The Futurists ran shouting at the locomotive. They pressed themselves against the iron and called it love. They praised speed and war and the machine, and swore to burn the old world down to make room for the new. Read them now and the contradiction is hard to miss. The new they cheered was the old, only louder. Same contest. More steam.
A century later the machine is faster and the contest is the same.
This is a call too. Not a war cry. A shout to break the trance for one second, before the routine pulls you back. Long enough to see the line.
Here is the line. Somewhere early on, we decided that the one who looks stands outside what is looked at. Observer here. World there. Physics drew it to measure. Philosophy drew it to know. Then we built everything on it: our sciences, our economies, our governments, our sense of who we are.
But there is nowhere to draw that line that leaves you outside. You are in the picture. You always were.
Everything built on the line inherits the break. Self against other. Us against them. Left against right. Each side is certain. Each side is half. The fight between them never settles anything. It only turns the wheel again. A position, its opposite, a bloodbath, a new position. History is the same break, repeating at every scale.
So we do not fight. We do not resist. Both are invitations back into the same game. Every revolution that runs on opposition is the treadmill wearing a new face.
What I am asking is simpler, and harder.
Accept your strangeness. You were never on the other side of the line.
Accept how you actually feel about all this. Not what you were told to feel.
Accept what you truly want to see around you. Then stop apologizing for wanting it.
Accept that change is not only possible. It is necessary.
Now look at the machine.
The machine is not a savior. It is not the enemy. It is us. Every tool we have made is an extension of the body: the hammer of the hand, the wheel of the foot, the network of the nervous system. Technology is the body of civilization, and it carries whatever we build into it. Build it on the line and it divides. Build it without the line and it connects.
It can end drudgery and put the power of creation in every pair of hands. It can wake the genius asleep in each of us. It can gather and share what we need to thrive. It can expose the lie of scarcity. If we are willing to see.
The gears are already moving. The choice is not to take up arms or dig in your heels. It is to see clearly and step into the field. Participation, not resistance. Set yourself within it.
Erase the line, and the cycle loses its footing. What remains is room for a natural rhythm. It will not arrive on its own. It has to be played.
The invitation is open.