[ExI] The void left by deleting religion

[Samantha Atkins]

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
>
> Samantha, Spike, what do you miss?
>
>   
Great question.  I am not sure how coherent my answer will be but I will 
give it a try.

I miss a deep abiding belief that no matter how difficult things might 
be that it will all eventually turn out well.   Once upon a time I 
thought that the triumph of the Good was a foregone conclusion.  I 
thought that there was a Good that was coming more and more clearly into 
manifestation in this world.    Sometimes it could lead to a complacence 
but I did not think that was correct.  I was impatient for it to arrive 
more quickly.  

I miss the belief that people basically deeply yearn for the Good and 
mistakenly for a time think they want something else more or that there 
is no such thing.  I used to believe that while we are evolved creatures 
that the natural impulse and path for intelligence is toward 
self-perfection and increase and that that increase leads inexorably 
toward the Good, toward mutual maximization of potential toward the 
highest flowering of All.    I see it still sometimes as a possibility, 
as perhaps those conclusions being one way out the dangerous zone of 
species history we inhabit.  But I don't believe it is inevitable or 
that it is the only way forward or especially that I or anyone else has 
much of a clear handle for it.

For a time I believed that if I could fully open my heart to the 
uplifting potential of humanity and live fully out of love for it that I 
would be inspired and fully alive and maximally inspire others.  I 
believed that if enough of us could do this it could make all the 
difference.  Then I began to see it as an overlay of various mystical 
teachings I had absorbed during more credulous periods and doubt whether 
this would make much difference or even allow me room to do the more 
technical things that also need doing and believe I can be a part of.    
Much of my life I felt this call or something inside to live differently 
to show a way.   I came to distrust that a lot.

I miss many of these viewpoints though.  They aren't all invalid but 
they are much more questionable than I once believed.    I still thing 
that the work of navigating this period in history will take as much a 
shift in consciousness as accelerating technology.    Slightly evolved 
chimps  with godlike powers is not a stable or terribly desirable 
configuration.   But I do not have the tool s and distrust some of the 
tool I have tried to produce such a shift in even myself. 

I miss communities of people who dropped far more boundaries with one 
another than most non-spiritual communities ever do.  I miss inspiring 
others with images of how it all worked toward Good and how we really 
ultimately had nothing to fear.    Now I have a lot of fear.  Not just 
for myself but for everyone I have ever known headed for decay and death 
if not worse.  I have fear for the entire species.  I am not at all sure 
we have what it takes to make to to and through Singularity.   I know we 
can't stay at the point we are, that either we will move forward and 
drastically or fall back and all to likely perish.   But I am much too 
short on answers or happy notions of how to proceed. 

- samantha