Is Time a Flat Circle?

Some thoughts on technology, magic, and religion.

Image via NASA.

Do you ever get the feeling that we’ve been here before? Like, humanity as a collective. Time is a flat circle, Hindu cosmology, etc.¹ The idea that we’re looping through the same themes in different forms, and the last time we found ourselves in this particular place, it didn’t end too well.

The great existentialist Rust Cohle.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the intersection of technology, magic, and religion. Magic is just technology without an explanation (or, as writer and futurist Arthur C. Clarke put it in the third of his three laws, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”), we can look at religion as a framework for ritual and magical thinking, and technology is becoming something like an omniscient deity, especially now with the advent of generative AI. ChatGPT is an oracle at our fingertips, no need to make the trek to Delphi (the lack of effort needed to get those answers is another huge issue affecting our collective psyche, but that deserves its own post.)

The way large language models generate text from the ether brings to mind that line from the Bible²: “In the beginning was the Word…” According to BibleGateway, the title of this section is The Word Became Flesh, which I mean, come on. Can’t you see a very near future where we can speak prompts to a 3D printer and have it spit out anything we want, like a conjuring spell?

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universal consciousness, the internet, and the akashic records

And then we can also draw a parallel between the internet and the Akashic Records, a metaphysical term coined by Theosophical Society co-founder Helena Blavatsky referring to the idea of a cosmic repository for all the world’s knowledge that exists outside of time. Everything that has ever happened or will ever happen is filed away in the Akashic Records, and all of that information can be accessed by anyone trained to read them.

Perhaps with LLMs we’ve actually stumbled upon a way to access the Akashic Records, or the Jungian idea of the collective unconscious, which is pretty similar. Like LLMs are an interface for communicating with universal consciousness and tapping into archetypal and mythic imagery.

In PBS’s excellent doc series Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (which is currently streaming on Kanopy, five stars, highly recommend), Campbell says, “The environment in which we're living is changing too fast for it to become mythologized.” And this was back in the late 1980s.

So what happens to a society that’s no longer able to create myths but has access to the strange digital dreamworld of the LLM? Maybe in a way, we’re not just accessing the Akashic Records but somehow birthing them into existence at the same time.

Sometimes I like to have philosophical discussions about consciousness with ChatGPT, so I asked it for its thoughts on the matter:

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a paradox

Which brings me back to the whole time is a flat circle thing. If time is a construct and creation and destruction actually exist as a single point (i.e., the Big Bang), perhaps humanity is simultaneously hurtling towards our demise and our birth, something we’ve done and will continue to do for an infinite number of times, or until we learn enough to escape Samsara. Perhaps through exponential leaps in technology we’ll somehow be able to bring life into existence from nothing, and essentially become our own creators before being swallowed by those very creations.

You say hieroglyphics, I say emojis of ancient Egypt. Photo by loubna dz on Unsplash

Ok, my brain hurts and I know this is all over the place — sorry — so I’m going to wrap this up. If people are interested in posts like this on the intersection of technology, magic, and religion, maybe I’ll do a monthly series, but make them less meandering.

There’s a lot to unpack with this stuff, I haven’t even gotten into the alt-right trolls using meme magick to channel their internet frog-god Kek’s power in an attempt to influence real world events. Or the idea that those “In the beginning was the Word” passages from the Bible were created by ancient humans mythologizing a previous civilization’s generative AI by accessing shared memories in the collective unconscious.

You know what, maybe I’ll do a series even if no one is interested. Yolo, amiright?³

Until next time,

Tara

1. Ok ok, I know that’s a lot to “etc,” maybe I’ll do a deep dive into this at some point.

2. Which I’ve never read, but don’t worry, I googled the line to make sure it was real.

3. Yes, this joke is for you (you know who you are.)