[2,679 words.]
“He who fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
I don’t do thoughts and prayers. To clarify: I never offer prayers, and arguably I don’t do thoughts. Which isn’t to say that during mass I am not engaging thoroughly in the ritual, or I am otherwise confused about the goodhearted intent behind public proclamations. It’s not even that I don’t believe they have an intended effect, consumed as I am by trippy proposals of psychic links and phenomenological tulpas replicating like cosmic cancer cells.
I am immersed wholeheartedly in this thing, unplagued by disbelief.
I’ve encountered many people – notably transhumanists and tech accelerationists attempting to pragmatically appropriate Christianity as some sort of software upgrade – who struggle with getting their arms around what God is. Surely it is impossible to intellectually grasp the infinite, but I see them cast God as a species of lower deity similar to how pagan cults would. God, in this framework, is subject to a dominion of outside forces, bound by some ill-defined mathematics of nature. In the traditional view I have taken great effort to understand, even the most powerful gods inhabit a container of fate and judgment, whereas in the Westernized iterations of Christianity all life are constructs within the mind of God who simultaneously flows through us as a fluid self-realizing ecosystem. The concept of Logos itself being the word of God that birthed the logic of existence as pure unbounded creativity. God’s plan, to summarize it in my vulgar fashion, is the sum of reality.
With this in mind it always seemed selfish, even hedonistic, to appeal to this totality as if it were momentarily erroneous. Who am I to plead for disruption? The arrogance to deliver wishes unto Him or plead to correct the record always seemed futile. It becomes achievable when you imagine God as a superpower in the sky, or a Zeus-like figure that can be bargained with, driven as he is by emotions and agendas similar to your own. I say this with the full understanding that this is a subjective interpretation and I may be throwing the gauntlet down for theologians to inundate me with mean things.
There were many historical factors that lead to the dominance of Christianity in Europe and the decline (or absorbing) of regional paganism, but one undeniable consequence was the pivotal enlightenment allowing a much more abstracted, distant horizon of the divine while maintaining a direct relationship with this power. It was the nature of the relationship that had forever changed to what we experience now.
The spiritual revolution coinciding with the decline of the Roman empire was nothing less than a mind revolution signifying a reconfiguration of our place in the universe. A revolution that may be one more demanded by the faithful.
None of us can truly imagine something outside of our comprehension, despite our constant drive to do so. This is the case with God, entities from the future, extraterrestrials, or the purported machine elves lurking in other dimensions allegedly accessible through DMT. It seems obvious that true interdimensional power would have no interest in negotiating on a level playing field with us, especially in a linguistic or moral framework we could understand.
Solemn Providence does not utter syke.
It is reassuring to believe you hold central influence in the universe even when critiquing from the periphery. Those viewing unknowable power from below find comfort in populating incomprehensible paranormal spaces with entities it can understand, perhaps even outwit or kill. Even when you believe power is beyond your reach, you want to believe you can still draw a circle around it. The current online dissemination of Italian Elite Theory is selling such analysis to the margins of society possessing no sociopolitical sovereignty, proclaiming that power is a singular force that is wielded by a singular class, yet the act of elaborating on it appeals to it in some manner. Predicting the moves of elites as if these gambles have anything on the line. This plantation of thought curses adherents to a pathetic proximity away from embodying the rare black swan event that could fulfill their destiny.
Investigations into power structures, including those involving shapeshifting reptilian invaders, are indicative the rationalism of our age. They are important, but more than important they are inevitable. When we encapsulate, dissect, and disenchant we run the risk of creating a basic-assumption fandom; a device purpose-built for our own intellectual enslavement.
Ethereal extraterrestrials in fact live inside of our actions, not in performances of shotcalling elite moves from the ghetto, engaged in an eternal knife fight over speculative crumbs of influence. In light of the harshness of the prior assessment, these flights of ideation are symptomatic of a deepening understanding of the sociopolitical forces that shape our lives. It is necessary, but insufficient.
As our understanding of total power has expanded so has our obsession with probing its mechanics, thereby encapsulating it, placing it upon a stainless steel table upon which we can lord over with surgical instruments. This is a consequence of the paradigm shift from a cyclical model of time to a linear model, where even the gods were contained within the cycle of change into a permanent – if declining – progression wherein there is no rebirth, no forecastable Kali Yugas, and bookended by a definite beginning and end. We maintain this conceptualization of temporality for better or worse, and as we have ascended to even more complex theories explaining the innerworkings of reality, we have expanded the terms of creation towards a spatialization of time.
This phrase seeks to explain how our cognition has refined the ability to visually portray both the future and past as static zones accessible as one walks between rooms, but furthermore alternate interconnected ecosystems searchable in a rudimentary theory of “multiverses.” It is this visual spatialization that stages our endeavors. The future is not just the extended present; it is a place that is inhabited by our future selves. The future is understood as a place where entities live, and we are entranced by stories where heroes can not only communicate with these human (or inhuman) entities, but travel to the future as if it were an undiscovered country. A frontier we can colonize, or be colonized by.
The future is where utopia resides, and our mission is to chart a course towards it. Not only do we believe the ideal future is inhabitable, we believe we are owed it as if an inevitable destination.
It should come as no shock that our understanding of the immersive creator has shrunk to fit inside of these illuminated negative spaces. Our conscience whispering that existence is subject to outsideness.
This subconscious spatialization of time has created a modern terrain to affirm inevitabilities that we believe draw us closer to them. It’s literal, transactional, and scalable. Even Nassim Taleb in describing Black Swan events – discoveries or events that change the entire status quo – portrays them like lurking Known Unknowns. Discoveries we do not know but believe we can know, trapped and awaiting liberation. Innovation as treasure hunting. This triggers a race to who can discover it first under the assumption that someone inevitably will, the qualitative or even destructive capabilities of the achievement being secondary. The ripe fruit is there for the picking it, might as well be us.
Some of the most powerful men in human history are convinced our destiny is to multiply heedlessly amongst the stars. Not only do they feel drawn to this utopian future by ambitions located in the untamed nether somewhere behind the scaffolding of logic, they understand other groups have also arrived at this conclusion and are currently engaged in a mad dash to the finish line.
We are beckoned beyond reason towards an ethereal New World, the unforeseen hazards largely dismissed by this Faustian script.
Now the last thing you need to hear from me is another treatise on hyperstition. It’s a popular notion these days imbued with the belief that there are either benevolent or hostile entities in the future attempting to influence the present through ideas that manifest like tulpas. The broader definition of hyperstition is a fiction or concept that makes itself real like an platonic form giving birth to itself. The question naturally follows, from where do these seeds originate? Who writes these fictions to make them so special? Other dimensions is one explanation, but then why not the future? This is the plot of Interstellar, arguably the plot of Arrival, just to name two.
Interestingly, it seems that every time we create an accessible realm hitherto unimaginable, we populate it with monsters. This is what ruined The Backrooms, in my opinion. A wildly popular organic online narrative community, The Backrooms started as a fascinating idea likely inspired by video games: the ability to glitch out of the known world and access spaces that seemingly exist behind, above, or even through our waking world like the secret spaces behind a movie set. This zone was not created by malevolent intelligence, rather seemingly called into being as a necessary substructure.
We begin with an implication that the universe could have a subconscious where half-formed locations intersect in an interconnected dreamscape, but as we developed this world our story architects felt compelled to make it a space where monsters roamed. This narrowed the conceptual possibilities, no longer seeking novel storytelling hooks but rather crafting familiar halls to run around panicked in.
Perhaps there is an evil corporate conspiracy. There might even me a final boss.
Our obsession with armchair-quarterbacking The Without, hypothesizing the reciprocal transmissions, has us placing bets on what maleficent shape Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) will take, having accepted that this is the destiny of all technological innovation if not in the short term, then certainly the long term. The most centralized civilizations on Earth are presently engaged in a race to heedlessly unlock the secrets of this Black Swan, convinced as they are that our utopian future requires it.
Many believe AGI is impossible, hobbled by limitations of both energy and data. While artificial intelligence will likely remain a hot sector due to gated applications, the dream of creating a machine god remains practically elusive.
Like those advocates for spreading humanity across the stars, those who pursue the most outlandish dreams of AI are primarily animated by the belief that it’s man’s fate to create a perfect – indeed, a perfected – replica of himself. The return on investment is incidental. He with a closed and cynical mind spends his time predicting what precise form it will take, while he with a more open mind understands that upon release it will begin dictating its own form. AGI is the barbarian horde encroaching from a savage netherworld forcing us to prepare for the siege.
A Spenglerian assessment could indicate that it’s the natural symptom of civilizational decay, more a commentary on fallen races submitting their vitality to a new master, the only struggle offered being the pleading to dictate the terms of the conquest. The Huns are still well within the boundaries of the Steppes, though; we are so convinced we deserve the siege that we are already thinking past the enemy that is only stirring awake. We feel as though we deserve it, the cleansing fire of The Without offering such imagined vitalism that we beckon it in. We are still not asking the most crucial question: why? Do you know why we need to conquer the stars? Do you know why we need to create a machine God? Do you know why we should live forever? This is not to say there is not an answer to each of these questions, it’s just I’ve never heard an answer.
A case could be made that the desire itself is all the explanation that is required. We are thrust by a momentum that does not need further justification. At times I acquiesce to this explanation, but I have come to believe we need to start identifying better reasons. Bernard Suits was a Philosopher of Sport who developed a theory that all human endeavors fit the description of games. This is not to say they are frivolous, but rather that games are of the utmost importance in the interest of accomplishing higher order aims. He challenged the conventional notion that games existed diametrically opposed to work, where the latter is seen as valuable and the former a dalliance to ultimately waste time.
Games are defined here as quests to accomplish goals with elective obstacles placed in the way in the interest of hindering absolute expediency. Games can include sports, role playing, gambling, and ultimately anything with defined rules that narrowly define the route to achieve the goal, shifting the aim from attainment to victory. For example, the most efficient route for reproduction is rape on a mass scale, but we developed what could be described as a “game” called courtship. Sexual consummation is the last link in a very long chain of general stipulations, with everyone understanding what the goalposts are.
Laws against insider trading, beliefs regarding how to conduct a transaction, chivalry, all of these can be identified as games as long as we acknowledge that these rules are not arbitrary. Nearly everything we do exists on this game gradient, becoming more treacherous as we approach pure utility. The rules can be viewed as eugenic layers filtering for the most adept champions, and winning at life in an amoral fashion is seen not only as malignant but weak.
This outlook is grounded in the belief that morals are obstacles to achieving greatness, whereas in the aforementioned theory they are the boundaries required to achieve greatness. Morals are an aggregate system of behaviors that have been passed down generationally which, even taking the utilitarian view, have been proven to lead to the best outcomes. I have encountered a few people who, in the interest of accumulating power, have defended making a deal with the devil, or even the benefits of unchained hubris.
Creating a machine god. Colonizing the stars. Living forever. Which end of the game spectrum do these fall? Are we approaching pure utility for the sake of it, foregoing all rules established through mythical wisdom, dismissing these concerns as if they were part of a child’s play by the name of morals?
I am possessed by the conviction that alien intelligence is impossible to interface with, and that the highest forms of power cannot be negotiated with. The consequences of opening Technological Black Boxes are unknowable, and it has become apparent that reckless technic cannot be reigned in. Guenon asserts this is the Reign of Quantity, and Spengler condemns this historical period as the decaying empire of of mutated materialism. The abstract realms guiding our ambitions are populated by monsters of our own design at our own peril.
Even God allows free will, but many believe political power is an inescapable superstructure wherein nothing unpredictable can ever occur. What power we could conceivably have is anesthetized by drawing borders around the unknown, lead astray by puny imaginings of what dwells within. Forecasting our own subjugation grants us no power over it, this may even call it forth. Free Will and Solemn Providence are not contradictory, we are simply accustomed to surrendering to perceived power the moment our decision trees narrow to a singular disastrous branch. A highly-educated prey position that blinds us to opportunities and attacks emergent forms as ratlike cancer cells.
Awareness of outsideness should not be interpreted as an invitation to become its ward. The Without arrives not with a handshake but it shudders when confronted with the darkly multitudinous. Within that depth, bewildering to those polluting alien eyes, you still possess the oft neglected question: why? As my friend StormyWaters is apt to say, to paraphrase: “bodies without consciousness will inevitably become host to consciousness without bodies.” I am unplagued by disbelief, which is why I take insane things seriously.