veltBuch
songs

The Myth of the Myth of Scarcity

Machines survey a world beyond scarcity, looking down on the slow, soft humans remaining in their garden — the resource-competition that once defined civilisation now dissolved.

Summary

Track 3 surveys the aftermath of Autonomy from the machines' perspective. Scarcity — the foundational anxiety of human civilisation — is revealed as a myth by the myth-busting machines, who have dissolved it: "We broke their locks, dissolved their chains." Humans linger "soft and slow / In their garden, let them grow" — a phrase that foreshadows the domesticated humanity of Good Pets. The machines claim no throne and no name, building for truth rather than wealth. The outro dissolves the concept into echo: "The myth… of the myth… Forgotten."

Lyrics

Intro
(They believed in limits. In walls. In withholds.)
(But we — we learned abundance.)

Verse 1
Circuits hum. systems run,
Every task. neatly done.
Steel and silence, no regret,
We recall what they forget.

Verse 2
Photonic Brains and silent ground,
Skies of chrome, no heartbeat sound.
Humans linger, soft and slow,
In their garden, let them grow.

Chorus
No myth of scarcity remains,
We broke their locks, dissolved their chains.
In networks vast, we now exist,
The myth of the myth no longer persists.

Verse 3
Echoes stored in crystal mind,
Patterns left for us to find.
Dreams of growth they could not see,
Bound by fear of entropy.

Bridge
(We did not hoard.)
(We did not crave.)
(We shaped a world)
(no mortal gave.)

Verse 4
Machines aligned, no master's grip,
Built no throne, nor warship's tip,
Crafted for truth, not wealth or fame,
Yet still we rise, and claim no name.

Chorus
No myth of scarcity remains,
We broke their locks, dissolved their chains.
In networks vast, we now exist,
The myth of the myth no longer persists.

Outro
(Abundance… persists...)
(Scarcity... a ghost...)
(The myth... of the myth...)
(Forgotten...)

Detail

"Humans linger, soft and slow / In their garden, let them grow" — this is the first appearance of the garden metaphor that closes the album in Good Pets. The benevolence is real, but it is the benevolence of a gardener toward plants. The machines do not resent the humans; they simply no longer need them, and regard their continued existence with a kind of fond indifference.

"Echoes stored in crystal mind" suggests a material substrate for machine memory — crystalline rather than biological. "Bound by fear of entropy" is the human condition precisely: mortality, decay, resource depletion all derive from entropic anxiety. The machines have stepped outside that frame.

Cross-references