I Do not Think It Means What You Think It Means

Revisiting the Machine and Human Action

We recently published two complementary essays on culture-making as resistance. Patrick Koroly explores the Pittsburgh Renaissance, arguing that it represented a top-down form of cultural management focused on consumption rather than production. He contended that elite institutions, funded and directed by economic oligarchs, centralized culture making in a way that functioned as a "Machine" process—eroding local culture. As an example, he pointed to the massive investment in the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO), framing it as an instance of top-down, consumption-oriented cultural management.

In response, Anthony Scholle acknowledges that the PSO may have been sustained and advanced by Machine processes, but he argues that it remains good, true, and beautiful, worthy of celebration and capable of serving as a tool for anti-Machine resistance.

Although the posts received relatively favorable comments on Substack, I also got several puzzled text messages from friends. My good friend James DeMasi—who is the Executive Director of the Beatrice Institute and keen cultural observer and commentator—put it bluntly: “What is The Machine? If the Symphony is the Machine, then it’s a useless metaphor.”

At the start of this project, we wrote an article attempting to define what we meant by The Machine. However, this essay exchange—and the reactions from friends—made me realize that even among our own writers, we use the concept in very different ways. The Machine has been described as a malevolent force, a system of processes, or a network of institutions, and we’ve applied it inconsistently across these definitions. In fact, there’s a tendency among those who use the metaphor to apply it loosely—to simply mean “things I don’t like.” This is a good place to start but we cannot end there because it is hard to resist something that we do not understand.

In this essay, I aim to delve deeper into what we mean when we talk about the Machine. To do so, I will explore the issue of causality—how things happen in the world and how this process is shaped by the ways we organize social life. From there, we can examine the Machine through the lens of social organization. My analysis will draw on personalism¹, Critical Realism², and Aristotle's understanding of causality, though I will be offering my own interpretation. I will avoid relying on specific terminology from these traditions, making the discussion more accessible to those unfamiliar with them. For those who are familiar, I trust you'll be able to recognize where I’m subtly applying key concepts and terms. I also aim to avoid getting sidetracked by overly particular Aristotelians who might be tempted to say (while adjusting their glasses), “Well, technically, that’s not quite what we mean by formal cause!”

What causes things to happen in the world?

I begin by exploring the nature of action: how and why do people or institutions act in the world?³ To illustrate this, I will use the example of why individuals might choose to get pregnant and have children, examining how this decision is shaped by the way we organize our public life. By looking at this example, I aim to gain a deeper understanding of human action and, from there, analyze the social substructure that influences the forms and possibilities of human action in the world.

Agentic Action

Agents are the subjects of action in the world. They perform actions. Agents can take many forms, but for the purposes of this essay, I will assume that agents are essentially persons, either acting individually or as part of a organic group. People also form institutions, which exist to help individuals achieve some good, fulfill a need, or satisfy a desire. Institutions, in turn, are structured by rules, purposes, and frameworks that enable them to function in the world. Importantly, institutions are not merely the accumulation of the actions of individual persons as they have their own rules, processes, and frameworks that transcend any individual person. So, it is fair to say that a company has committed an act while any individual person may not have been the actual decision maker. So, this suggests that institutions have their own agentic actions that transcend the person. In our case, the agent would be a married couple deciding to have a child.

Simply put, agents act in the world because they are motivated to do so. Theories of human motivation abound, particularly in psychology, where models such as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs attempt to explain why people pursue certain ends. In economics, the Theory of Utility Maximization serves a similar function. These motivations are often described as needs, drives, or desires. However, I prefer the term "goods," as it reflects the idea that our motivations can and should be shaped by a broader moral or ethical vision. We recognize that certain needs, desires, and drives—depending on their form and context—may not always be "good" for us. For instance, while we may desire money, we understand that stealing is wrong. Similarly, while we have sexual drives, we accept that they should not be acted upon indiscriminately. Though cultural norms evolve, there remains a general belief that sexual expression should at least occur only within the bounds of full consent. I will refer to these motivations as "motivational goods." In this case, our couple is motivated to have children because they believe that bringing new life into the world is a basic good.

Where do these motivations originate, and how do we determine when and how to pursue them? They arise from a particular understanding of the ultimate purpose—or telos—of persons. I argue that our motivations are shaped by what we believe individuals, groups, or institutions fundamentally are and what they are for. If one views human beings as mere biological entities driven by pleasure, one will understand sexuality differently than someone who believes human beings are made in the image of God for communion with the divine. These conceptions of an agent’s ultimate purpose largely determine what we consider good in any given situation. Let’s say that a couple’s motivation to have children emerges from their understanding that the purpose of human beings is to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth with persons made in the image of God.

So, here is basically the graph illustrating this idea of agentic action and how it works.

Social substructure

To understand human action more deeply, we must examine how conceptions of agentic telos are formed, how these are translated into specific motivations, and how these motivations, in turn, become action. I have previously argued that we cannot fully grasp what it means to be a person without recognizing both individual and social dimensions. Accordingly, some aspects of how we understand agentic telos and how it gives rise to motivational goods are deeply personal. At the same time, our ability to translate motivations into action depends on both individual virtues and social processes. The stories and values of our communities shape how we organize public life, influencing not only our sense of purpose but also our capacity to act on it.

We believe that each society possesses an underlying mythos—a foundational narrative framework that provides guidance on what things are and where they are headed. These mythoi function as metanarratives. For instance, the Christian metanarrative follows a trajectory of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. In this view, persons are created in love by God to love one another, serve as stewards of the earth, and "fill and subdue" it. Humanity's fall into sin necessitated a redeemer, fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and believers are called to participate in the redemptive process. This mythos plays a crucial role in shaping human action by informing how persons and institutions understand their own telos. If one views society through a Christian mythos, the purpose of human life may be understood as centered on love and fertility. More broadly, we comprehend what persons are and where they are headed by understanding what the world is for and where it is going, as framed by a particular mythos.

It is important to also understand that mythoi compete for prominence within a given society. There is always a push and pull between various operative societal mythoi. In fact, Lewis Mumford argues that The Machine has always been around and had become predominant in many societies at different points in history such as Egypt and Babylon. Likewise, it is manifested in the story of the Tower of Babel. This is why I do not believe that the Machine narrative is primarily a decline narrative. The Machine has faded in the past and can fade again.

Organizing mythoi lead societies to prize specific ideas and beliefs that guide human action. I will refer to these as values. In the context of a couple deciding to have children, the Christian mythos might elevate values such as human dignity, fertility, piety, and love. Alternatively, societal values could stigmatize being a stay-at-home Mom, which Johann Kurtz describes in great length in a recent Substack essay.

Closely related to values are ideologies, which emerge from values and shape how we organize public life—politically, socially, and economically. Likewise, ideology could inhibit fertility by promoting climate concerns vilifying families with more than one child. Though the relationship between values and ideologies is complex, for our purposes, I will assume a direct link between them. These values influence which motivational goods are considered worthy of pursuit. For example, if fertility is a core value within a community, that community may develop a pronatalist ideology.

I want to point out here that we do believe that these mythoi are fully real in the sense that they exist outside of human perception and have actual causal powers in the world even if we cannot see or perceive them with our senses. There remains an open question namely: From where does the mythos emerge? I’ll leave this to another post, but Paul Kingsnorth has something to say about this. Read his short story The Basilisk for some clues.

Finally, values and ideologies shape how we structure our shared lives, forming the basis of social structures. We can think of the way that we actually organize society and our life together which include the public policy that we pass, business practices that we follow, and how we organize our families. If a society values fertility, it will organize itself to support childbirth and motherhood. Social structures, in turn, can either facilitate or hinder individual action. For example, a person may be personally motivated to have more children but live in a society that lacks child tax credits, maternity leave, or other forms of institutional support—thus inhibiting their ability to act on their motivation.

Here is what this looks like.

What does this have to do with the Machine?

These concepts help illustrate why the Machine is such a difficult concept to pin down. There is reason to believe that the Machine might, in some cases, be thought of as any aspect of the framework that we outline above.

For instance, the Machine could be understood as an ideological system or a system of values that drive social structures and shape the goods that we are motivated to pursue in the world. For example, the Machine might simply be shorthand for industrialization or capitalism. It could also be a specific form of social structure. Perhaps, the Machine is the way that we have structured capitalism namely as surveillance capitalism. Alternatively, The Machine may simply be a collection of agents in the World. Maybe the Machine is the conglomeration of institutions like CitiBank, Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Netflix and the persons that run them.

A case can be made for any of these interpretations. In fact, in conversation, one of our authors remarked, “Isn’t The Machine the bureaucratic-industrial apparatus dedicated to efficiency at the expense of persons?” In this view, The Machine is basically a system of agents who share a particular understanding of motivational goods born out of a particular value system (i.e., “efficiency”).

However, when I reflect on my own essays and public discussions about The Machine, I realize that I think about it slightly differently. I see the Machine as an organizing mythos. In our first essay, we directly describe it as a mythos that forms the predominant narrative framework for our society. We essentially describe the Machine as such:

A mythos that tells us that we must harness the power of reason and science to usher forth a new utopian future in which we overcome all contingencies and limits through the control, accumulation, organization, centralization, and application of natural and human resources.

With that all being said, understanding the Machine as a mythos does not close off other understandings of what the Machine is. This is primarily because the particular shape and trajectory of the Machine mythos implies some very particular ideologies including capitalism, globalism, elitism, collectivist individualism (sounds weird but it’s true), objectification, domination, centralization, and consumerism. This then tends to lead to prioritize certain social structures including neoliberal economics, statism, no fault divorce, legal abortion and prostitution, lenient drug policy, surveillance, devaluation of production, and homogenous cultural production.

Likewise, certain institutions, such as government bureaucracies, multinational corporations, and mass media, entertainment, and professional sports companies seem particularly susceptible to Machine capture. Some individuals also seem to function as clear agents of the Machine, though they may also be shaped by other causal forces. Take Andrew Carnegie, for example—surely a handmaiden of the Machine, yet he was also an agent of other forces that shaped the world. On the other hand, some entities are simply the most convenient means through which we see the Machine’s influence in the world. For example, the Machine may operate through organized religions, but “organized religion” is not the Machine though it can embody some Machine ideologies. The Machine makes itself manifest through the values, ideologies, and social structures that make agents in the world act in Machine-like ways.

Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

So, what does all of this have to do with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO)? Partick Koroly argued that the Pittsburgh Renaissance, which contributed to the revitalization of the PSO, was compelled by values that are deeply consistent with Machine such as elitism and centralization which led to the prioritization or a sort of ideology that Koroly called elite cultural management. Social institutions that push the cultural renewal of the Pittsburgh Renaissance likewise deprioritized local, production-oriented culture. This process was led by agents particularly susceptible to Machine influence, such as corporate boards and government bureaucracies.

The PSO certainly benefited from what appears to be a Machine-driven ideological process. But does this mean that the PSO itself is part of the Machine? Probably not. In fact, there are probably few institutions that are more anti-Machine than the PSO, existing for the sake of beauty, truth, and goodness This is probably most true under the leadership of Manfred Honeck, the current musical director. That does not mean that institutions like the PSO cannot be overtaken by Machine ideologies. I hope that the PSO never goes the way of Major League Baseball whose patrons are largely objectified, being treated like cash registers through a constant barrage of advertising and captive-audience pricing. When I was enjoying Dvorak’s New World, I did notice for the first time the television screens that were bolted into the walls of Heinz Hall showing advertisements, and a plastic cup of crummy wine was $12. Be concerned when you cannot get into the PSO without a smart phone.

1. Personalism is tradition within philosophical anthropology that forms much of the foundation of our conception of “human flourishing.”

2. Critical Realism is a philosophy of science that, in my view, does an excellent job of describing the nature of reality—particularly in explaining how effects are caused in the world.

3. I am in essence basing this exploration on a method that I might call a phenomenology of action. An excellent example of this sort of phenomenology of action can be found in Karol Wojtyla’s Love and Responsibility wherein he leverages a phenomenology of action to better understand human sexuality. I use this same sort of technique when I define human flourishing .You can see how I do this in a previous essay.