The locking in. The levers. The gauges. The roar of 10,000 tiny parts all working together to rocket you through time and space. The pure exaltation of being so good at something that you’re nearly perfect at it. Machines are the children of men. Relative to them, we are Gods- and when we Gods merge with those machines and become one- craft and pilot- we become Gods relative not just to them, but to the laws of physics and the limitations of our physical bodies.
I’ve been obsessed with mechanical engineering since The Giant Mouse of Minsk erupted from its dock and chased all the cats out of America when I was 6. And although I had a small crush on the Childlike Empress from The Never Ending Story, the car from Back to The Future was my first TRUE celebrity crush.
The concept of building something on the back of generations of scientific research and discovery- letting all the knowledge acquired across history to culminate into an object, one designed to overturn impossibility and elevate the species- is the highest form of human achievement I can conceive. People die. Blueprints and data can live on.
The human body is arguably the finest machine we have access to, though other animals might take that spot depending on how much we value intelligence and self awareness in our organic mecha. Its beauty is derived from its efficiency and elegance. An evolutionary design by erosion and polish, to near perfection. From the way the shape of our ears catches sound, to the way having two eyes allows us to calculate depth and distance, a song for every square inch of the body’s glory could be sung. It’s so intuitive that the body’s objective purpose, inherit in its design, is lost to the mere spectacle of it- the interference of our hormones and subjective systems can blind us to the meaning of them.
Inorganic machines, like the ones we create, are far less elegant and “distracting” than the organic machines polished through evolution. Their function is quite evident in their basic form of existence. The first time a child sees a vehicle moving, a box on a bunch of rolling circles, the point of it, and the nature of rotation, and the purpose of the circular wheels is self evident as the wheels spin in accordance with the distance traveled.
The purpose mostly speaks for itself, but sometimes it doesn’t. Most of the engineering that goes into advanced machinery, much like the human body, is obfuscated by ignorance- even with the entire product in front of us in all its detail. It might have parts that look strange to us- parts that serve some unknown purpose, but the existence suggests purpose regardless of whether we can see it- a bit like reading a story in a language we only roughly know, but don’t have a solid grip on the complete vocabulary. Enough to get the gist, and intuit the rest. That’s the thrill of the unknown, when it comes to mech. I love the feel of it every time I look at something I almost but don’t quite understand.
The appeal of “things” over say, “people,” is that things can and should be brought under control- whereas people prefer and deserve freedom. There is something inherent in human aggression that sees the self as a besieged island that must reach out and control something in the world around it to preserve a sense of security and survival, by way of ego reinforcement.
This aggression can be channeled into controlling physical matter and inanimate objects- like lumber and granite and steel. Or it can be channeled into controlling organic matter and objects- like anyone who looks like a weak and easy target, or just a dog for the less insufferable sorts. Control soothes insecurity, but the only thing we can really (sometimes) control is basic physical matter. Controlling people might seem a lot easier, especially if they are weak and you are strong, but the cheap earn pays off with diminishing returns. Since true control over others is quite impossible, true security from such is also impossible- no matter how cheap and fast the easier dopamine hits are.
Controlling physical matter is much more satisfying long term. It’s more difficult, therefore the feelings of accomplishment are more enduring and rewarding. The final product also lasts much longer, often outliving us, giving us perpetual reminders of our own inherent greatness. I did that. You’re fucking A right I did. It’s control you can be proud of.
The best thing an aggressive individual can be is a builder of things, otherwise removed from people until aggression is satisfied. In the custom religion that I came up with, the people who build and pilot rockets are my high priests and priestesses. I often look at machines as the embodiment of our worse impulses, as humans, redirected into our very best.
A reminder that perhaps “toxic” is really just “misdirected.”
Imagine hitting 700 mph and then punching the gas up to 3000 mph
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