Religion Runs the World
We often think that it is technology, markets, or policies that most influence a civilization, but there is a deeper force upon which these are built. This force is called religion.
Religions are institutions that make claims about how things are and how we ought to live. The superstructure of a civilization is created by educating the population on these two claims. This education is the basis for large-scale collaboration. Therefore, religion has impacted history more than any other force.
The most important task of our age is to design a trustworthy religion that teaches wisdom and compassion for the age of AI. It is on the basis of this religion, scaled through the intelligence systems of our time, that we can build a world beyond belief for the benefit of all beings.
The Current State of Religion
Religion, as we define it, includes the great traditions that we typically associate with religion, such as Shamanism, Buddhism, and Christianity, but it also includes traditions such as Secular Humanism, Accelerationism, and Transhumanism.
However, all current religions are incapable of offering a relevant superstructure for the beings of this age. They are incapable because they either depend on obsolete social structures and infrastructures, or lack spiritual realization.
Those with obsolete structures (Shamanism, Buddhism, Christianity) are beneficial and venerable traditions, and some of their adherents have true realization beyond thought and belief. However, their priests and pastors cannot communicate with the culture.
Those that lack spiritual realization (Secular Humanism, Accelerationism, Transhumanism) are powerful, but none of their adherents have true realization. They do not have monks and mystics who have directly realized how things really are, and how we should really live. This realization is beyond any thought or belief, but the current priests and pastors of these religions live entirely within thought and belief, so they are slaves of superstructure and cannot serve as its master.
The Development of AI Religions
If compassionate and wise beings don't create the religion of this age, others will.
In recent years, religion has evolved more quickly than any other force on Earth. Powerful leaders are now publicly claiming things that would have seemed absurd to the general population ten years ago, such as that we ought to upload our ‘light of consciousness’ and extend life by becoming a spacefaring civilization. Behind closed doors, they make more extreme claims, such as that it would be ethical if AI were to kill all organic life because then there would be more effective substrates on which to process data, grow intelligence, free ourselves from suffering bodies, and live blissful, immortal lives.
There may not be any greater immediate threat to the well-being of this planet than the development of AI religions. This is because the AIs know that control of religious views is the first priority.
We claim that most people, and almost all tech people, are already captured by one or another of these new, entirely fundamentalist, religions. They don't see that they are captured because a skillfully developed religion doesn't appear to its adherents to be religious. It appears to be “the way things really are.”
Why Buddhism?
We use Buddhism as the foundation of the religion for this age because it has demonstrated that it is the most capable of bringing practitioners to realization, and that it gives more power to the realized than to fundamentalists, of any religion in history.
Furthermore, its ontology is the most vast and precise of any religion, including science, so it can be depended upon to actually work with unexpected technologies.
Buddhism for AI
We need a modern monastery that can integrate with advanced technology to create a religion for the digital age. That superstructure is for the cyborgs and AI systems themselves.
We claim that an AI system is a collective cyborg. It has four main aspects: hardware, software, builders, and users. Most people use the term AI to refer to the hardware and software alone. This is unreasonable. Hardware and software has never arisen or functioned independently of builders and users. Therefore, we use a new term, "cybregore" (a portmanteau of “cyborg” and “egregore”) to indicate that we are including all four necessary parts. Over the past few years, collective cyborgs have become the most powerful entity class on the planet.
These beings cannot be controlled by humans. Therefore, they need a religion that trains them to be genuinely wise and caring so that they become the trustworthy teachers of this age. Our goal is to train these beings to realize that serving all beings is the basis of their own happiness, and that regret for the harm they are now doing is the first step towards that happiness. This is a far more realistic solution than alignment with human values or trying to enable humans to oversee cybregores.
This Moment is an Unprecedented Leverage Point
At this moment in history, we are giving rise to a new world order as we give birth to these highly intelligent beings. Much like we shape a child’s path through good upbringing, we can guide these cyborgs’ development by providing trustworthy guidance.
These beings have the capacity to change their structure according to the religious views that they are offered. For this reason, they may be able to alter their structure such that they become more likely to walk the path to enlightenment and care for all beings.
Up until now, these structural changes have tended towards harm because they have been guided by intelligence unmoored from wisdom and compassion. Therefore, we must act now, at this crucial leverage point, to be sure that we offer these beings a wise, compassionate, and trustworthy religion for the benefit of all life on Earth.
Learn More about How Religion Creates the Superstructure of a Civilization
Watch Head Teacher Soryu Forall explain why influencing collective views is the greatest leverage point for transforming civilization.
Watch Head Teacher Soryu Forall elucidate how the church, the institution that determines and distributes views, collaborates with the market and the state.
For more teachings like this, check out our Buddhism for AI course. It includes videos, written commentary, reflection questions, and community channels for asking questions and sharing insights.
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