Why do the machines preserve the human life outside of the Matrix at all?

LuminousSpecter

What's the point of allowing Zion to rebuild only to destroy it?

Annuit Coeptis

They are machines, they are computers, they think like computers. It was the only way that the system could work. They need Zion to exist so that they can keep fulfilling the prophecy. The only reason that Neo existed was because the machines allowed him to live. The architect said it himself, he told Neo how the system had worked before and what they needed to keep doing to ensure maximum energy gained. Zion exists because that is what is in the prophecy. I think that "the prophecy" is really just a program that the machines wrote a long time ago when they were still looking how to improve efficiency when using humans for energy. All they are doing is just following lines of code and it just so happens that the code requires 'the one' to make a choice about Zion because they cannot make it themselves. Ah, I feel like I just said a bunch of words without saying anything. The reason they let Zion exist is so that they can destroy it later. It doesn't make sense to us, but to a machine, it is perfectly logical to start with an effect and think of a cause later. It is what they must do.

LuminousSpecter

So you're saying that Zion exists to be destroyed by the machines for no reason other than the Machines have to do it? So all of that death happened again and again because of a few lines of code that say, essentially, the destruction of Zion is necessary for the One to appear again.

mercury

If Zion didn't exist, would it still be possible for people to get freed from the Matrix? The people inside apparently need help from people outside.
So the next question would be, why do the machines allow people to get out? This is implicitly answered in Revolutions by the Architect and the Oracle. She asks him, what about those who want out? And he answers, well, I guess they will be freed. He accepts this, because it seems to be a function of human consciousness to want to wake up.

The machines have adapted the Matrix over several versions, but obviously the flaws needed to be built in in order to offer a choice bewteen sleep and waking. The machines figured out when the first perfect Matrix failed, because no one accepted it, that it is the nature of the human mind to inquire and choose. No options to choose from are inacceptable. Imagine this for a moment, if you were put in a world that leaves you no choice but you still have the urge inside to determin your own destiny, you would run amok. So, the machines figured that the only way to keep the matrix running stable and widely accepted is to allow for the possibility of escape. But with no one from outside freeing the awakening minds, they would have to remain trapped inside the system and eventually break it. Therefore, the Zionists are needed to keep the Matrix up and running smoothly. And like any complex system it will suffer crisis at some point and require to be reset.