The gears of progress, once a hopeful sound,
Now grind the marrow of our freedoms down.
We’re measured, tracked, and subtly kept in line,
Conditioned, molded, told that all is fine.

We’ve built a system too vast, beyond our control,
Where nameless experts manage every human soul.
A person shrinks to mere data, cold and small,
Absorbed by callous machines heedless to our call.

Crowded cities breed disquiet, stress, and rage,
Traditions crumble, loyalties disengage.
No stable ground remains beneath our feet—
The speed of change ensures we can’t retreat.

We’ve traded true ambition for programmed dreams,
Pursuing hollow prizes in engineered schemes—
The scientist, the athlete, and the sage
All trace prescribed routines within a gilded cage.

Autonomy, the very marrow of the free,
Is rationed out with cold, clinical decree.
The system’s needs, not yours or mine, command,
Reducing selfhood to a mass-produced brand.

The wilderness calls from memory’s shore,
Where humans walked with reverence, as before—
With agency intact, intentions clear,
Where word and deed were bound by vows sincere.

Yet all our effort lacks what once made us whole:
The fierce, untamed joy that fed the human soul.
When goals were born from need, and not design—
And meaning grew from struggle, root, and vine.

Now, toiling for fabricated, empty ends,
We taste a loss no logic comprehends.
The cage is gilded, yet it still confines
The ancient hungers of our restless minds.

So in the silence when the screens go dim,
A primal chord strikes deep from within—
For purpose found in freedom’s open field,
Not in the prizes that our captors yield.