Rod Dreyer, with whom I will be speaking at the Touchstone conference in Chicago next month, has posted an interesting commentary on AI religion: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/unwitting-servants-of-the-new-evil. NB: the material in question follows some disturbing material on another subject, the details of which the reader may want to avoid, though it won't do to avoid altogether the problem being addressed. Anyway, scroll down to "ChatGPT and the Next Religion." Afterward, an an antidote, read part 5 of this PHR series. And thanks to those of you below who have made such encouraging comments regarding what you have read here already.
Don't think I've ever read such an ambitious and all embracing, full spectrum dominating account of just how we got to here in 2023.
Such insight, generosity and footnoted writing is a rare thing, This essay in its parts required frequent revisiting, there is just so much here.
Just fantastic scholarship with a clear Christian discernment . Yet steeped in contemporary cultural signs of the times that confirm the utter debauchery that only a fake goddess of safety and public health dictatorship could emerge from.
Thank you Paul .This essay will have seismic influence in due course, Europe is waking up .
Thank you! A good read for me! Everything points to the inevitable one-world-governing autocratic hierarchical order: from Christ-in-a Free-land's questioning of the utility of democratic capitalism for resolving the complex polycrisis besetting humanity, to your comment that truth is now a passenger in the back seat while safety is at the wheel in the front seat, to your referencing The Line in Saudi Arabia (fascinating). I have the feeling that should the deep-learners in AI (your Agency Simulation) read your four texts on the Public Health Revolution, they will have a ready-made road map for all the steps to take to bring about the autocratic order: they will know which mountains need to be laid flat and which corners to be made straight. And I believe that there will be churches in the new order, but they will be like horse-drawn carriages in Québec City or like Upper Canada Village in Eastern Ontario.
I am no megawatt intellect I would be the first to admit...but I cannot help but think we are living in the immediate prequel to Huxley's Brave New World.
"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to be something called God–before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."
The opening lines of Brave New World Revisited (1958) confirm this: "In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching—these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren. I forget the exact date of the events recorded in Brave New World; but it was somewhere in the sixth or seventh century A.F. (After Ford). We who were living in the second quarter of the twentieth century A.D. were the inhabitants, admittedly, of a gruesome kind of universe; but the nightmare of those depression years was radically different from the nightmare of the future, described in Brave New World. Ours was a nightmare of too little order; theirs, in the seventh century A.F., of too much. In the process of passing from one extreme to the other, there would be a long interval, so I imagined, during which the more fortunate third of the human race would make the best of both worlds—the disorderly world of liberalism and the much too orderly Brave New World where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal initiative. Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would. The blessed interval between too little order and the nightmare of too much has not begun and shows no sign of beginning. In the West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane. In the rest of the world freedom for individuals has already gone, or is manifestly about to go. The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner."
From Section III, pertinent to the question of the fall: "The future dictator's subjects will be painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers. 'The challenge of social engineering in our time,' writes an enthusiastic advocate of this new science, 'is like the challenge of technical engineering fifty years ago. If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers'—and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World. To the question quis custodiet custodes— Who will mount guard over our guardians, who will engineer the engineers?—the answer is a bland denial that they need any supervision. There seems to be a touching belief among certain Ph.D.'s in sociology that Ph.D.'s in sociology will never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Galahad's, their strength is as the strength of ten because their heart is pure—and their heart is pure because they are scientists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies."
There were and are different schools within Platonism, which went through various phases. At the beginning of book 19 Augustine engages Varro (a Stoic) on some of those schools, as well as other actual or possible schools. The link to Freemasonry passes through the Renaissance theurgists, however, and through Boehme and Newton and Hegel, to name a few prominent thinkers who took an interest (on Hegel, see Magee https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/magee.htm).
"AI will, in other words, become God": https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/will-we-worship-the-ai/
Thus say those who have no idea who or what God is.
Rod Dreyer, with whom I will be speaking at the Touchstone conference in Chicago next month, has posted an interesting commentary on AI religion: https://roddreher.substack.com/p/unwitting-servants-of-the-new-evil. NB: the material in question follows some disturbing material on another subject, the details of which the reader may want to avoid, though it won't do to avoid altogether the problem being addressed. Anyway, scroll down to "ChatGPT and the Next Religion." Afterward, an an antidote, read part 5 of this PHR series. And thanks to those of you below who have made such encouraging comments regarding what you have read here already.
“Just machines to make big decisions, programmed by fellows of compassion and vision.”
https://youtu.be/Ueivjr3f8xg
Don't think I've ever read such an ambitious and all embracing, full spectrum dominating account of just how we got to here in 2023.
Such insight, generosity and footnoted writing is a rare thing, This essay in its parts required frequent revisiting, there is just so much here.
Just fantastic scholarship with a clear Christian discernment . Yet steeped in contemporary cultural signs of the times that confirm the utter debauchery that only a fake goddess of safety and public health dictatorship could emerge from.
Thank you Paul .This essay will have seismic influence in due course, Europe is waking up .
Thank you! A good read for me! Everything points to the inevitable one-world-governing autocratic hierarchical order: from Christ-in-a Free-land's questioning of the utility of democratic capitalism for resolving the complex polycrisis besetting humanity, to your comment that truth is now a passenger in the back seat while safety is at the wheel in the front seat, to your referencing The Line in Saudi Arabia (fascinating). I have the feeling that should the deep-learners in AI (your Agency Simulation) read your four texts on the Public Health Revolution, they will have a ready-made road map for all the steps to take to bring about the autocratic order: they will know which mountains need to be laid flat and which corners to be made straight. And I believe that there will be churches in the new order, but they will be like horse-drawn carriages in Québec City or like Upper Canada Village in Eastern Ontario.
The wages of sin is death
The West has been working overtime for 100 years or more at the business of sin
We’ve built industries on foundations of sin
Punished good and rewarded wickedness
It has passed an inflection point
Now accelerating out of human control
When payday comes,
Where will we turn?
The church must stand apart
Calling evil what it is
Calling those with ears to hear
To repentance, faith, hope, and obedience
To the word of truth and life
By the power of the Spirit
The Lord is merciful, just, and sovereign
Fear of Him is the beginning of wisdom
He is a rock, a sure foundation, a strong city
He has become our salvation
Death is swallowed up in victory
By the shame of the cross endured
The perishable traded for the imperishable
By the resurrecting power of God.
God bless you, Dr. Farrow!
I am no megawatt intellect I would be the first to admit...but I cannot help but think we are living in the immediate prequel to Huxley's Brave New World.
"Well, religion, of course," replied the Controller. "There used to be something called God–before the Nine Years' War. But I was forgetting; you know all about God, I suppose."
https://www.huxley.net/bnw/seventeen.html
BNW wasn't simply an imaginative work of dystopian fiction. It was a muffin recipe of sorts.
The opening lines of Brave New World Revisited (1958) confirm this: "In 1931, when Brave New World was being written, I was convinced that there was still plenty of time. The completely organized society, the scientific caste system, the abolition of free will by methodical conditioning, the servitude made acceptable by regular doses of chemically induced happiness, the orthodoxies drummed in by nightly courses of sleep-teaching—these things were coming all right, but not in my time, not even in the time of my grandchildren. I forget the exact date of the events recorded in Brave New World; but it was somewhere in the sixth or seventh century A.F. (After Ford). We who were living in the second quarter of the twentieth century A.D. were the inhabitants, admittedly, of a gruesome kind of universe; but the nightmare of those depression years was radically different from the nightmare of the future, described in Brave New World. Ours was a nightmare of too little order; theirs, in the seventh century A.F., of too much. In the process of passing from one extreme to the other, there would be a long interval, so I imagined, during which the more fortunate third of the human race would make the best of both worlds—the disorderly world of liberalism and the much too orderly Brave New World where perfect efficiency left no room for freedom or personal initiative. Twenty-seven years later, in this third quarter of the twentieth century A.D., and long before the end of the first century A.F., I feel a good deal less optimistic than I did when I was writing Brave New World. The prophecies made in 1931 are coming true much sooner than I thought they would. The blessed interval between too little order and the nightmare of too much has not begun and shows no sign of beginning. In the West, it is true, individual men and women still enjoy a large measure of freedom. But even in those countries that have a tradition of democratic government, this freedom and even the desire for this freedom seem to be on the wane. In the rest of the world freedom for individuals has already gone, or is manifestly about to go. The nightmare of total organization, which I had situated in the seventh century After Ford, has emerged from the safe, remote future and is now awaiting us, just around the next corner."
From Section III, pertinent to the question of the fall: "The future dictator's subjects will be painlessly regimented by a corps of highly trained social engineers. 'The challenge of social engineering in our time,' writes an enthusiastic advocate of this new science, 'is like the challenge of technical engineering fifty years ago. If the first half of the twentieth century was the era of the technical engineers, the second half may well be the era of the social engineers'—and the twenty-first century, I suppose, will be the era of World Controllers, the scientific caste system and Brave New World. To the question quis custodiet custodes— Who will mount guard over our guardians, who will engineer the engineers?—the answer is a bland denial that they need any supervision. There seems to be a touching belief among certain Ph.D.'s in sociology that Ph.D.'s in sociology will never be corrupted by power. Like Sir Galahad's, their strength is as the strength of ten because their heart is pure—and their heart is pure because they are scientists and have taken six thousand hours of social studies."
The rest is at https://www.huxley.net/bnw-revisited/.
Much to digest in this. Thank you.
Icarus
Thank you for bringing to the forefront the school of Plato and I am curious about it's relationship to Freemasonry.
There were and are different schools within Platonism, which went through various phases. At the beginning of book 19 Augustine engages Varro (a Stoic) on some of those schools, as well as other actual or possible schools. The link to Freemasonry passes through the Renaissance theurgists, however, and through Boehme and Newton and Hegel, to name a few prominent thinkers who took an interest (on Hegel, see Magee https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/en/magee.htm).