A few years back I recognized my desire for an oracle, someone who would find me and give me the perfect solution for all of my problems. A herald would graciously deliver a panacea for all of my injuries. A messenger with an appropriate answers to all my existential questions.
This oracle never found me, the panacea was never delivered, and the messenger has yet to become manifest. After realizing that the oracle would never arrive I labeled my penchant for deliverance as immature—a weak holdover from childhood neglect. And when I saw that other people had a similar craving, I thought they needed to do what I had done and “grow up” and leave this need for saving behind.
Now, after years of navigating life in lieu of a skeleton key hand delivered by an inspired profit my views have changed. I’ve started to value myths, to be moved by more than statistical consistencies, and our dull and imperfect fabrication or reality.
I’ve realized that “The System” is so encompassing that any hope of escape must be propped up by a savior, which is why we all go looking for one. And that some people complete their search after coming upon a mentor, a manager, or a CEO. While others place the burden of deliverance upon their spouse, parents, or governments. And the Sili-brained among us are convinced that technology, or AGI will someday become the savior we’ve craved through the ages.
While these alternatives are compelling and can temporarily satiate our craving for a savior, they all find their origins within The System, which means there’s no way they can help use rise above it.. At best, mentors, parents, governments, and managers can make our time here more enjoyable, less thick, and more like what we will be saved into. At worst, these false saviors make our time here a living, breathing, intricately woven, inescapable nightmare. When we consider our penchant for deliverance, and our stark inability to find a terrestrial deliverer we eventually realize that our savior won’t be found among the masses, or in our feeds, or behind a pulpit, or debating a political rival. That another person is incapable of being the savior we need. That our flawed and systemic biases can’t help but worm their way into every piece of technology we innovate, making an AGI savior nothing more than a salacious work of fiction.
With all this laid bare it seems that our innate need to be saved into something better will never come to pass. That our need for a savior is a cruel piece of hard wiring we simultaneously can’t ignore and can’t our grow. That is, until we realize, that our savior has already come, welcomed us into his family, and has promised to return.