The fight against individuality starts from the earliest moments. Those children who show the best promise become novices, while the other become servants or are sent down into the Underworld again. The training consists of making the novices become less and less individual and letting the Will of the City replace their own will. They are required to wear masks, like all others inside the Temples. They are subtly tested to see if they retain any weaknesses of individuality or heretical beliefs, and if they fail they are sent down or put into the meditation chambers, where they are forced to meditate on the Will of the City for months in total sensory deprivation and direct link to the City.
Most novices return either as perfect priests, or as vegetables.
This network connects every machine, every building, every human by invisible links of information. The City is sentient, in a diffuse way. There is no central mind, but there is an overall direction in the system. These are just guidelines, and not always followed exactly. The main problem is that the City is not a unified system, just an infinite network of components with their own goals.