The great external

One thing religion does well is externalize blame. Why are you poor/sick/alone? Because god deemed it so. Even more, he may have a special plan for you. This framework of externalizing cause and effect to a third party seems an important dependency of the human process, given its relentless survival against all odds and reason. It is a core human process, because we understand our powerlessness to change most things beyond our diet and morning routine.

If it takes believing for god to exist and manifest, then today god flickers dimly at 35% opacity. For most scientifically minded individuals, there is no god. And there certainly isn’t a reason driving events. Random is a word that has by now beaten most of us into submission. But externalize we must, so if not god, who? Us.

In science, we are god. We did not create the playground, but we play freely within. If you take god out of religion and salt-bae in a dash of science, you end up with a framework which finds less galactic ways to externalize blame.

Today there is a prominent idealogical system, which in the future might very easily be classified as a religion, whose main feature is externalizing blame. The reason you are poor/sick/alone is not because nature is cruel, the world chaotic, and resourcefulness unevenly distributed, but because there are human and systematic forces working to suppress your up-and-comance. The main feature of this idealogical system is that almost any malady can certainly be traced back to an aboriginal or ongoing wrong (a defining feature of most religions).

It may not be the truth, but it certainly keeps the story going. My incredulity at the audacity and mind-bending rational gymnastics this framework takes is likely akin to an observer a couple thousand years ago lamenting traditional Abrahamic religions as pure fairy dust. Sure, you’d have been right, but it wouldn’t have mattered too much.

The simulation ultimately doesn’t like you to think you’re just a flimsy dispensable meat bag swimming in a bloody lagoon. It finds ways to project meaning, and most importantly, causation.