Capitalism and much of the world today is driven by the notion that the purpose of life is to live as "large" as possible. Make as much money as you can (larger amounts typically involve some sort of expoitation--of nature, other humans, etc) and live as large as you can. Maximize!
That's seemingly in line with the ideas motivating the US doctrine of Total Spectrum Dominance. The Maximize doctrine leads to unending bad outcomes for most.
But sages and philosophers back to the beginning of recorded history have opined something very different, more like Minimize! Live as small as possible, with the smallest meaningful footprint on the rest of the world (including nature, other humans, etc). Do as little harm to others as possible. And mostly life is not about making (ie stealing from nature or someone else) the most for oneself, instead it's about integrating with everyone and everything else, for mutual satisfaction that relies on satisfying the other as much as, if not more, than oneself. In every era there have been many who have seen this with their own minds and followed. (My favorite sage has long been Laozi, though I'm not a Taoist as such.)
Many non-monotheistic theologies also present this sort of end to human life. Each individual thread of conscious existence does not disappear, instead it merges with the 'all.' The end of self and ego, but not the end of anything else. This is seen as the extension of living more and more that way in our self-constrained life, as should be everyone's goal.
As long as human societies and human technologies (including AI) remain committed to the Maximize doctrine, and to the degree they are, they will fail and horribly.
In short, the purpose of self-centered conscious life is to grow past it.
No comments:
Post a Comment