pathetic crustacean.