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Very few technological forces are this generic, so usually some human narrativization into a progress narrative is needed. But oil and silicon both come close to “naked” religions. No prophets or bibles needed. Raw serendipitous benevolence and bounty of nature. Just add physics.
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The relevance of this for today cf meaning crisis is — there’s no point giving people something to believe in (hopepunk, green new deal). You need to give people something to surrender to. Trumpism hit this button hard. It’s not what he offered. It’s the surrender he accepted.
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The left has not offered a surrender option since the 60s (hippie/dropout culture). This is why it struggles everywhere to be seen as anything other than authoritarian power grab by a bureaucratic minority.
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For those like me interested in a technological surrender option, a new Promethean force comparable to Moore’s Law, crypto, ML, and solar have been the 3 big candidates, all “children of silicon.” None as powerful as the parent. Lithium is another, but weaker than oil
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Importantly, surrender options are not ideas unless they are literal religions. They need a material basis. Arguably Reaganism had a material basis first in globalized trade, then in silicon. Americanism as a 150y old region is rooted in oil.
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The US was the OG petrostate for ~20-30y. The only reason it didn’t succumb to the Dutch disease/curse of resources is, it was first so had to invent the oil industry and all the tech. The hard work stayed the curse which descended on later petrostates.
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So inventing even the finest new secular -ism won’t help solve the meaning crisis. You need to claim either god or physics on your side. A bunch of philosophy or manifestos won’t do. God is dead, so it’s either reactionary delusions or new physics.
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Surrender to technological serendipity is what we usually call a network effect. An unbounded nonlinear upside dynamic hay is unreasonably easy to trigger within a broader physics rising tide (oil, silicon).
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This is a satisfying theory and explains why charismatic cult leader types only ever attract a minority of idiot true believers under post-modern conditions. The axial age is long over. Simply claiming revelation and delivering messianic texts is just campy to most people.
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Relatedly modern cults are NOT precursors of trad religions of 3021. Conditions have changed. The pristine ground of unicameral minds was only available for colonization that one time. It was the first and last “human resource” fossil fuel. New religions can’t evolve that way.
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If I had to bet, I’d bet on machine learning as the new physics force that can drive a new surrender-based religiosity. Just surrender to the inscrutable algorithm. If Moore’s Law is OT Judaism, ML is NT Christianity. Already with eastern (Chinese) and Western branches.
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I doubt last. I'd guess there are other open attractors out there. We'll blunder through the shell and then it's salt mine sinkhole time again.
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When do you think that shift happened? Judaism is like 3k yrs old, Christianity 2k, Islam ~1k, and mormonism a couple hundred, so unless you're talking about an actually modern shift, it doesn't look like religion creation was a one-and-done thing?