The Poking Machine

Metaphorical Narrative

Imagine a little wind-up toy soldier, cheap plastic and dented from overuse. Its arm swings up and down with a wooden stick, poking at anything within reach. It doesn’t care what’s in front of it — a wall, a chair, or you. The stick comes down anyway.

At first, standing in front of it feels personal. Every poke feels like a verdict, a spotlight on your supposed flaws. You brace yourself, waiting for the next jab. But then you step aside for a moment and watch what happens. The soldier doesn’t stop. It just swivels and starts poking the next thing.

And here’s the gut punch: the betrayal wasn’t in the poke itself. It was in realizing the toy never cared about truth or fairness in the first place.

Core Insight

What makes these attacks feel like visceral betrayal is not the sting of the words, but the absence behind them. These people don’t care about truth. They don’t care about fairness. They just want something to poke.

That’s why it cuts so deeply — because you expected honesty, or at least fairness, and instead found a default setting of attack. The mask of “truth” was a lie; the mask of “concern” was theatre.

Once that’s exposed, the attack loses its weight. You see the broken toy hammer for what it is: mechanical, joyless, and powerless unless you hand it meaning.

Saturday Experiment

Today, if someone takes a jab at you:

1. Name the program: Silently tell yourself, “Default mode: attack — no truth, no fairness.”
2. See the swivel: Imagine how they’d jab just as quickly at the next person if you weren’t there.
3. Flip to humor: Picture the jab as a squeaky clown hammer. Let the comedy break the illusion of betrayal.

Sunday Reflection

When the old voice shows up, journal in third person:

• How does he/she now recognize that the betrayal was never about the words, but about their lack of care for truth or fairness?
• How does he/she reclaim power by refusing to mistake their default attack mode for reality?
• What dignity does he/she recover by laughing instead of absorbing?