Singularity as Antichrist - Part 3
Welcome back to part three of our series "singularity as antichrist" wherein we are exploring the emerging mythology... the alchemical marriage... between technological singularity and Messianic Theology. Although we have examined the concept of messiah and Christ/Antichrist, through the lens of (ultra-violent) desert religions... many religions include a messianic component. The Buddhist Maitreya... the Hindu Kalki... the Zoroastrian Saoshyant... Many religions see the state of the world as hopelessly flawed beyond any aspiration of human rectification. As such, an eschatological intervention through a divinely prophesized messianic figure is seen as not only necessary, but immanent.
In our first installment, we investigated the hypothesis that the exponentially accelerating
evolution of technologies such as artificial intelligence will soon cause
machine intelligence to exceed that of the human. The emerging AI entity that
brings about this epoch ending event will likely be a sentient network of
technology, such as the World Wide Web. We further explored the “Big Three”
desert religion’s preoccupation with the Messiah/Antichrist eschatology and
overlaid this mythology upon technological singularity.
In part two,
we toyed with the idea that computer science, as personified by Apple, Inc.,
metaphorically represented a continuation of humanity's theft of the knowledge
of good and evil. This moment, as depicted in the Garden of Eden mythology, is
the moment when humanity became conscious or self-aware, thereby separating
humans from the rest of the animal kingdom. This allegorical moment represented
the pivot point of human self-determination... freeing us from the
superstitions of some angry god. It was this act of becoming self-conscious
that precipitated our expulsion... more accurately, self-exile... from the
garden.
And yet in
today's Information Age... That age-old eschatological angst manifests once
again in the modernized mythology of "geek rapture." Before we
consider such... Consider the following mythology...
The Gods must be Crazy
Certain
ancient Gnostic cosmologies depict a deranged, second-string deity known
as the Demiurge… roughly equivalent to Jehovah or Yahwah... mistaking itself for the ultimate and unknowable creative,
sustaining & returning force of universe (Godhead). In its derangement,
Yahwah brings into existence a minor-league creation known as the
"material world." The underlying nature of the manifest material
world is dualistic... Yin/Yang, Light/Dark, Good/Evil, etc. Consequently, all
that is within our materialistic world, shares this dualistic interplay of
light and shadow.
Now, within
this Gnostic mythology, Yahwah itself was brought into existence by a
first-string entity known as "Sophia" (There are multiple Gnostic
hierarchies of manifest emanations, known as Aeons, which are symbolic
abstractions of godhead's divine nature. Aeons are typified as dualistic,
male/female in nature... However, we will not expand upon this divine hierarchy
here). Sophia is a feminine aspect of Godhead's emanating wisdom. To make a
long and somewhat tedious story short, Sophia creates Yahwah without the
"assistance" of her masculine balancing counterpart, Theletus. The
male aspect Theletus (yang), and the female Sophia (yin), are mythic personifications
of the specific aspects of Godhead that when combined, represent:
"perfect" (Theletus) "wisdom" (Sophia).
The combined
attributes of Theletus and Sophia... Perfect Wisdom... are not handed down to
Yahwah, as Sophia acted alone in her creation. Hence the material world is an
imperfect manifestation of an imperfect (the Gnostics maintain: deranged)
entity... Yahwah. Thus the ancient Gnostics elegantly explain, through their
mythology, why the world we live in seems at times to be so heartless, so full
of pain and suffering, so brutal... so insane.
And so, with
the creation of our imperfect world, a great disturbance came into "the
force." Upon sensing this disturbance, Godhead, in its unfathomable
wisdom, dispatches two great savior Aeons... The Holy Ghost (called Kundalini
by the Hindus) and a great redeeming Jedi Christ. This Christ Aeon takes
human form, thereby becoming the messiah. The messiah redeems our broken world
by revealing Gnosis or knowledge to humanity, thereby saving us from Yehwah's
folly.
As the
Gnostics considered Yahwah, or the God of the Old Testament and the bible to be
insane, one can see how this could "ruffle the feathers" of the early
church fathers. It is not surprising that these teachings were deemed
heretical, and the Gnostics were expelled from the early church as heretics.
One more facet of interest needs to be mentioned concerning these ancient
Gnostics...
Gnostic
eschatology is rather unusual... for its depiction of the "end times"
does not culminate in an Apocalyptic battle, but rather as a... "steady increase of light through which
darkness is made to disappear" or in which iniquity (wickedness) dissolves... "just as the smoke rising into the air
eventually dissipates." The Gnostic vision of redemption is simply a
change in focus from folly to wisdom, and therefore righteousness. Heresy
indeed.
Geek Rapture
During this
year’s Chicago Humanities Festival which took place on Northwestern
University’s campus, Sci Fi Author and reluctant father of cyberspace, William
Gibson had this to say about the hullabaloo surrounding technological
singularity… The Singularity, he said, is the Geek Rapture. The world will not
change in that way. Like our gradual entrance into cyberspace, now complete
enough that marking this world with a separate term seems quaint, Gibson said
we will eventually find ourselves sitting on the other side of a whole bunch of
cool hardware. But, he feels our belief that it will be a sudden,
quasi-religious transformation is positively 4th century in its thinking.
So it is
with the above in mind that we finally arrive at the reworked and modernized
eschatology of technological singularity. It can be argued that singularity,
when it arrives, will contain few of the technological nightmares that the over
active human imagination can conjure. Nor will it likely usher in a golden,
transhuman age. Singularity may trickle in, as Gibson seems to think. In fact,
singularity may not look like anything we can imagine. As the old saying
goes... the truth is far stranger than fiction.
In terms of
human intelligence, singularity perhaps becomes a fulcrum point of equilibrium.
The place... or perhaps the moment... when our artifacts become as
consequential as our imagination. At the end of the day, technological
eschatology is but a shadow. It is our worst fears that we place upon
singularity, that tip the scale toward darkness. Likewise, it is our greatest
hopes and aspirations that tip the balance toward the light. And isn't that
what the Messiah/Antichrist mythology is all about …the balance of shadow and
light? Our worst fears, hulking in the shadow, become the Antichrist... Our
hopes and aspirations, basking in the light, become our savior.
It has been
said that (hu)man created God in his own image. The fractured demiurge thereby
looks suspiciously like the personification, told through the medium of a creation
myth, of not only our archaic understandings of the inception of universe, but
of our collective fear of the terrifying, carless workings of universe. In this
new and improved geek rapture mythology, the new point-counterpoint becomes man
vs machine. But if like God, we created machines in our own image, than the
machine is our own reflection, made dark or light by our own imagination.
Like the
Aeons of legend, humanity and technology increasingly become a counter-balancing
expression of the inner and outer human condition. As to the eschatology of the
geek rapture... the technological reckoning... we could take a page from the ancient
Gnostic’s view of the apocalypse… Let us all pull together to create a technological
singularity that facilitates that steady increase of light through which
darkness is made to disappear. Let us co-create a future when iniquity
dissolves... just as the smoke rising into the air eventually dissipates.
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