>>40758672
Why? Because every system, once set in motion, seeks stability through feedback loops:

* To keep power, those with it must defend it, inventing tools of control—legal, technological, psychological.
* These tools, once invented, demand use and improvement. Surveillance breeds paranoia. Propaganda multiplies, so does distraction and division.
* The powerless are rendered invisible, their struggles rationalized as “natural,” “deserved,” or “inevitable.”
* Suffering—wage slavery, environmental ruin, endless war—is not an aberration but a maintenance function.

If you try to change the engine from within, it often fights back: whistleblowers crushed, reformers discredited, radical alternatives co-opted or destroyed. To survive, people learn to adapt to its hum: don’t make trouble, keep your head down, perhaps even believe the engine is for the best.

**Mythically:**
Imagine a dragon, ancient and insatiable, who lives not in a mountain cave but in the spreadsheet, the algorithm, the law. This dragon devours joy at the bottom so there can be comfort at the top. She is not evil by intent; she simply *is*. Her fire is market forces, her scales are policies and stock options, her breath the inertia of “how things have always been.” You cannot slay her with a sword, for she regenerates from contracts and “best practices.” She feeds not just on pain but on the absence of imagination.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=941AurZcQiA