Full disclosure: I'm not here to ask questions. I came here to look for rationalists who have deep Mormon backgrounds or heritage. I am looking for "post-post-Mormons."
I doubted and stepped away from the Church almost 8 years ago. I was reading Moroni Chapter 7 and was exasperated at trying to fit everything in my expanding world into either a "all good things come of Christ" or a "that which persuadeth men to do evil and believe not in Christ is of the devil" box.
Access to the internet has provided me with enough takes, views, and tools to completely dismantle self, reality, sanity, and world. But thank Buddha for the dharma and for caring internet communities that have helped me find some groundless ground again, only after divorce after a 20+ year, multi-child temple marriage, which were and are both deeply precious to me, and also real-and-direct byproducts of Mormon faith and belief-practice.
I still live in a rural Utah community that is caring and supportive in all those Mormon ways, and I struggle to be ideologically isolated from so many people that are interacting with and caring for my children still at home, who are on track to follow the Mormon path and go to the temples and serve missions.
I am considering starting a podcast on super-deep dives into spirituality, community, human social reality creation, and human phenomenology. If anyone wants to chat, lmk.
There are a lot of antibodies and subtle cultural pressures that can prevent me from thinking about certain ideas and can atrophy my ability to take directed action in the world.
This hit me like a breath of fresh air. "Antibodies" yes. Makes me feel less alone in my world-space
Over the past few years, I have come to the personal conclusion that we humans, fundamentally, are not individuals. The egoic self is an evolved structure of mind that allows an individual human organism to pursue what we think is our own will, our own thoughts, our own self-interest, but deep down, we are connected in mind and meaningful language, concept, relationship, and organization in ways that feel profound, spiritual, oceanic, and religious. Whatever strength or power we attain, we generally share with our in-group as each of us knows in our bones that, individually, we are weak, need the care of others, and will eventually die, or could die at any moment. This human phenomenology is what gives rise to god-forms, egregore, spirits, call them what you like, a few examples of which are "Japan," "Apple," "Sunnyvale Homes," or what not.
This deserves more treatment, and I struggle to write the splendidly long and lucid essays common on LW.
Pivot to my main thought: It seems that life on this planet evolves into more and more complex and intelligent forms. I have no explanation for this, other than the conditions for life being what they are on Earth, that continue to sustain more and more complex forms of life.
The development of AGI or superintelligence seems imminent. There are many that seem distraught at the limitations of humans and how completely pwned we are by Moloch, who would gladly exchange the existential risk of Moloch for one of an AGI "Ahriman." It is easy to imagine us handing over our problems to AI, while humans become like "pets" to be domesticated by it - not a pleasant thought, but some of us feel like we're up against the limit of how we can be organized, managed, and governed by "pleasant" thoughts.
How many of you feel like you would trust an advanced AGI with the future of humanity more than you would trust humanity with the future of humanity? What is the best science fiction you have read along these lines?
Thanks for sharing your perspective. After years of anger, nihilism, midlife crises, etc., I suppose I've reached some equanimity, not all by choice. There's only so much of that shit an individual soul or mind can harbor, perhaps.
To expand on my original comment, my exploration into the dharma, specifically it's teaching on anatta or "no self," has exploded fractally for me, making so much of my spiritual or inner landscape crystallize into something deeply powerful and meaningful to me, even to the point of finding a fair degree of peace with and forgiveness for the Mormon Church and its ways.
For now I'll just say: I have a deep inner conviction that I am not an individual. That I am not the egoic "self" that my culture and society have trained me to be, and which they continue to pressure me to be. You could say that this is just another religious or spiritual delusion, similar to my experience of Mormonism. That would be completely fair, and I'm not really inclined to rebut it.
It's strange, but I arrive at my current spirituality by way of dharmic insight into the workings of mind, as I think I observe within my own experience and practice, and also by a fair degree of rational reasoning. We are complex social primates, unable to process or even hold a fraction of our complex sociopolitical world within our individual organism. We are more like distributed processors with memory in real, fleshy social network and community. Others are no doubt more "individual" than I am, but in all my observation, I think I only see "self" arise phenomenologically according to relationship and conditions in community.
All of which is to say, this "I" is part of a much larger arc of humanity, angst, and consciousness than that which I can call "me." Parts of me are both from and in my parents. Parts of my parents' identities reside in me. Parts of me live within my children, in ways they don't even understand yet. This massive chain extends far beyond just family, but seems to manifest most observably within these intimate ties.
Even my questioning and doubting of the Church was largely transmitted to me by my parents and forbears, I believe. I know I am sowing seeds and projecting world and meaning in ways that are affecting my children, and I consciously choose not to poison them against the Church. I've carried around anger and poison long enough. I've been a vessel for others' poison and anger. I think I am deeply familiar now with this psychology or what I'd prefer to term "phenomenology of mind."