Because you perceive the galaxy as being on a railroad? Why? Doesn’t Stan look railroaded the way he drives to work, eats lunch, drives home, mows the lawn? Maybe the galaxy, like us,[1] experiences itself as doing things with volition. Which might seem weird given the sheer scale and timespan of a galaxy. But:

> Assuming that the galactic mind works in and through electromagnetic fields, then its thoughts and perceptions must be very slow indeed, by our standards. The radius of the Milky Way is about 50,000 light years, so it would take at least this length of time for the galactic centre to perceive what is happening at the periphery, and as long again for it to act on star systems at the edge.

Instead of having a consciousness that has to wait 50,000 years for some input, it makes more sense for a consciousness to experience time on a scale where input happen in (say) 100ms consciouss-perceived time or so. So what looks like 500,000 years for us is a second to a galaxy.

[1] The HN philosophers can argue about free will or not but here only the feeling of having it is relevant