Amidst my time traversing what many now refer to by the name The Liminal Web, I have come across varying conceptualizations of the widely distributed shared patterns of thought and the common underlying phenomena that influence how society animates itself—their influences being essentially god-like in their scope and potency. To me, these concepts are fascinating, as they attribute distinguishable names to consistent and significant dynamics that permeate our every day, each of which has a way of disrupting our own agency and most of which seem to be a barrier to global coordination.

In this era of lasting, accelerating, and compounding risks of disaster, catastrophe, or existential events, it is important that we are able to clearly recognize and identify the problematic dynamics that negatively influence our civilization—dynamics we may even be continuing to perpetuate—so we might have a better chance of understanding how to stop them. 

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, depending on your disposition, the conceptualizations I'm familiar with and will share herein tend to be represented with an aesthetic of a pseudo-religious quality. The term false gods is referencing the [sometimes subconscious] ill-considered devotion or capitulation that is afforded to these imaginary entities, at the expense of more sacred and humane values. Moreover, I had some fun with this project—hence categorizing it as a "creative" endeavour—by crafting these concepts in the form of a collectible trading card game. If woo-woo or nerdy-stuff isn't your cup of tea, I still encourage you to consider the seriousness of what these concepts are pointing towards; it isn't necessary to be nerdy or spiritual to appreciate the original and astute analyses that inspired my fanciful representations.

As Scott Alexander says in his Meditations of Moloch essay, "[These ideas are] powerful not because [they're] correct—nobody literally thinks an ancient Carthaginian demon causes everything—but because thinking of the system as an agent throws into relief the degree to which the system isn’t an agent."  Likewise, this reinforces a point made by The Center For Humane Technology's Tristan Harris, "We need to stop searching for bad guys, and start stopping bad games."

There are a lot of different terms that are interrelated with what I call The False Gods of 21st Century Civilization, these terms include: egregores, gods, spirits, demons, hyperagents, thoughtforms, distributed cognition, collective intelligences, swarms, mobs, autocults, memetics, tribes, and more. Some of these terms have been stretched and conflated in myriad ways, and frankly, I sometimes find it difficult to discern the key distinctions and what each is pointing at. So at least for the purposes of this creative project, I will endeavour to define my own terms (note: my apologies if I'm just creating gross misrepresentations of more agreed upon definitions). What unifies all three categories is their ability to disrupt human coordination and our chances of building a flourishing world for life on Earth; in their own way, each of these false gods compel us to make uncooperative decisions.

Endemic Egregores — Maladaptive clusters of our own collective intelligence, that are recursively brainwashing us
e.g., Moloch, Mammon, Consumerism, Scientific Reductionism, Cancel Culture, Techno-optimism 

Manufactured Idols — Supernormal technology that we designed to diminish our own agency
e.g., Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, Supernormal Stimuli

Primordial Forces — Inexorable destabilizing properties of our universe, endlessly subverting coordination efforts
e.g., Entropy, Evolution, Mortality

ENDEMIC EGREGORES

Maladaptive clusters of our own collective intelligence, that are recursively brainwashing us

• In my conceptualization, egregores emerge from groupthink -like dynamics in concert with pre-established societal incentive structures (e.g., get more money, get more likes, get more views, get more clout, get more respect)

• Based on my understanding of BJ Campbell's definitions, there is likely many many forms of competing egregores seeking to monopolize the noosphere (think: controversial political culture war tribes); however, I wanted to highlight a handful that seem to be all-encompassing, monolithic, and severely-overlooked.

• Technology that has advanced so far that the power asymmetry they've attained, as compared to our biological slow-to-evolve human capacities, might as well be thought of as god-like power

• Often considered amongst the class of innovation known as Exponential Technology, these Manufactured Idols are lauded as superb and welcome advancements by more than just Silicon Valley -types and techno-optimists, but we fail to appreciate the ways in which they may be harming us

PRIMORDIAL FORCES

Inexorable destabilizing properties of our universe, endlessly subverting coordination efforts

• This last category is the most different and may not even by appropriate to bundle up with the others; however, I felt it too interesting and important to leave out—and of course, it still has the common effect of disrupting our ability for global coordination

• The difference with this category is that it is not human-engineered or human-influenced—at least the way I've presented it. This is a perspective on reality through which I'm making a connection between well-established natural phenomena and their detrimental effects on the challenge of human coordination

• Thus, unlike the false gods that directly or indirectly receive our devotion, these "gods" do not need any followers to exert influence over humanity; they are inherent and inescapable properties of our universe

This was a fun project. I could hardly stop myself from repeatedly regenerating the AI art—making marginal prompt adjustments to no avail. Personally, I find this work to be by no means a rigorous theory and I certainly recognize a few ways to pull apart its incoherence, but I still love this as a thought experiment. Plus, the nerd in me that once dabbled in Magic The Gathering is greatly amused.

One thing I enjoy most about this work is attempting to give meaning to the AI generated art—e.g.; "Artificial Superintelligence" looks like a nuclear mushroom cloud and maybe that makes sense given their comparably destructive potential; "The Cancel God" is ostensibly an elegant, unassuming, and bright statue worthy of respect, and this relates to the duplicitousness of politically correct virtue signaling; in the "Idol of Scientific Reductionism" a random demonic entity appeared, and I like the idea that this manipulative egregore hides itself behind the suited-up authoritative scientists that hubristically promote its ideology. 

I'm curious: what connections do you see in this imagery? what false gods would you add to this framework?

Maybe one day I'll create the opposing deck of cards; the "true deities" per se, that will help us rise above these false gods.

• Trading Card Template: Custom-made via Microsoft PowerPoint.

• Imagery: Microsoft Bing Image Creator (powered by DALL-E), with prompts engineered by me.

• Capturing Gnon. "Capturing Gnon". Jun 27, 2021.

• Rebel Wisdom. "Covid & the Sensemaking Crisis, BJ Campbell". Dec 31, 2021. 

• Vanderklay, Paul. “Secularists Discover Spiritual Forces Behind Social Media and the Culture War”. Jan 10, 2022.

• Handwaving Freakoutery. "Memespace Egregores and Nuclear War". Mar 4, 2022. 

• The Stoa. "Swarms, Egregores, and Autocults w/ John Robb, BJ Campbell, Patrick Ryan, and Jordan Hall". Mar 23, 2022. 

• La vie symbolique. "The Symbolic World vs Egregores, Part 1". June 5, 2022. 

• J. Pageau. "Egregores, Mobs and Demons | with Jordan Hall & John Vervaeke". Jun 24, 2022.