276. The Unstoppable Machine

The machine is silent and nefarious. It operates in myriad ways, often without notice or detection. It requires no one to control it, guide it, or feed it. It does all of these things for itself. It does them today, it will do them tomorrow, and it will keep doing them for as long as time itself. The operations of the machine are entirely automatic. They follow from each other just as night follows day.

You cannot stop the machine. You can demand that it explain itself, but your question will not be heard. The machine is not something that listens. You can break the machine’s parts, but they will be replaced. The machine is not something that fails. You can stand in front of the machine and dare it to kill you and it will kill you. The machine is not something that feels. Any individual effort to oppose the machine will not succeed. The machine is used to handling dissenters and it will carry on regardless of protests or attacks.

But the machine does have a weakness. It is built out of parts that can be changed. In fact, its entire structure is created and contingent. Everything that makes up the machine could be other than it is. Changing the parts will not cause the machine to stop, but it will function differently. The parts can be changed because we decide together what the parts will be. If we reach an agreement to make a change, the machine cannot prevent it from happening.

Still, there are parts of the machine that can overcome the changes we make. These are the oldest parts, the ones that are the most solid and battle-tested. These parts can grind though new parts that are not as strong. But we need not despair when this happens. It only means there are more parts to change than we thought. Entire sections of the machine might need to be replaced.

Most importantly, we cannot make these changes alone. Parts of the machine will be replaced only if we can agree with others on their replacement. It is this consensus that we must create, nourish, and grow if we hope to build a machine that benefits us all.