Abstract- 20200201- 9

Technology-Oriented Religions Are Coming

An EcoChi Vital Abstract

This article was posted October 9, 2019 by Stan Stalnaker, Quartz.

Religious ideas and powerful radical theologies pepper our science fiction. From Klingon religions in Star Trek to the Bene Gesserit in the Dune series, Cylon in Battlestar Galactica to the pervasive Cavism in Kurt Vonnegut’s works, our society has little trouble imagining the concept of new religions. We just don’t implement them. The 21st century is setting the stage for a new type of widespread faith: technology-based religions. Technology today is pervasive and granulated. It encompasses our world view, and people are translating it into their spiritual views. The internet acts as an accelerant on these forces, enabling cross pollination and mutation at rapid rates. Techno-oriented religious movements represent a big departure from the strategies of 20th-century-style cults, which could make them even more dangerous. The foundations for this growth are governed by three factors: the internet, which allows for rapid scale; quantified-self technologies, which promise self-betterment; and new surveillance methods, which ensure a whole new type of peer-pressured submission. Today’s major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, took hundreds of years to propagate. Their turning points from small factions to true movements happened when they addressed social injustices. Tech-backed movements like the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and #ClimateStrike scaled by tapping into a growing sense of social injustice. Instead of legal or economic changes, these movements rely on social agreement as their first outcome. Social agreement is powerful and represents a type of group-think that can evolve quickly into action when it reaches a tipping point. No more wandering the plains of medieval Europe seeking people to convert—social media has brought billions of people right to you from the safety of your couch. There is a huge audience of lonely people looking for spiritual answers to social injustice. The internet has made social injustice more visible, movements easier to start, and causes easier to join. While tech-led social movements are not yet religious movements, they lay the groundwork for mutated spiritual movements to copy similar values and conditions to gain scale. Over the last several years, mindfulness—defined as paying attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—has exploded into popular consciousness. It is a part of a wellness movement focused on inward explanation, breath work, yoga, and meditation that has brought people tools of personal growth and empowerment. The next phase of this obsession with self-betterment is augmented mindfulness. Quantified-self devices track all manner of biological and mental functions in the form of everything from electrocardiograms on the latest smartwatches or brainwave scanners. But can technology process God into something we can finally understand? At some level, everything is about control. It is worth being wary of how these technologies are being used, who is advocating for them, and who owns them, to make sure their evolution is in our best interest. Religions can be a wonderful and inclusive tool pushing society forward—but the line between the freedom to pursue religion and the pressure to conform to new one should be carefully guarded.