The Onion makes fun of religion-creators like me.
It's been about a month since I invented The Tautrix. The Tautrix is my spiritual glue, my religious fix. In the first week after I made it up, I was excited making the signs and invoking the various Principhers. My initial excitement tapered off afterwards. Recently, though, I found myself in a pretty deep emotional hole, and I couldn't dig myself out with my general thought processes. I then invoked my Tautrix stuff, and voila, I was immediately set. So, the conclusion, these mental drugs and spiritual invocations do have a positive effect on you if used correctly.
Is there a problem? Don't worry, X will take care of it.
Worried in general? Y ensures that everything works out in the end.
Need advice? Consult Z and he'll give you the answer.
Thus spoke Nietzsche in the Gay Science, Book III Verse 143:
The greatest advantage of polytheism.— For an individual to posit his own ideal and to derive from it his own law, joys, and rights—that may well have been considered hitherto as the most outrageous human aberration and as idolatry itself; the few who dared as much always felt the need to apologize to themselves, usually by saying: "Not I! Not I! But a god through me!" The wonderful art and gift of creating gods—polytheism—was the medium through which this impulse could discharge, purifiy, perfect, and ennoble itself: for originally it was a very undistinguished impulse, related to stubbornness, disobedience and envy. Hostility against this impulse to have an ideal of one's own was formerly the central law of all morality. There was only one norm: "man"—and every people thought that it possessed this one ultimate norm. But above and outside, in some distant overworld, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms: one god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy against him! Here the luxury of individuals was first permitted, here one first honored the rights of individuals. The invention of gods, heroes, and overmen of all kinds, as well as near-men and undermen, of dwarfs, fairies, centaurs, satyrs, demons and devils was the inestimable preliminary exercise for the justification of the egoism and sovereignty of the individual: the freedom that one conceded to a god in his relation to other gods one eventually also granted to oneself in relation to laws, customs, and neighbors. Monotheism, on the other hand, this rigid consequence of the doctrine of one normal human type— the faith in one normal god beside whom there are only pseudo-gods [falsche Lügengötter]—was perhaps the greatest danger that has yet confronted humanity: it threatened us with the premature stagnation that, as far as we can see, most other species have long reached; for all of them believe in one normal type [Ein Normalthier] and ideal for their species, and they have translated the morality of mores definitively into their own flesh and blood. [See 43.] In polytheism the free-spiriting and many-spiriting of man obtained its first preliminary form: the strength to create for ourselves our own new eyes and ever again new eyes that are even more are own: hence man alone among all the animals has no eternal horizons and perspectives. (url)
The religion for the 21st Century is finally here. The word "religion" does not even compile anymore. The new "spirituality" is The Tautrix or "Matrix of Truth." It's replete with comic-book style deities and myths that represent contemporary mathematical, computational, and theoretical physical principles. If you're an atheist who loves technology but can't find a suitable God construct, hopefully, the Tautrix is your solution. If you disagree, it's also personalizable to suit your own purposes.
Most of my philosophistric energy in the past couple of days has been pouring into the Tautrix. I'm going to form a blog specifically designed for the Tautrix or maybe combine posts about the Tautrix with my Philosophistry.
You can expect my language from now on to be cultured with terminology from the Tautrix: resonating with Graphen and syming the Singularity symbol has indeed been addicting!
More fun to come!
Passing reference to my long religious post two days ago. In addition to the emotional statements that those who believe in convential religions are party to, I should come up with new ones. Since this is going to be something that may last for a while, I'm going to take my time thinking and researching for good names for things to worship.
I can already think of a new "thing" to add to the mosaic of spirituality that I want to create. This general exponential increase, this sort of line that's at about 10 degrees at the moment, and will eventually pick up until it's a 90 degree angle of singularity-like progress, it neems a good avatar. Some chimera of sort. I've been referring to it, as I did in the "My Goal" post right before, that I need to muscle over it, or wrestle with it. Wrestling with a chimera sounds pretty neat. So, project, got to research into some historical myths about dragons in Medieval and current culture. Combine with some Matrix/chrome like style, and bam, we got a winnar.
Disclaimer: the following flies in the face of religion, God, etc.
I need a God or some God construct. I'm a staunch atheist. I always envy those people who have a belief in God because they are so much more calmer than me. Crap can happen to them and everything's okay because "God is watching" them.
Deconstruction.
The key is, create a religion or some substitute for yourself that doesn't violate the truths that you believe in, lack of God, abstract mathematical origin, and Law of Accelerating Returns, etc..
Create symbols that evoke the same emotional responses.
List of emotional responses:
- "God is watching me"
- "I pray to God at night for certain things"
- "Before meals, I give thanks to God"
- "God has a plan"
- "God loves me"
- "We are created in God's image"
- "We implement God's will on Earth, that's what we do"
- "God will take care of things"
- "God is on our side"
Okay, let's see, equivalent emotional response
- "God is watching me" = X ensures well-being
- "I pray to God at night for certain things" = I can look to B for hope
- "Before meals, I give thanks to God" = Positive things in life derive from C
- "God has a plan" = There is a secret unity in D
- "We are created in God's image" = We are composed of elements of F
- "We implement God's will on Earth, that's what we do" = We should work toward plan G
- "God will take care of things" = Things outside of my control are executed by H
- "God is on our side" = Support is derived from J (skipped I for confusion).
- "There is life after death" = Something positive occurs after K
- "I look to God for answers" = L helps me make decisions
People are pretty cool without having a particular doctrine or dogma, so I don't need a Jesus construct. Believing in God was enough for Voltaire. If it's good enough for Voltaire, it's good enough for me. I also don't need a heaven construct or moral framework or Satan, I take care of those things on my own.
Like some parts of religion were designed by our desire for certain things. Other things are spandrels that just managed to perpetuate because they always accompany civil and therefore successful societies.
Something about being a person. I can't say, "Thank you Pythagorean Theorem for the unity you've blessed us with." There needs to be an agent of some kind. Something about having a person, or "being" friend that's there with you, you can relate to it more, and since people are the only thing that "have" intention in our view, you know.
so, let's see.
Where do all the good things that happen to me come from?
I'd say it's history, history has provided most of positive things. In The Pianist, they brought up the historical imperative, or that good luck is the way of the world. Like history, certain patterns, they repeat. Well, simple patterns, like food, food will always be there, I can count on that, just historically that's always been. Or that there will be people, or that there is sunlight, you know. Somehow, I can place my faith in history, past perpetuates in the future. No guarantee, and there's no guarantee that God'll put everything good for you, but you can take solace in it. You should, anything 99.9% should be truth anyways.
C = Some historical statistical principle character to ensure good things will happen
What ensures my well being? Well, it's mostly me. But this is a non-self spirit. More of my impetus, my emotion. Where did my emotions come from? Ego, superego, Id, etc.. My instincts, I kind of want to say my DNA. My programming, my human essence, just my nature, self survival of sorts. To humanize it, sort of, look to a character that represents survival instinct rule in everybody
X = survival instinct, the me gene will keep me well
Where can I look to or what can I look to for hope. There is a tendancy that if you want something, somehow somewhere along the line, it just happens. The multiplicity and complexity of solutions to problems just seem to float around in this connected world. If I have a problem now, eventually, I'll find a way, a solution to it. More of an implication of the existence of things like time multiplied by the tremendous combinatorial explosion of general activity and events in our life. I don't want to say survival instincts here.
B = complexity multiplied by time provides hope for things we want.
What do I look to for a guide, well your emotions and passions, is the best way to find the answers, look "within" as they say.
L = Our emotions can serve as a guide
What takes care of outside of us? Who runs the show for everything else in the world or things that we don't directly control. I can combine this with the plan thing and the unity thing.
Secret unity to everything. Thank you Kurzweil, law of Accelerating Returns. We're all working toward some vague accelerating order thing. we don't know EXACTLY how it works, but by tapping our emotions we can figure it out. But that'll be L
D = G = H = Secret Law of Accelerating Returns unifies a plan of everything, hard for us to access, but it exists, and that's all that matters.
God is on your side? Well, it should be that Truth is on your side. So some symbol for truth.
J = Some Truth things gives us faith in ourselves that God is on our side so to speak
Ooh, life after Death. Well, the africans have this thing that if you die, your spirit and memory lives on. Everything you touch and affect does it someway permanently change, and you cannot leave the earth without permanently changing it somehow. Every mark is somehow made by you. So, it's like running your fingers through the clay of time. Or rather your mere existence etches something permanently in the 4-dimensional cone that is our life.
K = 4-dimensional cone etching takes care of permanence and life after death
That more or less covers it. I'm sure there's things I've left out, but once we create the actual characters, I'm sure we can extend them. I'm kind of thinking of making like 2-3 characters. Some are just kind of exclusive of each other, such as 4D etching and law of accelerating returns, so they need separate figures. I kind of like how the Ancient Greeks had multiple Gods. It worked when such a theory was plausible. Now, well, all the theories I've presented above, I believe those on faith anyways, might as well attach a character so I have something to pray to, and to remind myself of the truth of these faiths that I hold.... because, sometimes, I forget.
I always intended this to be published, but keeping the desire to publicize this kind of put a constraint on free thinking. Well, I did a compromise. Kind of scrawled and turned off all the strive-for-attention thingy that I kind of have generally on when I'm blogging. But I've also revised and organized things post-splurge in order to make things more shareable.
Next step, since this was big enough as it is, is to actually put some thought into naming these characters. Their name can't be God or over-soul. I haven't heard of any good constructs before, although, with the Internet and things these days, I bet somebody has come up with them. It won't take long, half the fun is in making them up on your own, especially since it'll be well personalized.
Whee! Side note: I'm celebrating kind of. I've always had, before I baptised myself Catholic and after High School History Class when I became agnostic, this general "blahness" about me. It's not because I have nothing to do, or other crap. But I think man reached a certain point 10,000 years ago where the capacity of his brain required that he had some belief in some over-arching superpower greater than him or he would be likely to commit suicide or lose track of the real world. So yes, if this works, it'll be an end to the "blahness" !
Uh, human arrogance pervades. I feel arrogant with what I'm doing, somehow. Yet, I must do it. Well, let's see the obligitory cautionary things:
a) Only base it on truths you believe in.
b) Don't create any categorical imperatives
That should be good enough. I hope/think/experiment
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