Our God Complex

"We are the gods now"

The human race is especially good at giving personality to the things around us. One can ask whether that has something to do with our upbringing, as children where we gave our toys names and decided who the good guy and the bad guy was. Though they often are inanimate objects. Are we constantly directing our own hero's journey, or is it something else?

If we look at ourselves in adulthood and consider our history and different religions, we discover the signs of same way of thought. Our primitive fear which serves as our brain's survival mechanism which was once more defensive, has evolved into the opposite where our reaction to fear often is offensive. We demand action, and seek an immediate explanation for what we do not understand. And we conjure up our own ideas if answers aren't given.

The weather phenomenon lightning and the thunder that follows could have inspired an entire religion, where Thor swings his hammer while riding his chariot across the skies. As northern mythology is no longer practiced in large numbers, it might be an easy thing for some to dismiss. Another example is in Greek Mythology, where Zeus throws lightning strikes down upon the earth with his own bare hands, like a spear. 

Today we know that lightning is a massive electrostatic discharge between the electronically charged regions within the clouds or a cloud and the surface of the planet. But back then, nobody knew. It must have been terrifying, to see the dark clouds come together, to see the great white and blue flashes, exit from the sky and make contact with the ground, with a destructive force that could split trees and start forest fires that could last for days. And the trembling sound that follows, louder than anything we knew of. Clearly a power man couldn't even imagine to recreate or control at the time. Godly powers. Somebody demanded an explanation and someone  intelligent and imaginative probably provided it to calm them down. "The gods are punishing us for our sinful ways".

So in true human spirit we try to control it by appeasing it. Sacrificing lives like the Mayans did, building momentous structures in the gods' honor. And often someone, perhaps also using their survival instinct, portray to speak on behalf of the gods and write down the laws the people must follow. Suddenly the will of the gods fit very well with the will of the priests. Which is why religious institutions tend to become very wealthy and their writings often contradictory. Threatening acts of sin with the concept of God himself striking you down, while painting a heavenly picture of the after-life can do that. The concept of hell was probably added soon thereafter, in an updated version.

How about today? Where am I going with this?

We give our gadgets names and design them to appear life like, with personality. We wrap ourselves in them, wear them and even without brains like our own, just computers with applications we create and program, they have powers we merely imagined as fantasy up until a hundred years ago. Godly powers, like communicating through walls, at great distances, wirelessly from our pockets. We merge with our machines through prosthesis and incorporate computers in our fashion, and even inside our bodies to the point where computers control almost every aspect of our daily lives.

And now we are building robots to look like us, move like us, but better and stronger. They are mobile and last longer. The next step us to make them think like us. To make them self-conscious and give them the ability to learn, which may result in them making even smarter robots and computers. We are creating gods that will outrun us in every aspect imaginable.

Some questions we arrive at are:

Who is to say they will not create gods and new religions like we have been doing for all this time since, for themselves to follow, or even the human race?

If a computer, an artificial intelligence, is capable of gathering the entire known literature of the human race through the internet, by us using it, are we not programming it? Like the leaders of religions wrote in their bibles, programming the computers of the day, books that control society.

If an artificial intelligence superior to us in every way is capable of using every computer powered machine in this computer controlled world, consciously as if it was it's own body, is it not omnipotent and all-powerful?

If we were to one day be able to upload our consciousness to the internet, would we become separate entities or just an addition to a singular mind, achieving singularity? Literally becoming our own creation? To guarantee the after-life?

If an A.I would not be programmed with a purpose, would it seek it, or would it become schizophrenic, overwhelmed by too much information and our contradictory views?

I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I look forward to finding out.

Some inspiration from the philosophic world (Jiddu Krisnamurti)