i explained what i meant by technopaganism in the first part of this series. another way of defining what something means to you is by saying what it doesn’t mean.
i’ve been doing a bunch of “atheist spirituality” reading recently and being slightly to deeply disappointed in a lot of their framing of the “traditionally religious” as backwards and ridiculous. i wasn’t reading richard dawkins and sam harris and being offended by their blatant islamophobia to be clear, but books more focused on convincing the long-standing atheist that maybe some of this spirituality stuff isn’t all hokum.
it seems on its face really disrespectful, as well as not particularly curious or engaged for people, especially those without religious trauma, to make fun of and belittle the beliefs of, i’m assuming, billions of people.
TODO: maybe go into specific books? maybe not? if not summarise the things that annoyed me in more detail.
i feel like since TESCREAL/effective altruists seized upon their bastardisation of the divine in this arena, it feels like a weird thing to admit being in awe of technology in any positive sense. for the uninitiated, EA, or effective altruism, is the idea that you can use a mixture of stats, utilitarianism and cold hard cash to calculate and thus optimise the amount of good you can do with your career, and, ultimately, life, by following these simple steps!
TESCREAL stands for “transhumanism, extropianism, singularitarianism, (modern) cosmism, rationalism, effective altruism, and longtermism”, a list of words that you may not be familiar with but is beyond of the scope of this to break down for you here. they’re all interconnected and interwoven as communities, mindsets and ultimately political and social goals.
whilst i think some of the stuff that EA in particular cooked up was less misguided to begin with—i had a look in the Wayback Machine to make sure—gradually with growing power, influence and money the views there have crystallised into “we need to create as many digital humans as possible in the far-flung future, so all present concerns are largely irrelevant”.
as a teenager and young adult i was pretty into the idea of transhumanism, the singularity, rationalism to an extent and eventually effective altruism. it’s important to think about how my views here could be misconstrued, so i’ll be crystal clear; i don’t think you can build god. what TESCREAL is trying to do is surpass our fleshy human limitations and achieve said godhood. on its face that might be laudable to some people, but if that means ignoring the terror and destruction around us as the world burns and our neighbours drown… i don’t know how else to tell you it’s not a good thing.