What is The Machine™

[Cramulus]

I would agree with that summary

[Cosine 5]

But what is wrong with this system, if people are happy?

Ignorance is bliss...
The Machine sounds like deception for the benefit of the decieved rather than the deceiver.

[AFK]

Tell me if I'm misunderstanding this:
- the Machine is the status quo. It tries to maintain social stability and order.
- the Machine, like money, is an idea that only exists because people believe it.
- the best way to invoke change in society is to rebuild the machine, rather than wrecking it.

Yes, but you can only change it from within, and only one or two cogs at a time.  And that should be the aim.  Because how do cogs work?  They turn and make other cogs turn, which make other cogs turn, etc., etc.,  If you can change the course of a couple of the cogs, you can get the change to spread.  It will never be enough to change the whole of The Machine, based upon history, but perhaps you can alter the trajectory just enough to make the human social existence a bit more palatable AND equitable. 

[LMNO]

But what is wrong with this system, if people are happy?

Ignorance is bliss...
The Machine sounds like deception for the benefit of the decieved rather than the deceiver.

Hey, if you're happy with the status quo, then good on you.  Pay no attention to the grinding, crunching sound.  We need to grease the wheels somehow.

[AFK]

But what is wrong with this system, if people are happy?

Ignorance is bliss...
The Machine sounds like deception for the benefit of the decieved rather than the deceiver.

Ignorance is a benefit?  Perhaps it can be in certain situations, but I think it is a deficit if your ignorance is blinding you and shielding you from other possibilities on your pathway through life.  The Machine is what masks the other options on your path.  Options that allow you to experience more from life and to have new experiences that you've been unable to contemplate.  The Machine keeps you on the quick and easy and predictable path.  It limits adventure.  It limits discovery and exploration.  It limits potential.  It's what keeps people on their couches glued to their TeeVees when they could be outside playing.  

[Cramulus]

But what is wrong with this system, if people are happy?

Ignorance is bliss...
The Machine sounds like deception for the benefit of the decieved rather than the deceiver.

That was my reaction to reading 1984.

If the proles seem to like it, what's the problem?

[Jenne]

But what is wrong with this system, if people are happy?

Ignorance is bliss...
The Machine sounds like deception for the benefit of the decieved rather than the deceiver.

Hm, perhaps it's that nagging word that is rarely used in times like these, properly anyway:  Freedom.  To choose, to live as one wants, to be who one really wants to be and fuckitall.

Now, Freedom is somewhat of an illusion, thanks to the auspices of The Machine and those who keep it running.  However, if you have had your rose colored glasses removed, you realize that that niggling sense of hopelessness and nothing's-ever-gonna-be-ok-again creeping feeling that settles into your marrow and between your shoulderblades in the dead of the night is not going to go away.  Ever.

Crushing The Machine that perpetuates it all and still entices you to FORGETFORGETFORGET what you have come to experience in 4D in a living nightmare would bring much satisfaction to those of us who feel the need to react.

But YMMV.

[Captain Utopia]

There's something Kai talks about sometimes, called emergent properties.  Kai does a far better job explaining it than I ever could, but at its core the emergent is when simple rules combine to form complex systems.  Each ant is a truly simple creature, but the rules they follow combine in magnificent ways.

The Machine is that.  But taken up a few orders of magnitude.  All the thousands of little rules like 'if profits go up, so does the stock price' and 'you need X amount of money in order to get (re)elected' or 'if somebody doesn't look me in the eyes they're lying' combine to form The Machine.

But, like any emergent system, its a hell of a lot more than just the sum of its parts, those rules have a hell of a lot of unintended consequences.  So cops think am Arab is lying to them, because in his culture looking someone in the eyes all the time is rude, the CEO fires tens of thousands of people because that brings profits up that quarter.

So much so that both its proponents and opponents believe that it is a manifest destiny.

[Requia ☣]

- the Machine, like money, is an idea that only exists because people believe it.

I have to say no to this part, most people have never heard of The Machine.  There are parts of it, like money, that would go away if people stopped believing in it, but The Machine would continue to exist even if all those parts were removed (though it would look incredibly different).

[Doktor Howl]

Ignorance is bliss...

And there you have it, folks.

America™, circa 2010.

[LMNO]

SHHHH!

[Cramulus]

- the Machine, like money, is an idea that only exists because people believe it.

I have to say no to this part, most people have never heard of The Machine.  There are parts of it, like money, that would go away if people stopped believing in it, but The Machine would continue to exist even if all those parts were removed (though it would look incredibly different).

they've never heard of the machine itself, no

but the whole damn engine is build on faith

-the faith that spending 40hours/week working is a fair trade for the income
-participation in the system leads to rewards such as status, comfort, and luxury
-civilization is built on a network of cooperation towards mutual self-interest
-if you don't like how things are going, there are official channels you must go through to affect change (call the police, write to politicians, etc)

if people stopped believing in any of these things, it would send a tremor through the whole engine

[Cramulus]

From the Chao Te Ching...

Chapter 23
The Machine™ is built by our behaviors;
Our unconscious desires,
our conscious schemes.
Built by the expectations we create through our expectations,
the action we create through our actions,
the jobs we create with our jobs,
the world we create with our world.

But as a traffic jam does not last all morning,
nor a bad day lasts a lifetime,
a good mood is often fleeting,
and fortune does not always smile.
The Machine™ contains more than is apparent.

[AFK]

The thing is people have seen The Machine prominently in action.  I'm thinking of the elections in Iran.  How many people were saying and hoping the same thing.  That the people relentlessly take to the streets and fight against the system.  People were tweeting and rooting for them.  All the while not recognizing that we too are part of a system that suppresses and for too many, oppresses.  It may feel less violent and less dangerous, but it does hold people down. 

And this is why ignorance isn't bliss.  The ignorance helps to fuel it.  Why change what you think is working?  The politicians keep telling us The American Way is working and will always work.  Why change?  Why think about change?  Let's mock hope and change.  That is silly talk for people living in the wonderful world of make-believe. 

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I like RWHN's points. The Machine™ is not necessarily evil, but it does maintain the Status Quo in a way that limits experience. It lays out a track for every person, based on a number of quantifiable circumstances, and makes it incredibly easy for each person to follow the path laid out for them. So easy that it might be considered pushing people down their respective tracks. These tracks, these predictable life paths, are the "cogs" of the machine. As people move down them, the cogs spin, and they set off other cogs. Everyone going silently along their tracks and doing what is expected of them makes for a very quiet-running Machine™.

The problem with the Machine™ is that without a breakdown in the tracks, nobody has to examine the Machine™ at all. Nobody has to find out why the Machine™ is making so much noise, why it's breaking down, or how to fix it. If we are all quiet and stay in our places and stick to our tracks, not only do we miss out on a lot of opportunities and experiences as RWHN said, but the Machine™ will barrel on in whatever path it chooses - the logical conclusion of whatever direction it is on, and those conclusions are never good ones.