the machine is in the blood

journal entry 3.22.26

I often feel that I am of two minds - that beneath the joyful and childlike desire for human connection lies an emotionless, calculating Machine, sharp and amoral, Machiavellian even, which judges people and interactions not by fullness of heart nor by human goodness, but by pure economical evaluation: is this person worth something? How do I get what I want? Should I behave a certain way, withhold certain information? What can he or she do for me? Or should I just discard them?

I am of split mind, also, about the moral implications of the Machine; I believe all psychological processes are adaptive, though prone to maladaptive distortion or excess. Anxiety, paranoia, even psychosis, are not exogenous phenomena, flung upon unfortunate victims like a virus or plague; rather, like an autoimmune disease or chronic illness, they are the result of natural biological processes (in the brain rather than the body) gone haywire.

But the Machine is not maladaptive; we all possess the Machinery; Or are you too scared, too Good to indulge its Machinations? Do we not all manipulate one another, smiling and laughing at the right times, wearing the right clothing, adornment, saying the right things (or at least not the wrong things) to lead others to a specific impression? All social interaction is manipulation - and in this arena, the Machine dominates.

But there are, I have to imagine (for how can one truly know another), the truly pure of heart, those whose actions are guided by love and light and are thus adored, admired for the simple miracle of existence! I’ve only met a few. Surely they possess a Machine as well, though theirs must be less cutthroat, more considerate, or perhaps they simply use the tool in less cutthroat and more considerate ways - after all, the Machine is uncaring, amoral. It must be the man, the user, the controller, who is sick, evil, twisted, deviant, broken, ruined, sinful, screwed up, messed up, fucked up; the virus is in his head, the virus is in his heart, the virus is in his blood.

But in the cold comfort of anger, the Machine soothes with a mind-numbing heat, a flame that does not scorch the skin - and in those depths, beyond care and joy and love and play, down where the Child does not dare tread, in Its metallic grip, its all-encompassing, unmitigated Power … I lose myself again.