 As I have written in my-heroic-theory.html, I have come to the opinion that we are not designed to live in the world that we have created. This applies infinitely more to the digital domain. Whereas at least modernism is physical and can be tailored according to physical needs, the entire virtual world is disconnected from the physical. But it is through physicality that the brain receives information about the world, and so without physicality, distortions arise everywhere because there is no neuro-physiological causality involved; the neural subsystems that provide feedback to the brain about the world- that prevent cognition from becoming hallucination- are thereby rendered obsolete. This has profound implications for the future of humanity. The recent advent of artificial intelligence (AI)- and its probable rate of advancement- pose real, existential dangers to the human species. Moreover, the general lack of organic interaction common to everything from social media to customer service has done irreparable harm to an entire generation of young people that have been raised not on personal connection but rather on the facsimile of personal connection. This has resulted in sky-high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidality. And if we do not address this problem with all the seriousness that it deserves, we may very well soon realize that we are behind the curve- a curve that has gotten away with us. Enter Guinevere. GuinevereGuinevere is my attempt at the creation of the world’s first identity authentication ecosystem. It is founded upon two simple principles.
Neither of these is done particularly well. Each online organization creates its own identity verification system with its own activity authentication system. Many of these same online organizations then buy, sell, and trade these profiles for profit to scam artists and advertising firms. This is the dehumanization of personhood. As the saying goes, “If the service is for free, then you are the product.” Product. Not person. However, we can imagine a better way- a way that respects the dignity of the individual, and the rights of the individual to own his own identity. It would require an entirely new paradigm. Because thus far, technology has been built without thought for its effects on human psychology. With the advent of AI, this is no longer tenable; a new set of principles is required. Artificial Identity Manifesto“The natural individual must retain all rights to his own identity; the primary responsibility of tech sector companies is and must be to protect the identity of the natural individual; finally, the establishment of an identity ecosystem is necessary, which will safeguard the rights of identity across relevant cybernetic ecosystems.”
As we move towards ever-increasingly accurate representations of reality in cybernetic ecosystems- on the internet or through virtual reality or whatever may come next-, it is critical that we retain our humanity. And it is my true hope that this endeavor will help to spark some discussion about the dangers of virtual reality and artificial intelligence to the health, function, and wellbeing of the natural individual. ~ Joshua van Asakinda
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 [ Grunwald 1410 by Arendzikowski ] We all need a mission. For me, it all became clear in graduate school when discussing punishment (or the lack thereof) in psychology. And I asked exactly why it was that we do not advocate punishment in psychology when it seems to work well enough in athletics, martial arts, military organizations, etc. The professor said, “Because of the Hippocratic Oath: “Above all, do no harm.” And I vividly remember thinking to myself, “Oh, my God, I don’t believe in any of this…” So I asked the professor what to do, and he said, “Well, try to change things. Write a book; become a speaker. Try to change the paradigm,” which is exactly what I set out to do. (As it turns out, “changing the world” is not so simply done.) My first draft of the solution was “my Heroic Theory.” This was rough, simple, dramatic. However, it contained the seeds of everything that followed; perhaps more importantly, it was through my Heroic Theory that I defined the problem: We are not designed to live in the world we have created. Problems of ModernismWe must define “modernism:” For our purposes, we will define modernism as that counter-cultural movement that ignores or abandons what we will refer to as “the classical tradition.” Generally speaking, the classical tradition is that body of art, music, religion, and philosophy that- whether Eastern or Western- advocates for “old school” virtue- that is, the personal cultivation of strength, wisdom, compassion, loyalty, bravery, and so forth. Civilization has largely moved on from these ideals, and they have been replaced with “modern” and “post-modern” philosophies such as Marxism, pacifism, feminism, deconstructionism, etc., and it is this replacement of the old value system that Heroic Theory takes aim at. There is one very simple reason for this: The classical tradition evolved necessarily in response to our ancestral environment. In other words, we are designed to live in an environment characterized by pain, disease, violence, and brutality. And the classical tradition- the “old school” virtues- developed in order to survive that world. This value system is built into us; we have ancient neural pathways that predate modern Homo sapiens that respond to this kind of environment. And so by abandoning that value system, we create dissonance between the self and the world it inhabits. This, as they say, is “a problem.” Towards a Heroic TheoryThe core purpose of my Heroic Theory was two-fold:
This would require a paradigm shift in terms of psychology. Because the current psychological paradigm tends to be rooted in a kind of hard materialism, which at least implies (knowingly or unknowingly) that free will is secondary- that it is not the driver but rather the passenger. Subsequently, the internal dimension of the early paradigms of Freud, Jung, etc. has been forgotten; this has been replaced by mass pathology and by a culture of psycho-pharmaceutical therapy that robs the individual of his responsibility- and thus robs him of his power as well. Without power, responsibility is impossible; conversely, without responsibility, power is impossible. So the downstream consequences of modernism and hard materialism have been to suffocate the very power to change and to cultivate the self, which was once the mission of psychology. According to my analysis, modernism has resulted in the following:
As a consequence of these, modernism has resulted in the development of social, religious, and political structures that no longer resemble our ancestral environment and that no longer reinforce the development of the individual psyche. And so the psyche, which has failed to achieve the self-integration necessary for performance and stress-resilience, instead becomes hyper-sensitive- weak, fragile, reactive; finally, it breaks under pressure. Thus we see nihilism, family breakdown, cultural fragmentation, and mass psycho-pathology. Ultimately, it has become necessary to imagine a new set of principles sufficient to renew the classical tradition. And those principles are the foundation of “my Heroic Theory.” ~ Joshua van Asakinda  Agonistic & Existential Semiotics (ÆS) is the philosophical reconciliation of my youthful Nietzscheanism and my present-day Mahayana Buddhism. As a result, it assumes (rightly or wrongly) that the majority of the apparent contradictions between the two are myopic and superficial. Therefore, its purpose is the formulation of a unified, scalable substructure for understanding experience across epistemological, ontological, and axiological domains; this is informed by the following nine principles:
These nine principles form the foundation of the ÆS worldview, which I will delve into in more detail at some later time. ~ Joshua van Asakinda |
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