The New Testaments

Now that the Church has defined its core tenets (See the On Utopia series), let’s consider what these ideas would mean in practice. The tenets are intentionally simple and designed to allow interpretation and adaptation as each person sees fit; thus, there is no prescriptive (or proscriptive) “Right Way” to adhere to the tenets. One can attempt to adhere to the tenets while continuing to live in the modern world. Although strict adherence to principals of non-harm are virtually impossible […]Read more »

The first five tenets of the Savior Self are fairly uncontroversial. They are a distillation of anarcho-communist ideals infused with a mild underpinning… effectively, “Humans should be free to do as they please, but they should reduce harm in order to promote harmonious living.” The first five tenets are non-proscriptive and are intended to serve as a set of guiding principles upon which each person can develop their own beliefs and ethos. However, the sixth and final tenet of the […]Read more »

We have previously discussed the inexorable march of human progress and its effects on society, but let us now consider its effect on us as individuals. As we have tamed the world around us, we have eliminated the dangers and discomforts of . We operate on autopilot, performing routine tasks and duties with minor variations, ingesting and reciting pop culture and, increasingly, filling every idle moment with a stream of content from some digital device. We may, on occasion, exercise […]Read more »

Harm is a nebulous concept. At its most basic, to harm someone or something can simply mean to “negatively impact” it, which still leaves the concept open to broad interpretation. When dealing with people, we must rely on the subjective evaluation of the transgressed to determine whether they “feel” harmed, at least in less-egregious situations that don’t involve a court of law and a jury of peers. Of course, this makes sense. The negative impact of an action against an […]Read more »

As humans, we possess the seemingly-unique awareness of our own mortality. Although some other animals exhibit behavior that suggests at least some cognition of death– such as elephants’ mourning rituals– there is little evidence to suggest that they aware innately aware of their own eventual and inevitable demise. Relatedly, we alone seem to have a highly-developed sense of self, one that allows us to fully immerse ourselves in imagined situations and circumstances to the extent that we can temporarily displace […]Read more »

Liberty without cooperation is savagery. The foundational pillar of our continued survival as a species (for however much longer we can continue to survive) is that we developed complex societies that were ultimately built on cooperation. All our advancements were predicated on the notion of specialization, where separate groups would each perform a specific task necessary for our survival, and they would trust that other groups would perform their tasks and would share their results in kind. Of course, throughout […]Read more »

Coercion is a loaded term. We generally consider coercion as an individual performing a particular action against their fully-free will, generally under the threat of violence or harm; that is, a person does something not because they want to, but because they are forced to, to whatever degree. This definition is mostly adequate for the purposes of discussing the first tenet of the Savior Self: Humans should live free of coercion. However, we must reframe our concept of coercion to […]Read more »

Now that we have thoroughly negged the modern world and everything in it, let us begin to discuss more constructive things; specifically, let’s focus on the vision of the Savior Self, and what is intended to be a path forward. First and foremost, let us establish the intent of the Church. As the unholy name implies, the Savior Self is not a messianic institution, proscribing salvation for the planet or the species. The Savior Self does not offer any practical […]Read more »

Life is meaningless and the knowledge of mortality is crippling. These are the truths of our modern scientific worldview. Any atheist who claims to not fear death is a liar or delusional; anyone who spends adequate time contemplating non-existence will teeter on the verge of madness. So of course it makes sense that our prehistoric ancestors would craft mythology to soothe their burgeoning neocortices and keep the existential dread at bay. And of course it makes sense that this mythology […]Read more »

Before we delve into the main topic of this discourse, take a moment to reflect on the human brain. Our brains are capable of such incredible feats that they may ultimately craft their own evolutionary successor (see On Progress, Progress) and render itself extinct– actually, let us digress from this digression. The very idea that are knowingly and deliberately attempting to create their own evolutionary successor (via some form of artificial intelligence) is fascinating. It is a slap in Darwin’s […]Read more »