Bootstrapping God

Cultural Creatives. Sally J. Goerner (After the Clockwork Universe) cites studies which track the emergence of a new fundamental cultural meme set called Cultural Creatives. Imagine the self-selecting gender grouping like that occurring at a grammar school dance. Just like boys on one side, girls on the other, the Modernists wearing scientific/technology/industry glasses were on one side of the room and Traditionalists seeing through church and community values lenses on the other. For years, those were the only two groups at the dance. But then a new clique began to emerge in significant numbers about ten years ago - the Cultural Creatives. Emerging from all fields of study, this new group would replace the traditional "reductionist vs. ethereal dichotomy" with an Integrated Society which reflects the value of all in a larger view.

The old Modernist way of seeing is based on a mechanistic, "clockwork" understanding of the universe, which is apparently true on some level. But quantum uncertainties coupled with the Chaotic nature of so many systems across all sciences gives us a fundamentally different meme set; the clock has been replaced by a web. And as luck would have it, we happen to have the tools to begin to understand the nature of a relationship-based learning model. Indeed, it can be argued that we have arrived at this juncture because of the computer and telecommunications. But now that we need them more than ever, it can easily be argued that we are evolving in tandem with the dramatic growth of these fundamental change agents. In short, there's a Big Change a coming.

The old Traditionalists are both challenged and consoled by these developments. Some belief systems encourage the devout to seek the inner light. These traditional institutions, by strategically embracing fundamental technological change agents, may lead us toward an Integrated Society driven by the best in each of us. But historically, increased communications have been a threat to organized religions. Because technology can help to break down the "us vs. them" meme set that can appear so naturally in human endeavors, many traditional institutions, especially those based on less than enlightened ideals, are seriously challenged. We feel it in the wind; there's a Big Change a coming.

The next decade will bring increasingly rapid change. Fundamental shifts will occur in all aspects of society: politics, economics, education, religion; all basic institutions will be dislocated due to the rapid adoption of more and more capable Internet-based services. The Cultural Creatives assure us that a calm, reasoned, inner-focused view of reality will see us through what will clearly be interesting times. What we are witnessing is the emergence of something far greater than the sum of the parts. Chaos teaches us that patterns riddled with beauty emerge along the edges where complex systems touch. The world is wiring itself to an end, the fruit of which may ripen sooner than you think.

As we approach the Great Asymptote (there's a Big Change a coming), when superhuman consciousness designs the next more intelligent generation of software/processor/network, it can be argued that the Omega Point has emerged; as that point, the accelerating intelligence curve will rapidly approach infinite intelligence. We are effectively bootstrapping God.