Introduced by the Machine

Next, in my description of the operation of the Machine:

The creature goes about self-actualization as a beast.  In many venues use of a concept like “self-actualization of the beast” (to say nothing of people possibly taking it to mean “self-actualization of The Beast”) would be thought ridiculous.  While many schools of thought emphasize essential differences between human and animals, this distinction is rarely made more forcefully than by Bible-believing Christians who emphasize Man Made in the Image of God.

One need merely observe the male gorilla beating his chest in a dominance display, however, to observe as well the truth that animals go about squaring themselves with significant internalized drives bent on asserting the effectual fulfillment of the individual—self-actualization, at least of a sort.  The Genesis to which Jesus subscribes is scarcely as fastidious about the exceptional status of humans as many humans are.

Animals in Genesis are formed from the same soil as humans, and quickened by the same breath of life.  Both animals and humans are initially commanded to refrain from eating animals, and though both animal and human are later—in the Noahide covenant—permitted to eat animals, all such creatures are liable to be punished for homicide.  The very passage in Genesis 6, so often quoted: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man” is embedded in a passage that recognizes blood-guilt even upon beasts.  Beasts—including humanity in an abiding sense—are liable to culpability incurred in the process of living out their—our—urges.

Our introduction as created beings into the realm of moral challenge and of sin is little other than a process of our creaturely selves being fed into a machine, a machine constructed of survival contexts and fuel by the urges with which we are born.  It is a beastly business, but it does not play out in an arena of wild happenstance.  God said to Cain, “if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door.  And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.”  This situation has been contrived by God for all of us.  Like all scenarios contrived by God, the larger context of our temptations—fueled most formidably by our urges—is to an extent understandable, and to an extent manageable.

We are in such manner introduced to the world by the Machine.