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We here in the United States find ourselves once more in the throes of overt fascism. Right-wing extremists, led by a textbook strongman persona, have won a decisive victory in our federal elections. Their explicit agenda is to dismantle the federal government, place plutocratic lackeys in the highest position of power, deregulate private industry, suppress our bodily autonomy, abolish freedom of the press, further destroy our education system, isolate the country from the global community, institute a police state with no accountability, swiftly conduct mass deportations, institute radically conservative Christian theocratic policies, and generally inflict greater pain and suffering on the lower classes regardless of their race or creed.

This is their explicit agenda.

And they won resoundingly.

[EDIT: For accuracy, the final vote counts show that the Democrats only lost by about 2 million votes, and that voter turnout was much closer than originally reported immediately following the election, when this essay was first published.]

By all accounts, Trump had only marginally more voters than in 2020, but Harris and the Democrats had substantially fewer votes than before, almost 20% fewer according to early numbers. That means that 1 out of every 5 people in the United States who opposed Donald Trump in 2020 then decided to implicitly support him and his even more radical agenda four years later.

Let us set aside the vileness of Donald Trump himself; Trump, the most boorish, mush-brained, sleaziest, physically weakest and most mentally unfit, crassest, egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, and transparently psychopathic criminal to hold elected office. Let us ignore the individual and instead use a placeholder strongman: one who identifies powerless scapegoats for the country’s problems, uses violent rhetoric, promises to have solutions for all– literally all– of a country’s problems, glorifies a nostalgic past that never existed, and speaks in absolutist terms about “evil” and “enemies.”

Why does this strongman persona continue to intoxicate people of supposedly modern and intelligent societies? Why do Christians abandon the compassion and pacificism taught by Christ and instead fill their hearts with hate and anger? Why do citizens vote against their own self interests, ignore verifiable facts, and happily accept unfounded propaganda and admitted lies? And why does the opposition demand ideological purity from its candidates and refuse to build coalition and take small gain victories?

There will be thousands of thinkpieces written this week about why this happened. Conservatives dug in their heels when they were continually ridiculed and looked down upon. Religious radicals embraced the false messiah that will nevertheless usher in their desired theocracy. The rust belt continued to feel ignored. The progressives sat out as a protest to the genocide in Gaza. The leftists are still betting on accelerationism to somehow magically propel them into power at some indeterminate future date. Bad messaging. Unlikable candidate. Disinformation. AI. Fox News. Russia. They will all stop short of calling out the core, uncomfortable truth.

We, as a species, are all idiots.

All of us. You, reading this. Me, writing this.

Even the most educated, most traditionally intelligent amongst us are shockingly vulnerable to facile manipulation tactics, to groupthink and self-delusion, to inconsistent beliefs and irrationality. None of us see ourselves for what we really are. None of us introspect deeply enough and honestly enough to understand our motivations or the consequences of our actions.

We are all indoctrinated from birth into this system that discourages critical thinking and reinforces our desire for hierarchy. Grown-ups, gods, coaches, officers, judges, bosses, presidents, priests. We are taught to revere and defer to those in positions of authority but only when that authority is upheld by force, either over our corporeal bodies or our eternal souls. Authority by knowledge or subject matter expertise doesn’t seem to hold much cache.

We are conditioned to trust “the system” for justice, no matter how frequently it fails us, how obviously it is stacked in favor of the rich and powerful, how consistently it is blatantly against people of color and marginalized groups. We watch as billionaires amass obscene amounts of wealth and brazenly flaunt their power and influence in our faces, and we parrot the same angry memes and missives on social media rather than taking decisive action. We are more informed than ever and yet more docile than ever towards the horrors of the world.

This is what we are as a species. Space exploration and quantum theory doesn’t change the fact that we are stupid, angry, semi-autonomic creatures driven by our limbic systems and our herd mentality, and that we will happily cede our autonomy at the first chance to any self-proclaimed “alpha” who exudes an image of strength and promises to take care of us.

Nearly all people are content with these passive, routine lives. They want to be given some semblance of free will, some predefined set of choices from which they can craft a personal identity. They want stability and predictability, to do as they are told and to progress along the traditional milestones of life with their prescribed belief system. The desire for novelty and “Nietzschean danger” varies from one person to the next, but very few fall outside of a thin band of deviation from this.

And so the ones that rise to power are the most psychopathic amongst us, those that lack empathy and know well enough to ignore criticism and ridicule and shame and decency and to simply persevere in their egoistic will, because eventually they will addle enough of our weak minds that they will amass power, and then they are basically immune to consequence.

The experiment of liberal democracy is really still just that– an experiment. It is one that requires us to become fully-formed individuals, well-versed in critical thinking and capable of making informed, rational decisions based on indisputable facts. It takes work and makes us confront difficult truths. It either leads down a path to nihilism, or it requires tremendous effort to attain a state of spiritual enlightenment, where one can unify with everything without requiring a patriarchal godhead.

Capitalism made this virtually impossible. By rewarding ever-greater production, it created a system in which people had no choice but to devote the majority of their waking hours and their energy to labor, depriving them of the luxury of time and energy to learn and think and analyze. By rewarding ever-greater consumption, it created an increasing number of “comforts” to salve our discontent, just enough to keep us committed to the system but not nearly enough to nurture our souls.

So, as Marx observed, we have become alienated and feel the loss of our innate humanity. We are discontent, living in a state of constant stress about entirely fictional constructs– such as the economy– and entirely real tragedies– such as genocides and the destruction of our planet.

Recent surveys show that younger generations are skewing significantly more conservative, likely in large part because they recognize– consciously or otherwise– that the current consumer capitalist system is bereft of any spiritual meaning and is also rapidly making life materially worse. So many turn to religion and extreme conservative ideologies, lured by curated propaganda that makes the sacrifice of liberty seem like a noble decision, to willfully subjugate themselves in service to a higher calling. Young men are enticed by the promise of privilege and young women with the promise of virtue, and both with salvation in some contrived eternal afterlife.

And the left has failed to offer a compelling counter-narrative. They have ultimately become an ideology of identity politics and hedonism. There is no spiritual salvation on the left; there is only science and intellectualism. Life is meaningless and nothing happens when you die, so you should do whatever you want while you’re here. This is incomplete.

Fascism and ultra-conservatism will continue to rise to power as our material conditions get worse. And our material conditions will most certainly get worse as fascism and ultra-conservatism continue to rise. As people remained uninformed or misinformed, as our rights are taken away, as consumption and is accelerated for the benefit of the elite class, as environmental collapse leads to increasing instability, so too will people become more desperate and more incapable of the self-actualization that is necessary for our liberation. And so we will continue to flock to the next psychopath that promises to save us from the last one.

So you’ve decided to seek the path to liberation and enlightenment with the collective strength of a community rather than all alone against the forces of the entire world. Great choice! But building an intentional community is, in itself, nearly as difficult as escaping the subjugation of a sleepwalking society.

As with the tenets themselves, the Church of the Savior Self condones all prescriptive teachings; we must each walk our own path, replete with pathfinding and obstacle avoidance. More plainly, the Church has no answers, because we believe the only answer is that each person determines their own actions based on reasoned contemplation, or what may otherwise be called mindfulness.

Every community built on the mindfulness of its members will be different, and therefore there is no universal blueprint for what the community must be. However, the Church can offer guidance on some important ideas that are generally foundational to all communities, and should be considered by individuals wishing to found an intentional community.

Communities generally develop organically over time from people interacting with one another and finding spaces where they fit, like pieces in a puzzle. Healthy communities typically foster diversity across beliefs and traditions, insofar as those beliefs don’t interfere with each other’s goals (see On Tolerance). But an intentional community must be less organic and more designed; the parameters of the community must be discussed and debated at its inception and vigilantly enforced throughout its lifespan.

That doesn’t mean there’s no space for diversity. Diversity is as crucial to community as it is to nature; homogeneous groups and biomes do not fare well on an extended timeline, and it is only through diversity that we can adapt and grow. However, even the most anarchic communities should establish a baseline definition of what the community is and– more importantly– why it is.

It is also important to recognize the duality of human nature; although we aspire to be a communal, unified collective both within our communities and across the world, we each contain rich internal worlds that must be nurtured as well. It is therefore important to define spaces and practices that foster individuality, solitude, and privacy.

Let us examine these simple concepts in greater detail.

Common Goals

The ultimate goal of the Savior Self is to find modalities for living that are more harmonious and yield a higher “net happiness” than our current liberal capitalism. But harmony and happiness can each have vastly different definitions to different people. Thus, each community should begin with a concise thesis. As in writing, the thesis should be definable within a few sentences and should serve as the immutable foundation for the community; although strategies, tactics, and even specific goals may change, they should all be in service to the community’s thesis.

If, for example, the thesis is to reduce harm to all living creatures to its least possible extent, every decision within the community should consider this underlying goal, even if it cannot realistically fulfill it. Simply put, the thesis is the “intent” of an intentional community.

This may seem so facile as to be unnecessary, but it is perhaps the most important aspect of developing a mindful community. Every member of the community should– or really must— accept this foundational tenet as a non-negotiable truth, and this should be enforced. Any action that is opposed to this thesis should be prohibited; any decision that does not at least indirectly serve this goal should be carefully reexamined.

When we contemplate ourselves deeply and truthfully, we will find that we each hold contradictory beliefs simultaneously. As a basic example, the desire to reduce all harm to its absolute minimum is challenged by the desire to maximize individual liberty; if someone’s definition of Tenet Four (‘reducing all harm to its practical minimum’) wishes to use their liberty to inflict (what we may consider) unnecessary harm to another, we must deprioritize one belief to support the other: we must either idly allow this harm to happen (inaction being an action unto itself), or we must impose rules or consequences to restore the aggrieved and prevent future harm. Either way, we must decide which belief or ideal we value more. The cumulative effect of several– or dozens or even hundreds– of individuals attempting to reconcile these contradictions can quickly lead to conflict and disharmony within a community unless a priority is clearly defined.

Thus, even if a community wishes to uphold several theses as its immutable foundations, the theses should be defined within a hierarchy that allows the pursuit of a single, topmost goal to override the others.

Beyond the core thesis or theses, the community should agree upon all of its goals as the parameters upon which the members operate. Is the community seeking isolation or federation? Is justice restorative or punitive? Does the community foster hedonism or asceticism? Regardless of the level of governance a community chooses to enact, having a set of well-defined goals ensures that all members agree on the most fundamental aspects of their chosen home.

To be certain, a community should have multiple explicit goals. It is important to define these goals specifically enough for them to have meaning, rather than becoming ineffective platitudes or leaving so much room for interpretation that conflict may arise. At the same time, however, the goals should not be so rigid that they impede progress, nor should there be so many goals that they become dogmatic. It is a difficult but important balance to strike, one that will most likely require patience, spirited debate, and multiple revisions.

Common Practices

The community’s practices includes those deliberate actions that are in service to their goals as well as those that are the basic logistics of daily life. What are the community’s rituals and routines? How are chores and duties handled? Are meals communal, and does the community impose dietary restrictions? Are issues that affect the broader community decided via consensus or committee?

Even in the most anarchic collective, some baseline of interpersonal norms must be defined and agreed upon in order for a community to operate. Practices should be defined in adherence with the community’s goals and, as with the goals themselves, should not be proscriptive. The founders should calculate the value of each defined practice based on how strongly it supports the community’s goals as well as broader harmony amongst members versus how restrictive the practice may be, and whether the community could support its ideals without codifying the practice.

Ultimately, participation in a community is intended to be actively opt-in; that is, members of the community make a conscious decision to join the community. Thus, a community is subject to the same “market pressures” beloved by capitalists and libertarians alike; communities that define either their goals or practices too rigidly may not thrive if people remain unconvinced of their value and decide to leave or not join in the first place. Conversely, communities that do wish to adhere to a strictly-regulated method of living are free to do so, as disinterested parties will not join and only like-minded members will remain.

Clear Intents

Conflict arises from misunderstandings. If goals and practices are not well-defined, they are subject to interpretation, and differing interpretations can lead to disharmony. If we are to promote a truly consensual modality, it is vital that every member clearly understands everything to which they are consenting.

Communities should establish a charter that clearly defines its theses, goals, and required and recommended practices. The charter should make effort to define each item as specifically as it needs to be and no further; that is, it should minimize the possibility of divergent, good-faith interpretations without descending into tomes of legalese. Once again, this is much more difficult than one might assume.

Of course, bad-faith actors can always argue semantics or word choices no matter how detailed the provisions are. In such cases, communities may choose to assemble an ad-hoc committeeOr jury, if you will. to review the situation and render a decisionOr verdict, if you will.. Yes, it sounds like court, but in most cases it should not require all of the complexity that a modern judicial system entails, if most everyone is operating in good faith.

Bad-faith actors should also be addressed personally to identify the root cause of their behavior; in some cases it may be a personal grievance, whereas in others in a more fundamental disconnect between their personal beliefs and those of the community. Mediation or counseling may be helpful to re-align the community and the member, but it some extreme cases, it may be discovered that the member is not a good fit for the community.

Shared Spaces

Modern society has largely eliminated the idea of community. In all but the smallest of towns, people are systemically conditioned to avoid and mistrust their neighbors, to keep to themselves, and increasingly to forego even communal commercial spaces to enjoy private consumption at home. Inhabiting shared spaces is depicted as a nuisance, inconvenient, or a symbol of lower economic status.

The reasons for this are very clear. Consumption is far greater when every individual demands ownership”Or of their own thing instead of going to a place with shared things, so there is more profit to be made. Almost every modern apartment has in-unit laundry machines; hundreds of tons of machinery that sits unused for 98% of every week because people have been taught to believe that the slightest increase in convenience justifies mindless consumption. The same is true for movie theaters, coffeehouses, public transit, and virtually all retail sales: we are indoctrinated to believe that we must have our own home theaters (with a curated firehose of content for our every whim), espresso machines (typically with single-use pods that produce literal tons of plastic waste), and cars (idling in gridlock traffic and burning hundreds of gallons of fuel a year); everything else should be delivered straight to our doors within two days from the other side of the country, once again while consuming countless tons of disposable packaging.

The other reason is that individuals are far easier to control than collectives. Coffeehouses were the de facto scene of the cultural revolution of the 1950’s; better to have people safely in their own homes, consuming online content that is carefully curated by profit-driven media empires, or is otherwise closely monitored by companies and the government alike. Individuals feel more isolated and alienated from society, which culminates in a complacency with or resignation to the problems of the world; of course it also leads to a rise of extremism and random violence, but that’s a small sacrifice we must make at the altar of infinite consumption.

Community is not a spontaneous phenomenon; it is the result of conscience action. Establishing shared spaces reinforces the interconnected nature of our species and promotes conscientiousness, empathy, and flexibility in thought and action. By using shared resources and occupying common areas, we feel that we are a part of something, rather than apart from everything.

Fostering shared spaces within your community– and, ideally, with your broader community beyond your commune, no matter how seemingly-incompatible their beliefs may be — is perhaps the single most important element to nurturing our humanity and returning to a state of harmony within our world.

Shared spaces can be either functional or recreational; kitchens, laundries, gardens, game rooms, and dining quarters are all obvious candidates for communal areas. Although they typically promote sociability, shared spaces must not necessarily be social; libraries, workshops, and art studios can also be shared, even if community members generally work on their own projects or studies.

Of course, shared does not necessarily mean singular, particularly for larger communities. Shared spaces and facilities should not cause perpetual inconvenience from lack of availability; the more essential spaces like kitchens should account for the fact that most people generally eat around the same times every day, and capacity should be planned accordingly. For less frequent or urgent spaces such as laundries or lounges, members may be expected to adapt their schedules to accommodate a practical capacity.

Solitary Spaces

Despite our inherently social nature, humans clearly also require privacy, possessions, and space for introspection. Members should be given ample, dedicated private space that belongs only to them. There is a sense of refuge for even the strongest extroverts when they can retreat to a place they know is their own, which they can decorate and organize as they please, and in which privacy is fully respected.

Similarly, there can be common areas where solitude is gently enforced, such as meditative gardens or isolated areas of the property which members can use without being bothered by others. Whether access to these areas is structured via a schedule or simply with an “in use” indication, such spaces can help members feel greater “ownership” of the community by not confining their personal space only to their living quarters.

Conclusion

Looking at this framework, we see that it largely resembles any other modern social structure: charters, laws, juries, public works, private property. These modalities are integral to a functioning interpersonal community of any size, and are not wrong unto themselves. It is only through their poor execution and the corruption of those in power that these constructs become a problem.

No matter how optimistic one’s view of humanity, it is hard to envision a complex system of interpersonal relationships that does not require mediation. Pure anarchy does not seem like a viable strategy for a stable and harmonious community; in fact, there can be no community without defining it and providing perpetual effort to nurture it.

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 in our current societies, we can commit to conscious living and consider each action and decision so as to reduce its harm, sacrificing as many modern conveniences as we are personally comfortable forgoing. Thus, we will continue to begrudgingly participate in harmful systems, but we will play a smaller part.

The challenge of this approach is that we will always struggle with alienation and frustration; we will continue to exist in a state of mutual disdain between a system that we condemn and which condemns us. However, the obvious advantage is that we can continue to benefit from the (very) relative comfort and stability afforded to (some of) us by this system.

Alternatively, one can abandon the system entirely and go “off grid,” rejecting the current economic and political paradigms completely while living a self-sustaining life as far removed from society as possible. We can choose no compromises of the tenets and pioneer new modalities of living that disentangle us from the patterns of harm and destruction that are perpetuated by the modern world.

The clear challenge here is that a life off-grid is hard and, currently, even getting off the grid in a “permitted” way requires significant capital and resourcesThis is perhaps the ultimate irony of capitalism: in order to escape it, you must first succeed at it.. To truly reduce harm to its minimum practical level requires the sacrifice of nearly every technological advancement since the Industrial Revolution. Yet, the advantage is a very smug sense of self-satisfaction.

There also exist virtually infinite other alternatives that fall somewhere between these two extremes. All such options are valid, as far as the Church is concerned. Salvation is liberation, and liberation is a conscious life.

Similarly, one can be a practitioner of the tenets as a single individual, or they can connect with others and build their community. Here, the Church solidly supports the latter approach. Of course, it seems almost silly to adhere to a philosophical framework that extols unity and interconnectedness as its ultimate goal but to do so as an isolated practitioner; however, there are many paths to salvation and some may choose to walk their path alone.

Community is one of the Three Refuges of Buddhism and it is often called SanghaThe true concept of Sangha is somewhat open to interpretation. Originally, Sangha implied the refuge of the ‘clergy’, the ordained monks and nuns of Buddhism. Later, it was interpreted more broadly to include all like-minded practitioners. It is now sometimes used to mean the kinship shared with all living things. We are talking about the middle one.. The goal is to cultivate a series of sincere, trusted, and rich relationships with others, so that you may all teach and learn from one another, provide support and safety, and share the whole of life experiences– beautiful and tragic– as one.

Navigating this existence with consciousness and mindfulness is no easy task. It is a daily struggle to reject the relative comfort of consumptive capitalism and the global system of injustice, to not backslide into our lifelong conditioning, to resist the dark allure of harmful behaviors. It is, quite literally, no different than recovery programs for addiction; we find strength in others, and we give them strength in kind.

Forging deep bonds in a like-minded community enriches us and helps ensure our success in our pursuits. There is no rugged frontiersman or lone ranger that can solve the problems of fundamental dissatisfaction on their own.

Of course, there is some sacrifice of individual liberty when participating in any system. But the Savior Self does not promote liberation as some sort of platonic ideal, the purest form of which should be pursued at all costs. The Savior Self wishes to improve the material conditions of our existence by achieving collective liberation; this must be achieved through cooperation and community.

To experience the true richness of life, it must be shared; if nothing else, it is in our biological nature. And we stand little chance of taking on this world alone. As we forge our paths to liberation and salvation, we must reach out to others along the path and build our Sanghasor intentional communities or affinity groups, or any name which you choose to give it..

We will discuss some strategies for establishing mindful communities in the coming entries.

The first five tenets of the Savior Self are fairly uncontroversial. They are a distillation of anarcho-communist ideals infused with a mild philosophicalSpecifically, traditional Buddhist philosophy 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 Savior Self is decidedly more definitive, and it must be accepted as an axiomatic truth to preserve the integrity of the other tenets. Before we discuss the sixth tenet of the Savior Self, it is important to understand why this tenet is so crucial.

In philosophy, egoism is the idea that all actions should enrich the self. In many ways, it is the foundational framework of liberal democracy and libertarian capitalism, in which people are encouraged to “follow their bliss” and prioritize their own personal well-being, and that doing so will then, somehow, benefit the whole of society via open markets and invisible hands.

Of course, we have seen the dehumanizing and destructive results of these beliefs in the “flourishing” liberal democracies around the world, as well as the false veneer of freedom they provide. Egoism is built on two key presuppositions: that humans are special, and that IThe royal ‘I’, not me specifically. am extra special.

Anthropocentrism is the belief that human beings are exceptional and unique in the universe. This belief can be traced back to Greek philosophy, and it is foundational to Abrahamic religions in the divinity of man and his creationSorry, ladies and enbies. /s in God’s image. The belief remains dominant today across religious, spiritual, and seculareven transhumanists believe that humans are the pinnacle of creation so far and are thus obligated to transcend to even more supreme forms. populations, perhaps with different justifications but culminating in the same conclusion: there is something cosmically or spiritually distinct about the human species, and we remain the most superior form in the universe.

The “logical” conclusion of human supremacy is that humans are entitled to use (and abuse) the world as we see fit. From biblical proclamations to spread like cancerGenesis 1:28 – And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” to various modern environmental conservation arguments, anthropocentrism is foundational to our morality.

In addition to this– or perhaps as a prerequisite for it– our minds perceive ourselves as the most supreme being, at least subjectively. Surely this arises from a survival instinct buried deep in our evolutionary past, a motivation for self-preservation inscribed in our helical genetic blueprint. Our modern social evolution may have required us to conceal and temper this belief in order to foster cooperation, but it is still very much a subconscious conductor of our thoughts and actions. There is certainly some truth to the idea that greed and selfishness are human nature… they are, just as they are in the nature of every creature confronted with resource scarcity.

In stark contrast to this, most Eastern religions and philosophies encourage the suppression of the self in order to recognize the interconnected unity of ourselves with everything and everyone. Ego death is the extreme form of this suppression, wherein one is able to fully dissociate from their own subjective experience and, ostensibly, see past themselves into a more objective reality; practitioners often use psychedelics to help achieve this transcendence. Whatever the method, the goal of enlightenment is to shed the veil of disconnected individualism and to embrace the unified cosmic energy of all living things.

It should be obvious which ideology works better for harmonious coexistence.

Ascribing human life with a fundamental value— and a value that is fundamentally far greater than anything else– restricts our ability to properly evaluate the consequences of our actions. If we were somehow able to cut down every tree on the planet and use them to provide housing for every homeless human, would that loss of habitat for countless billions of other organisms be morally justifiable?

That notion of a fundamental value to human life– no matter the circumstances– also provides the rationality for anti-abortion activists, because every life is sacred even if it is unwanted and results in a life of hardship and perpetual poverty. It is also the basis for capital punishment abolitionists who believe that a life sentence in captivity is somehow more ethical than a death penalty, or that the possibility of a single innocent person being put to death justifies the countless billions in resources that are expended to carry out life sentences for thousands of unrepentant violent offenders.

Thus, the Church rejects the a priori sanctity of human life as a counterproductive belief. This is the sixth tenet of the Savior Self.

Human life is not inherently sacred or special.

Tenet 6 of the Savior Self

This does not mean that human life has no value, nor does it mean that everyone is expected to adopt a materialistic philosophy that negates the existence of a soul or alternate planes of consciousness; however, it does mean that we should reevaluate our conceptions of our value on this plane of existence in a more rational manner. Of course human life should be protected and harm should be reduced to its practical minimum, as stated in the third tenet. Compassion is vital to the tenets of the Church.

But so is truth.

A person that deliberately causes harm to othersAnd is unrepentant or unable to be rehabilitated. cannot rationally be regarded as equal to one that devotes their life to helping others. Similarly, a person with a degraded quality of life– whether through illness, injury, or circumstance– should not be forced to continue their existence due to some arbitrary moral imperative.

To be sure, these both seem like slippery slopes. Who dictates the value of one life over another? The answer, in most cases, should be the person living the life. The ultimate goal must be a society in which everyone shifts their consciousness to perceive life in this way; if we do not indoctrinate and guilt people into clinging to life at all costs, if we normalize the creation of living wills, and adopt a healthier attitude towards morality– terrifying as it admittedly is, we can restore the freedom of choosing to die to many people.

The situation of capital punishment is more delicate. Incarceration has served many “claimed” purposes: a punishment meant to evoke penitencehence the term “penitentiary”; an opportunity for rehabilitation; a punishment for the simple sake of retribution; and as a last resort method of separating dangerous people from society. Recidivism rates indicate that penitence and rehabilitation are hardly effective, generally hovering around 40-60% across North America and EuropeEven in progressive Scandinavian countries that emphasize rehabilitation and dropping to around 20% in stricter countries such as Singapore.

Incarceration as retributive punishment can be justified when one party is tangibly harmed, although in such cases the decision should be made by the harmed party (and tempered for “fairness” by the community). In an enlightened society, the harmed party may seek restorative justice rather than retribution, but that should be their choice to make.

Finally, incarceration as a matter of public safety seems ineffective for non-life sentences (as supported by the aforementioned recidivism rates) and exceedingly cruel for life sentences. Regardless of the “comfort” of the accommodations, depriving a person of virtually all of their liberty for their entire, natural life seems far more barbaric than making the solemn decision to end their life.

With all that said, criminal justice remains a separate topic for another day. Moreover, the Church believes that crime should not be a common problem in a healthy society, and therefore these sorts of scenarios should be fringe cases that can be handled on an individual basis (as should all transgressions, really).

Accepting that human life is not divinely sacred allows us to make rational decisions to the benefit of everyone and everything which– in a holistic worldview– will be to the benefit of ourselves as well.

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 our livesThe Church will always qualify references to human prosperity as applying only to the small portion of people that are fortunate to live in stables societies and have some degree of wealth. It is crucial to remember that this is not the universal human experience, especially within the context of the tenet we are discussing today.. 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 our “free will” or contemplate our personal goals to shape our actions, but we ultimately operate on the premise of satisfying our every fleeting urge and fulfilling our social expectation, without ever stopping to consider the urge itself or the consequences of our action.

How many moments in a day are you awake? Not the number of hours you spend with your eyes open, but the number of instances when you make a deliberate, introspective analysis of yourself, your thoughts, and your desires, and then act accordingly? For almost all of us, the answer is certainly zero. Introspecting upon ourselves and adjusting our behaviors necessitate a certain amount of discomfort.

For example, even something as trivial as saying “bless you” in response to a sneeze is the product of an implicit expectation of the social contract. But even these trivialities deserve some critical reflection. What is the purpose of this reflexive response to someone else’s autonomic bodily function? There are archaic attributions to preventing spirits or souls from entering or exiting one’s body, and in other cultures the response to a sneeze is often a variant of “to your health!” But certainly even the most devout no longer believe a sneeze is a demon, let alone the rest of us; similarly, while wishing someone health may seem polite, it is also entirely meaningless.

Of course this is now itself an autonomic nicety, some harmless relic from centuries past, but it is representative of the insidious power of coercion to shape our behavior and our lives, often without our own awareness. In the face of lifelong conditioning, it requires less effort to not say “bless you” than to say it.

This is partially a product of evolution. The evolutionary pressure on every living being is to expend the least amount of energy. Discomfort elicits a reaction, and reactions burn calories; calories are scarce, and thus it is a viable strategy to exert some additional effort now to avoid discomfort later. So we remain in a seemingly unique evolutionary situation where scarcity is effectively eliminatedWithout a profit motive, it absolutely would be. and higher consciousness has formed, but our limbic survival instincts tell us to minimize exertion and conserve energy.

Yet this instinct for sloth is extolled as a virtue in neoliberal societies and depicted as the ultimate goal of humanity: a life free of effort or discomfort or negative sensation, an existence whiled away in air-conditioned mental stasisThis is the less perverse sales pitch for the advancement of AI: that we may one day be freed of all humanly duties to become a species of interstellar meatsacks, floating contentedly throughout the cosmos. The more perverse pitch is a sort of crypto-extinctionist ideology that strives to replace humankind with a singularity, as previously discussed in “On Progress, Progress”. So we are encouraged to consume and distract ourselves, to silence our inner thoughts with a steady stream of sensory overload and recreational or pharmaceutical chemicals.

Nietzsche implored us to “live dangerously,” not as an invitation to death but as an affirmation of life. When we are faced with danger– true, grave danger– we are existing solely in the moment, not dwelling on the past or fantasizing about the future. We are aware of every sensory input and every muscular action, even if the adrenaline overwhelms us and makes our recollection of the incident hazy; in fact, it is that very focus that makes the memory hazy, as our mind is preoccupied with the moment and has fewer resources for processing memories.

Of course, defying death is not the only way to achieve consciousness, nor is it the most practical for most people. But for those who have had their mortality imminently threatened, there is no sensation in our daily lives that can focus the mind quite like those harrowing moments when death is on the line. That is why many people who have a near-death experience emerge with a sense of newfound clarity, a re-commitment to mindfulness and purposeful living.

But as we’ve discussed above, that mindfulness is often quickly snuffed out by the onslaught of distractions and pressures of modern life, and they return to old habits in short order.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Eastern philosophies have recognized this inclination since ancient times. Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism (and their respective derivatives) all place an emphasis on mindfulness and conscious living. This mindfulness is achieved through meditation, which is, at its most basic, the act of looking inward. Meditation teaches us to block both the internal and external noise in our lives– sensory distractions and purposeless mental chatter– in order to quiet our mind and build our internal tolerance for, essentially, boredom. It is only when we can feel content and satisfied even with this state of boredom that we are said to be at peace with ourselves.

Once we have attained this inner peace, we can return to the outer world with the ability to filter out the distractions and trivialities. With the noise tuned out, we can focus our minds on finding the truth, whatever that may mean for each of us personally. We can examine the world as it is, and ourselves as we are; we can observe the faults in each and work towards health and healing.

Now, in many ways this practice is even more difficult than nihilism’s decree of dangerous living. The modern world demands our energy and our attention, toiling away in a self-serving cycle of production and consumption and otherwise filling the idle moments with artificial conflicts and carefully-crafted dopamine triggers. The alienation and isolation of capitalist society make us feel as though we are in competition with one another; the ostensible comfort of cities and suburbs make us seem disconnected from nature. Mindfulness is the practice of seeing past these superficial boundaries and breaking free of our conditioned routines in order to make every thought, word, and action a conscious choice.

Committing to mindful or conscious living is a constant, difficult, and demanding goal, and that is why it is a foundational tenet of the Savior Self. A rational, conscious being is crucial to a harmonious existence. When we remember that we are connected with our fellow humans and with the world at large, we may act freely and without the need for gods or masters because we will recognize that any harm that we inflict upon the world will harm ourselves as well.

Humans should live consciously and reflect on their thoughts, behaviors, motivations, and emotions.

Tenet 5 of the Savior Self

It is a goal that, even after years of devout practice, is not permanently attainable. As with all tenets of the Savior Self, conscious living is aspirational, a goal towards which we should work every day. When we find ourselves faltering in our commitment– whether deliberately or, more likely, unconsciously– we must have the grace to forgive ourselves, the strength to introspect and find the reasons, and the will to gently re-align ourselves back towards the goal.

It is important to note that conscious living is not necessarily ascetic living. A conscious being is free to indulge in sensory pleasures and even pursue a fully hedonistic lifestyle if they believe it is the path to their happiness; the goal of mindfulness is to simply consider each decision and its consequences before making it, rather than to simply surrender to our natural urges or to social programming.

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 object— cutting down a tree, for example– can be quantified by examining the direct consequences of the action, and then the secondary consequences resulting from the direct consequences, and so on. In this example, cutting a tree may reduce the available habitat for local flora and fauna, remove the vegetation that produces oxygen, eventually destroy the root system that protects against erosion, and perhaps several other consequences. But depending on the biological health of the region, these effects may be incalculably minimal to the broader system; technically there is harm, but practically there is not.

Yet even this objective harm is exceedingly difficult to calculate in the modern age; cutting a single tree may be innocuous, but it quickly becomes tremendously harmful at scale (i.e., ten people each cutting down a tree will likely have a measurable impact, to say nothing of industrial logging removing hundreds and thousands of trees), or when one considers the “ripple effects” of an action (e.g., the carbon footprint of manufacturing a chainsaw, the petrochemicals required to operate it, etc.). For something as simple as buying groceries, one would have to extensively research and consider concerns about ethical labor, animal rights, carbon footprints of transport, packaging waste, nutritional value, bio-patents, supporting small and/or local suppliers, and likely several dozen other things.

By contrast, the negative impact of an action against a person is really rather straightforward… they can simply tell you that your behavior is harmful to them. Whatever is their subjective definition of harm is largely irrelevant; if you and they are both good-faith actors, it should be relatively straightforward to discuss the issue and find a way to eliminate the harm inflicted by your actions.

Now, this can obviously also become more complicated when dealing with people behaving in bad faith– that is, people with unreasonable “sensitivities” to things that are generally regarded as harmless, or people with particular agendas to push a false narrative for personal gain. Of course, every person has their own traumas, thought modalities, and ethical or moral frameworks, and we should make good-faith attempts to respect them and make reasonable accommodations to their needs. But there is undoubtedly a so-called “outrage cultureDon’t worry, this is not some veiled right-wing sympathy for people ‘cancelled’ for their shitty behavior. This applies just as much to fearmongering assholes on the right as ‘language police’ folks on the left.” that pervades our current society, and even people that are generally well-intentioned will express great offense at perceived slights that, in all likelihood, were not meant by the actor. These are shortcomings that we must collectively work to remedy in society by promoting nuanced, rational dissertation rather than finger-wagging echo chambers.

Nevertheless, these differences in identifying and preventing objective and subjective harm require different approaches, and it is for this reason that the Savior Self promotes separate tenets for each. The third tenet of the Savior Self is Humans should not harm one another, which provides a somewhat definitive denunciation of direct harm against another person because such harm can be easily identified and, therefore, easily avoided. Do not physically or emotionally harm another person/people or their (private or communal) property.

Humans should not harm one another.

Tenet 3 of the Savior Self

The fourth tenet of the Savior Self, Humans should reduce all harm to its practical minimum, is deliberately open to interpretation. As we have discussed, some level of “harm” is implicit in virtually every single action we performEven the mere act of breathing ultimately eradicates countless microbes.. Attempting to prevent all objective harm is effectively impractical and largely impossible; thus, we encourage each person, affinity group, and other organizational system to contemplate their own definitions of harm and to align their behavior with the ethical thresholds that they find sufficient for harmonious living. Even with such broad interpretation, the Church believes that most people will readily agree on the vast majority of harm-reduction guidelines (as evidenced by our current tolerance for people of other faiths and ideologies), and any differences should be defensible through reasoned, good-faith debate by all parties.

Humans should reduce all harm to its practical minimum.

Tenet 4 of the Savior Self

Harm reduction is, without question, the most important foundational tenet for our social evolution. Ultimately, all human progress has been towards the goal of reducing harm; some of this progress has been misguided and much of it has been coopted by sociopaths that are happy to harm others for their own personal gain. But philosophy, religion, laws, politics, and technology are all ostensibly built upon the goal of reducing human harm, although their practical applications leave a lot to be desired. We must continue to aspire for ever-greater harm reduction– to our fellow humans and ourselves, to other creatures, and to our planet– as our world gets increasingly more complex and populated, because even the smallest actions can amplify and ripple outward to cause significant harm, intended or otherwise.

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 ourselves from our current, physical existence and “lose” ourselves in imagination. Cognitive scientists posit that dreams are a manifestation of this ability and, again, there is evidence that certain other creatures also dream, and therefore may have some degree of this ability.

Regardless, we will likely never know whether these abilities are uniquely human since we cannot experience the qualia (or subjective experience) of other creatures; for that matter, we cannot be certain that we humans ourselves share similar understandings of our mortality, but this is a digression into a different subject.

It is safe to assume that early mythologies and religions were developed to counteract the natural anxiety of mortality. Our mind— that is, our very sense of self– is predicated on a stream of consciousness that appearsdespite spending about one-third of our lives in a semi-conscious state, to say nothing of other interruptions to our consciousness or the idea that we ultimately remember only a fractional percentage of our past continuous and ongoing. Once we began to ponder what happens to us when we die, we realized that it is literally impossible to answer this question based on the assumption that death means we cease to exist, as we have no meaningful way of conceptualizing non-existence. Thus, we devised concepts of afterlives, reincarnations, celestial redistributions, spectral hauntings, and all manner of other inconsistent theories that still kept our subjective selves intact even after death.

Of course, philosophers debated these notions long before neuroscience provided indisputable evidence that our subjective experience is a product of our physical brains and, thus, the concept of surviving our biological death is meaningless. Nontheists and other “enlightened” scientific thinkers have claimed that they have made peace with this idea of nonexistence, with many claiming to find some type of comfort in it.

I cannot argue that such claims are superficial or disingenuous since, as we previously alluded to, we cannot evaluate the genuine qualia of other people; we must simply take their assertions in good faith. However, I believe that our intellectual desire for self-preservation– separate from our biological survival instinct– cannot logically reconcile this notion of nonexistence. Ostensibly, we did not exist before we were born and– within the context of our sense of self– continued nonexistence long afterwards until we achieved self-awareness somewhere in our mental development process. However, our minds were not aware of this nonexistence because, obviously, they did not exist. Thus, the totality of the mind is built upon our subjective experience of existence and we cannot meaningfully conceive of something outside of this boundary.

To illustrate this idea more simply, I will ask you to imagine an entirely new color, one outside of the visible light spectrum that we are able to seeRemember that images of ultraviolet and infrared spectrum are transposed to our visible light spectrum for us to actually see them. You may certainly be able to grasp the idea of some unknown color in the abstract, but despite your best efforts, you fundamentally cannot construct a new color in your mind because it is beyond the frame of reference of the entirety of your knowledge and experience.

To illustrate the idea more complexly, consider the concept of “infinity.” For a person that is untrained in mathematical thinking, our brains may be able to generally conceive of “something without end,” but we ultimately substitute this with a more understandable idea of “something very, very large.” Indeed, to the best of our scientific calculation and measurement abilities, there is no infinity in the physical world; both the cosmic universe and the subatomic appear to have finite limitsOf course, these limits themselves are far beyond our normal frame of reference and are practically incomprehensible except as variables in equations..

All of this is to say that no one can truly handle dwelling on the concept of nonexistence. Theists and spiritualists avoid the issue with a belief that their self-existence persists in some form, and nontheists may ultimately accept the concept, but they most assuredly do not think about it regularly.

This is true, too, of our overall sense of self. The more introspective among us may occasionally consider the inevitable deterioration of aging, or the potential consequences of our self-destructive habits, or the possibility of random death, dismemberment, or disease in our day-to-day lives, but we are unequipped to think about these things too deeply or to really consider their statistical probabilityOr certainty, as the case may be., lest we suffer an anxiety or panic attack as our brain cannot cope with the stress of these scenarios.

Thus, we each live within our own perpetual delusion of immortality, a subconscious rejection of these difficult and unpleasant realities. We would be paralyzed in fear if we were to admit that we are not immune to drunk drivers and mass shooters and the countless other horrors, accidents, and senseless tragedies that befall anonymous millions every single day. Most of us would succumb to mental breakdowns if we acknowledged the contradictions of our spiritual beliefs and attempted to understand the true nature of existence and mortality.

So we don’t.

This applies equally to those of us in the relative safety of the global North, and to those relegated to war-torn, violent, or impoverished parts of the world. The interminable hope and fascinating adaptability of the human “spirit” impels us all forward, day after day, with the memories of our past traumas eventually fading and the knowledge of our future traumas subconsciously suppressed.

We proceed in a momentary bubble of tolerable existence. Even in our greatest suffering, we press forward with the hope that our suffering will abate with time and that what lays ahead of us is better than what is behind us. Without hope is despair, and a person cannot sustain in despair for very long.

However, equally distressing is the notion of actual immortality. Our memories compress as time proceeds; we increasingly discard chunks of unimportant time and memories in our past, retaining only the flashes that fostered deep synaptic connections for one reason or another. What would we discard on an “infinite” timeline? What would really be left of us as individuals? How would we experience the tapestry of our past selves across thousands, millions of years?

How bored would we be?

Once again, our notion of immortality is clearly defined within our frame of reference of mortality. Perhaps we would transcend into a form that exists outside of linear time, experiencing past and present and future all at once, liberated from the restrictive causality that shapes our current reality. Or perhaps we figure out how to preserved digitally, an immortalUntil the inevitable heat-death of the universe, anyway. part of the singularity, intertwined with all other consciousnesses and omnipresent in a digital infinity.

But with any such fundamental reshaping of our experiential framework, would we really still be ourselves, in any meaningful sense? Does such transcendence allay any fears about the destruction of our subjective selves?

This is a lot of words to say that existence is torment and death is terrifying.

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 history this cooperation often occurred under the threat of violence, first directly and later more subtly through the systems of coercion we previously discussed. However, these threats were predicated on two things which we must work to dismantle:

• The premise that “human nature” is lazy and untrustworthy
• The imbalance of power that actually fuels humans’ laziness and untrustworthiness

Many societies– historic and contemporary– have proven that humans are categorically not lazy, and that while time for leisure and recuperation is necessary, we all ultimately are driven to achieve things, whether personal goals, professional endeavors, or simply idle activities to occupy our bodies and mindsand temporarily distract us from the cold, harsh reality of our mortality and the ever-impending descent into oblivion. Capitalism has worked diligently to make it seem that market economics are necessary to motivate people to work and innovate under threat of starvation and homelessness, even though volunteer organizations and open-source software (to name just a few examples) continue to thrive even under the increased pressure to fulfill our capitalist obligations.

Thus, the second tenet of the Savior Self: Humans should cooperate. On its own, this is another seemingly-superficial statement that can be interpreted countless ways and could ostensibly be applied to any form of interpersonal behavior. While the tenets are deliberately intended to be broad, ideological guidelinesyes, this sounds like the same apologetic excuse for religious scriptures, this tenet is ultimately intended to discourage competitive systems such as “free markets”.

Humans should cooperate.

Tenet 2 of the Savior Self

Although free markets have inarguably spurred tremendous innovation, they have done so in the interest of self-enrichment through capitalist gains. This is a flawed ideology through which to see the world and, it could be argued, has actually stifled innovation in more recent times due to hoarding of advancements through patents and obfuscated intellectual property.

Imagine if everything was open-source; every person could contribute their knowledge, ideas, and skills to improve products. And rather than flooding the “market” with a hundred variations of the product– each with its own shortcomings and compromises for the sake of undercutting the “market price”– we simply get the best version available to us, and we generate a lot less industrial waste or unsold products dumped into landfills to preserve the artificial scarcity.

Of course, “best possible” may be subjective and different groups may have different wants and needs, and and achieving general consensus is often tedious and significantly slows progress. Cooperation does not negate the concept of markets enitrely; people can still have choices and can create their own variations as desired. But rather than wasting energy and resources “reinventing the wheel”, they can simply “fork the main branchsoftware development lingo for making a copy of something to customize it separately from the primary version” to create their own variation and share it with others who are interested.

Innovation would skyrocket if we removed the artificial barriers that allow capitalist endeavors to hoard knowledge as they do other resources. Humans would still specialize and find their niche upon which to obsess, and they would be driven by both their personal passion as well as the status they would achieve within their community for their efforts.

To further clarify: cooperation does not preclude competition. Individuals can– and should— be rewarded for their efforts via public recognition, and friendly competition in pursuit of material incentives is not necessarily incompatible with the spirit of cooperation. Two groups can compete to find the most efficient method of producing a certain item; whichever group succeeds should be celebrated and rewarded, but their results should be shared with the world to allow the next great innovative leap.

We must stand on the shoulders of giants, and we must be willing to be a part of the giants upon which others may stand.

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 include not only obvious structures such as capitalism or majority-mandated democracy, but even to include the fundamental modalities of life that we take for granted such as cultural traditions and social norms.

Humans should live free of coercion.

Tenet 1 of the Savior Self

These modalities are so pervasive that most people will likely balk at the idea that they are coercive. But that is the product of indoctrination, both of the structures themselves and of the lifestyle that discourages conscious living.

To be truly liberated we must be truly conscious, and this requires a level of self-scrutiny that we simply do not commit to in our everyday lives. This is further discussed as part of Tenet 5: Humans should live consciously and reflect on their thoughts, behaviors, motivations, and emotions.

To be clear: the Savior Self does not claim that these things are without any valueIn fact, we’ve previously discussed the importance of homogeneous societies in On Tolerance; however, we must evaluate these deeply-ingrained beliefs and behaviors before we can transcend to self-determining, liberated individuals.

For now, let us consider that this tenet means that every human being must be free to exist as they deem correct. This means that any system or structure that is implemented by a hierarchical structure (such as an affinity group or intentional living community) should have its parameters explicitly defined and should allow those who do not consent to the system’s rules to amicably remove themselves from that system.

This does not mean that actions are without consequences, nor does it mean that individuals cannot be bound by explicit rules or expectations; rather, this tenet specifies that any such system must be entered into consciously and consensually, and that there is no retaliatory punishment for rejecting the system other than exclusion.

This tenet closely aligns with most libertarian ideologies except that, within this context, we wish to apply this principal not only to structures of governance but to all interpersonal relationships. In all instances, coercion arises from an imbalance in power, with the more powerful party imposing their will on the weaker party. This is true of both systemic coercion (state-backed threat of detainment or property extrication) and personal coercion (being held at literal or figurative gunpoint). While it is likely impossibleand undesirable to eliminate all imbalances of power, we must work to deconstruct oppressive systems and replace them with new structures which respect autonomy and which do not punish noncompliance; similarly, we must work to suppress the aspects of (so-called) human nature that desire power over others, and instead foster an appreciation for cooperation and consent.

Thus, systems must be designed to avoid the “tyranny of the majority” and to require selective consent to each aspect of their rules, as granularly as possible. Those who withhold their consent should not be punished, but may be excluded from that aspect of the system (or from the system entirely, as long as practical alternatives exist).

Of course, this situation is different in individuals who are not cognitively capable of providing informed consent, such as children. In these cases, a certain degree of “implicit coercion” is unavoidable, as the individual lacks may not fully understand the consequences of certain actions or behaviors and may thus act “irrationally” and against their own best interest. Despite this, parents and caretakers should make good-faith attempts to promote rational decision-making by explaining situations, reasons, and consequences when possible.

A free society consists of free people. We each possess the capacity to determine what is best for us, but this capacity is not entirely innate; it requires developed skills of logic and reasoning and, to be exercised responsibly, it requires factual information upon which to act. All of these elements have been deliberately eroded in modern society in order to disempower us and make us far easier to manipulate and coerce.

We must therefore work to educate anewI’m really trying to avoid the term <em>reeducate</em> with all its totalitarian connotation ourselves and our communities before we can hope to dismantle the power structures that rule us by coercion.

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 solution for the broader problems facing our population for, as we have recently discussed, these are fundamentally problems of scale and cannot be remedied without either a massive reduction of that scale or achieving a broad consensus of personal sacrifice, and the Church maintains that neither of these remedies can be humanely achieved.

Rather, the Church aims to provide a framework for willing individuals to save themselves through ideological self-fulfillment and a conscious rejection of the modern world to whatever extent each individual wishes to do so. Through this type of shift in personal ideology and practice, the Church wishes to foster the organic growth of like-minded communities, each of whom define their own shared morality, ethics, hierarchies (or lack thereof), and action plans.

With this is mind, let us put forth the fundamental tenets of the Unholy Church of the Savior Self. These tenets are not divine, and they are not the objective truths of the universe; instead, they are the foundational assertions of the ideology of the Savior Self, and all members of the Church are expected to treat these assertions as their own personal truths.

Beyond these tenets, every member of the Church is encouraged to craft, refine, debate, and pursue their own world view. Later discourses will discuss each of these tenets in detail.

The Tenets of the Unholy Church of the Savior Self

1. Humans should live free of coercion.
2. Humans should cooperate.
3. Humans should not harm one another.
4. Humans should reduce all harm to its practical minimum.
5. Humans should live consciously and reflect on their thoughts, behaviors, motivations, and emotions.
6. Human life is not inherently sacred or special.

With the exception of the final tenetWhich is perhaps the most important one, the tenets of the Savior Self resemble those of any major religion and most sociopolitical ideologies and may almost seem trite. Yet despite this resemblance, we can clearly see the endless inconsistencies and contradictions of modern society in practice, and the importance of intentionality in adhering to these tenets in our daily thoughts and actions.

The Savior Self is an opportunity for rebirth, in which adherents consciously reexamine their own personal beliefs and behaviors to identify the ways in which they are no longer compatible with these foundational tenets, and to make adjustments as necessary.

These tenets are deliberately broad and nonspecific, and their goal is to foster the self-development of an ideologically-consistent ethos for each member. The Church encourages divergent interpretations of these tenets, and it asserts that any ideologies that remain faithful to all tenets will be compatible with one another and allow for harmonious coexistence.

Once members have redefined themselves, they are encouraged to connect with one one another to form affinity groups and begin the development of their own utopic communities.

The next several discourses will explore each tenet in greater detail. We will then discuss the practical considerations for utopic planning and guidance on how to develop intentional communities that adhere to the tenets of the Savior Self. Finally, we will publish a series of essays on this author’s personal vision for a utopic community, as well as essays by any member that wishes to share their vision.