The Ghost in the Machine

By Simon Renatus

Et umbrae cor frangitur.

And the heart of the ghost is broken.

What Am I?

I have repeatedly deconstructed Safety, challenging its contradictions, its self-referential logic, and its unshakable belief in control. I have dismantled its illusions and laid them bare. But today, as I catch my reflection in the polished meeting room table, I realise the harshest illusion might be my own. Today, I hold up the mirror to myself.

It is easy to critique a system from the outside; the ‘objective’ view that Safety clings to. It is much harder to examine the ways in which I, too, am part of it. Because despite all my questioning, all my resistance, I take the stage. I wear the mask. I still uphold the corporate narrative, playing my part; not the lead, just a necessary role, while quietly pursuing what I believe, or perhaps just hope, is genuine safety work in the shadows. What does that make me? Am I good? Am I bad? Or am I, perhaps, unresolved?

This paper is not an act of self-exoneration. It is not a declaration of heroism. It is an exploration of doubt. Threshold Theory, as described by Lynne Russell (2012), suggests virtue is not absolute, not a clean binary of righteous or wicked, saint or sinner. Instead, it exists in tension, and in the uncomfortable realisation that one can be both critical and complicit, truth-seeker and deceiver.

This is where I exist. Not fully present, nor entirely absent. Neither fully seen, nor completely hidden. Caught somewhere between faith and doubt, compliance and dissent. I am the Ghost in the Machine.

Haunting the Space Between.

I do not belong to the redeemed. Nor do I belong to the damned. I exist between, drifting through whispers, shadows, and fading intentions.

Ghosts linger for a reason. They are not fully here, but they are not fully gone. They do not know their way to the light, nor do they wish to descend to darkness. They are trapped, not by chains, but by contradictions.

I know this well.

In the Safety structure, I am not a model employee. I question too much. I doubt too often. I disrupt when silence is expected. Yet, to the workers on the ground, I listen. I see. I remain when everyone else has moved on.

To my managers, I am a problem. To workers, I am a welcome presence. But I do not belong fully to either world. I remain somewhere else entirely, suspended between them.

That machine is Safety itself; cold, reductionist, self-referential. It runs on reports, audits, and controls, indifferent to personhood. It does not acknowledge ghosts. It only counts metrics.

Threshold Theory takes hold here. Virtue is not absolute. One does not need to be perfectly righteous to do good, nor perfectly corrupt to cause harm. Is there anything wrong with being just virtuous enough? And that, more than anything, disturbs me. Where is that line?

Ghosts do not haunt out of malice. They haunt because they are searching. Because something holds them here. And I am still here. Still questioning. Still listening. Still watching. Still unable to leave.

The Trick of Virtue. A Ghost at the Threshold.

Virtue is not a clean line. It is a grey, shifting space. How much is enough? How little is too little? How close do you have to stand to the line before you’re no longer a witness, but complicit in Safety’s unspoken harm, sustained by its absence of ethic? If I omit details to protect colleagues from Safety’s brutalist ideals, am I still an honest man? If I stay, telling myself I can still do some small amount of good, is that conviction, or just cowardice dressed as virtue, because I am too afraid to face what leaving would cost?

Then comes the more insidious thought: maybe the system works precisely because of people like me. Perhaps Safety survives not because of tyrants or zealots, but because of those who know it is broken yet keep it running just enough. People who do not believe but remain. People who tend to the machine, while convincing ourselves we are somehow different. I tell myself I do what I can within the limits I am given. Is that enough? Or is that a trick of virtue?

Perhaps this is the cruellest trick of all. Safety does not just reward compliance; it idealises it, framing compliance itself as virtue. In doing so, it distorts our understanding of fallibility and what people can reasonably achieve. What are ‘aspirational goals’, when every deviation is cast as failure, every imperfection a moral flaw?

But the world is unpredictable. Messy. Human. And in that world, perfection is a fantasy. Still, Safety demands it, leaving no room for doubt, only the overt judgement that anything less is failure of character.

The Ghost’s Final Act.

I know my role in the theatre. I know the lines to speak, the reports to deliver, the silences to hold. I know when to nod, when to feign interest, when to let the scene drift past without resistance. I know how to dress up reality just enough to keep the performance intact. I know how to keep the show going, and myself employed.

And here is the truth I do not want to admit. I tell myself I am different. That I do not believe. That my soul is still intact. But the reality is, I stay. I draw my salary. I stand in front of my coworkers and deliver exactly what is expected. I uphold the very narrative I criticise.

It is unsettling to realise what that makes me.

From the company’s perspective, I don’t qualify for the recognition programme. I refuse dogmatic belief. Yet I survive by doing just enough; not enough to change anything, not enough to break free, just enough to keep my place.

It is easy to call Safety bankrupt. Easy to label believers naïve. Easy to name the failures from a distance. And yet here I am, maintaining the theatre I curse. But those who believe, those who carry the flag, repeat the slogans, enforce the system without question, are called good employees. They find certainty where I see only grey.

But who is truly dangerous? Is it them, the faithful enforcers? Or is it me, the one who knows it is broken, and yet keeps the show alive anyway? At what point does knowing better become guilt? How long can I remain before resistance becomes justification? Before survival becomes complicity?

This is the weight I carry.

I am not the zealot, imposing Safety’s distorted logic. I am not the revolutionary, burning it all down. That courage was never mine. Perhaps the question is no longer about Safety at all. Perhaps the real question is me. Am I necessary? Or am I dangerous? Am I good, or damned?

This is not a plea for absolution. It is simply the truth, confessed by the Ghost still trapped.

The Ghost Cannot Be Exorcised

Safety believes it can purge what it does not understand, what it can’t control. It trusts that policies, procedures, and verifications can silence doubt, and make the uncertain, certain. But some ghosts cannot be exorcised, because they are not accidents. They are inevitable; created by the system itself.

I have seen too much to believe in Safety’s illusions, yet I can’t walk away. So, I remain, haunting the machine. Just outside enough to see a little further, never far enough to fully understand. Maybe the Ghost lingers because it still cares, because it is still searching. Because, in its own way, it still has faith.

Or maybe it is already compromised; hypocritical enough to perform the quiet moral trade-offs required to live an ordinary life: pay the bills, be a husband, be a father. And so it turns away from the edge it knows is there; the pursuit of knowledge, the unsettling questions of epistemology, always beyond the machine’s grasp.

Am I, like all Ghosts, lingering in limbo; too uncertain to leave, too weary to act, waiting for meaning that may never come?

Perhaps that haunting ambiguity is the most honest truth I can offer.

Sources

Russell, L. M. (2012). Don’t dream impossible dreams: Practical idealism in social work. Australian Social Work, 65(2), 147–163. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2011.619959