none of the sources of information [about the history of the Matrix] seem completely reliable, and the film is actually quite amenable to an interpretation in which humans are being kept alive for reasons that have nothing to do with power. The most obvious answer, in my mind, is a kind of experience machine scenario, in which humans chose to create a system which would sustain them, while living inside the Matrix, either voluntarily (individually) or by having it imposed by some smaller group of people. In this reading, the attempts to prevent anyone from disrupting the system could be seen as a kind of built in attempt at stability.
on a reply to me that read "that was insightful, and very funny