Fionn the Druid, AI and Pan-theism
Arrives in Ériu Early Next Year from South India...
Now, the thing is that somebody gave out to me recently for not believing that politics dictate everything you eat, drink, wear, think, do… God, I thought, what a bland way of looking at the world. There are so many ways to escape that mundanity. I mean look at the stack of eejits who have put posters all over the telephone poles across the country. Who would even wish to think that these people had any influence over us?
You could argue that Pericles was right-
'Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.'- Pericles
I studied politics in UCG. Michael D. Higgins lectured me on Bunreacht na hÉireann. Yet he flagranlty ignores the very tenets of the constitution. He prefers politics.
Political apathy refers to a lack of interest, engagement, or concern regarding political matters. It manifests in individuals feeling disconnected from the political process, disenchanted with politicians, or disillusioned with the efficacy of participating in political debates or initiatives. Perhaps it’s true.
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.'- Plato
I’m on board with Nin on this subject:
Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn! (about politics). I know many people, mostly creatives, who happily plough on with not the slightest bit of interest in this extremely banal subject. Fionn the Druid, for example. He arrives in Ireland, at last in early 2025. He is in a container as we speak. Or write. Or read.
Fionn the Druid has a staff topped by the Eye of Horus. He wears Fionn- MacCuamhaill style boots and he has a were-fox called Jesus (go figure). He carries the banished snakes of Ériu in his left hand, a harp on his back and of course like all Druids, a long beard- the wise sage accessory. I believe he also his an Apple fitbit on his wrist. So Victor Langheld tells me, who envisioned this Druid, created as all his sculpures are, in South India.
After Victor’s sculptor was robbed by Sadhguru himself, for a time, he got down to work on Fionn the Druid. He will be installed at Victor’s Way sculpture park in Roundwood, Co. Wicklow in 2025.
Now, isn’t he fine-looking. But, what is a Druid? A mysterious figure who left an indelible impact on Irish history (and other Celtic lands) despite the scarcity of information about their practices and beliefs. The Druids were not scribes however; their knowledge was transmitted orally from master to pupil to prevent corruption. Our understanding of their lives and beliefs is primarily derived from Greek and Roman writers or Christian monks, who portrayed them unfavorably.
Their profound intelligence is actually evident in their ability to design standing stones and passage tombs that aligned with the stars, which could not have been done without advanced understanding of mathematics and astronomy. The suns movement over the seasons. Druids were not only mystics but lawmakeres, bards, artists and storytellers. Give me a Druid any day, over a politician.
Note: A Druid is here defined as someone who derives his or her basic survival procedures primarily from nature (i.e. from natural intelligence, i.e. from NI)) rather than from a book (i.e. that transmits local, i.e. the residue of ethnic or religious high-end social engineering culture, i.e. now called AI).- Victor Langheld
Victor Langheld, creator of Fionn the Druid, sees the Druid as the original Pantheist.
Now, those who challenged the hegemony of Christianity and its dogmatic scions, generally speaking had their books burned. (like the Druids, who themselves may have been burned but in this case, without books). The same thing happens today but in complete reverse- those who oppose Christianity are the ones who burn the books or ‘cancel’ those who are not aligned with their beliefs. Each of these polar opposites brings us to insanity.
Anyway, John Toland is a rather obscure Irish rationalist philosopher ( 30 November 1670-11 March 1722), a freethinker and satirist who wrote political philosophy and philosophy of religion, part of the Age of Enlightenment. Born in Ardagh on the Inishowen peninsula, Catholic and Irish, Toland claimed to have been called Janus Junius, a name that recalled the Roman two faced god Janus and of Junius Brutus, founder of the Roman Republic.
Indeed, John Toland might have been a re-incarnated Druid himself (according to my thinking) and of course he eventually had all of his books burned. His first, and best known work, Christianty Not Mysterious (1696), opposed hierarchy in church and state. In Ireland, copies were burned by the public hangman, and he was forced to flee the country never to return. There we are, another exile from this strange little island.
Nay, it has come to this, that Truth meets no where with stronger opposition, than from many of those that raise the loudest cry about it, and would be taken for no less than the only dispensers of the favors and oracles of Heaven. If any has the firmness to touch the minutest thing that brings them Gain or Credit, he's presently pursued with the hue and cry of Heresy.- John Toland
Anyway, Victor is a great admirer of John Toland’s works. And of Spinoza. He summarises Spinoza with this- ‘God is a substance and we are merely moulds of that. God is plasticine and we are merely different shapes and sizes of that substance.’ The world, says Victor, is
‘a Universal Turing Machine. It is self-assembling. Remember that God’s Law is Trial by Mortal Combat. It is Faust Recht- Right of Might, Right of Fist.’
We will do anything we can to avoid this void-ness of ethics and morality. We may step across the corpses of our predecessors but the imprint of this is too strong in parents, and the drive to pass on DNA and reproduce is too strong…The baby is of two chromosomes and everything self assembles from there. The blueprint. AI (religion) says that Re-incarnation is a Salvation Programme. Hope= AI.
The Druid takes away the last hope. Druids Reduce Lubris- a cautionary voice.
It is pantheism that is the creed of the Druid. God is a substance. Sub-stance. Under a stance. Over-stance= Artificial, keeps sub-stance in ‘correct’ position. God is AI. The Druid embodies Natural Intelligence. Fionn the Druid is coming to Ériu to remind us of this. He does not teach. Because we already know, inherently. All of the rest of it is an overlay. It is not God, but Nature. Not God but Nature. That is the simulation, the overlay.
The pantheist1 accepts that all he/she can observe2 (i.e. experience as personal fact) is nature.3 Because of the seemingly unlimited creativity4 of nature some pantheists choose, for practical reasons, to call nature GOD.5
The pantheist does not observe a supernatural entity6 (i.e. an AI generated (hence culturally expedient) GOD (such as the human generated conceptions of Yahweh or Brahman) as different from nature. - © Victor Langheld [Pantheism.ie]
AI (nurture) over NI (nature) is unintentional, i.e. There is selected, random happening. Nature is blind to nurture. Our primary job is to do. Selective seeing helps.
Ours is not to reason why. Ours is to do (with the help of AI) AND die!- Victor Langheld,
Mahaviras’s last words were in the overlay/ AI. (He is erronously known as the founder of Jainism, a religion older than Buddhism). To be good, to pay taxes. Those were his final directions to his students. Buddha’s last words were in accordance with NI/ Natural Intelligence. Be a lamp unto yourself. IE Find your own way!
Victor reminds us that the Druid Fionn is not a missionary. He says what everyone already knows inside themselves, and he wakes people up to what they know. As for the Buddha, ‘his first two of the Four Noble Truths were okay, they are of Natural Intelligence. The Truth of Suffering, the Truth of the Causes of Suffereing.. but the third and fourth Noble Truth, IE the Eightfold Path, is Artifical Intelligence… according to Victor and ‘obviously he had an ego if he needed an audience. Otherwise he would have remained under the tree.’
Trauma is what brings us home to Natural Intelligence. The Druid Fionn is silent, because there is nothing to do. All is perfect. He doesn’t leave the tree.
Victor says the sculpture is, in itself, an act of Futility.
In Ecclesiastes (/ɪˌkliːziˈæstiːz/ ih-KLEE-zee-ASS-teez; Biblical Hebrew: קֹהֶלֶת, romanized: Qōheleṯ, Ancient Greek: Ἐκκλησιαστής, romanized: Ekklēsiastēs) is one of the Ketuvim ("Writings") of the Hebrew Bible and part of the Wisdom literature of the Christian Old Testament
Solomon sang that all of life is vanity. Life should be about Craic agus Ceol.
I compare you, my love,
to a mare among Pharaoh's chariots.
Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
your neck with strings of jewels.
-Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes
Read more about Druids here. https://siofra.substack.com/p/fergus-and-the-druid
More about Pan-theism from Victor’s Writings:
1… Pan = (Greek) meaning ALL. Theos (Greek) meaning God. Pantheism means: All is God, or, every emergent in the universe applies the God/emergence operating system. Thus ‘LIFE is god’.
2… For ‘observe’ read: register a physical response.* Nature affects (i.e. instructs) a biological system via billions of individual data instruction/contacts per second, whereby each strike makes the incoming datum real. These contacts/instructions are reconfigured by the brain as identifiable (thus cognizable) realities. The pantheist’s view is derived from science; the local theist’s is derived from fantasy and upheld by faith.
*All contacts (i.e. as quantised wave pulses = instructions = charges), both external and internal, operate as quantised wave pulse collisions @c (in a vacuum), hence are registered as physical, hence as real (hence positive).
3… The totality of all identified (because repeated or remembered) realities-as-wave-interference-patterns (i.e. made real via contact).
4… For creativity read: newly emerging dynamic complexity. Note that creativity (i.e. adaptive complexity) happens as response (to quantised turbulence = discrete random momentum).
5… For GOD (the AI generated fantasy of a supernatural entity) understand: an automatic series (or pattern) of constraints, i.e. a blind, automatic dynamic procedure (or basic operating system of fundamental physical forces) that enables the emergence of identifiable realities.
6… The ‘no GOD’ view was first proposed (and indeed widespread) in India about 2800BC by the Charvakas/ (or Lokayatas), later by Jains and Buddhists (and some Taoists), later still by the pre-Socratics and Epicure. The Charvaka mantra appears to have been: “Nature is all we’ve got. So let’s make the best of it.” To avoid social friction, pantheists generally admit to believing in God, save that theirs’ is nature itself. The AI generated God/ruler of Judaism and Christianity has neither name nor definition, hence as empty frame can be filled by any notion serving the personal survival needs of the priest/interpreter/executor representing that vacuous notion.
7… Since every bit/bite of nature (i.e. every identifiable reality) self-generates by means of the same emergence/creation procedure (or substrate, i.e. Spinoza’s (poorly defined) substance) each individual (thus local) emergence can be understood as a god in its own right, that is to say, as a local GOD variation or application. To wit, since nature = GOD then each bit of nature = GOD.
8… Nature’s laws are automatic and blind, thus indiscriminate. Consequently, nature’s laws, as sets of constraints, equivalent for all, are apolitical, hence culturally useless as political means. Therefore humans invent (via AI) politically useful laws/rules/constraints that differ from the natural ones. (Named and defined) Gods worshipped by humans are all human artificial intelligence survival aids solutions.
9… From the point of (natural) view of the dependent and immature infant its independent and mature father/mother appear supernatural (actually, superlative).
10 … In this regard see Auguste Comte’s proposal, derived from everyday observation, of the three-phase development of natural systems.
11… Since the majority of natural (human) systems fail to achieve mature adulthood, hence the capacity of self-regulation and innovative self-adaptation, the majority’s survival mode is best served by belief/trust in a supernatural (indeed artificial, hence specifically designed) GOD/Creator/Father cum Guide & Control System. Belief in the supernatural is a highly efficient placebo.
In short, the pantheist understands nature ≡ (i.e. identical with) GOD.7
Hence the laws of nature = GOD’s laws.8
NOTE: Pantheist belief is expedient only for mature, independent adults, i.e. for dynamic self-regulating systems capable of freely applying the basic creation procedure to self-adaptation. Belief in (AI generated) supernatural9 Creation, Guide & Control system/entity is useful for the dependent and immature, i.e. for those transitioning (via the juvenile phase of part dependent/part independent) to free self-regulation and adaptation.10,11
‘A (and thus THE) procedure (or algorithm) that emerges order may be called GOD.’
+
‘Cognizable Order emerges as GOD manifestation’
The pantheist infers (and chooses to believe) from the evidence provided by nature (and not human fantasy, for instance religious scripture) that an automatic basic order enabling procedure generates all cognizable realities. This order enabling procedure (or algorithm) he/she chooses to name GOD.
Hence all cognizable realities that make up the universe enact the GOD procedure in equal measure, albeit locally constrained (and so differentiated) by alternately enacted GOD procedures.
In short, each and every identifiable (because ordered) realness moment (hence a GOD moment) of which this (and every) universe is made up manifests one specifically constrained application of one basic order enabling procedure.
Thus: ‘ALL ‘is’ GOD’
Hence: ‘I’m a god APP’ (and so are you!).
Thus: ‘I’m GOD in my niche.’
Fantastic, Siofra!
It is interesting to think about artificial intelligence as actually having some potential beyond mimicry, yet I'm constantly led back to the moment of intelligence being beyond thought. Intelligence is revealed through nature, through the forest, as simple reality.
I am reminded, just as politics demand and devour, so does science and math.
The latest rage is providing mathematical reduction to history in order to shorten it. Therefore as well AI is the simulation, so the entire world becomes fake and quick.
You can't escape it they say, that it isn't just computers, everything is just a simulation.
I thorougly reject the notion that I must delve into politics, and I laugh at the notion that everything is fake.
Politics are a system of control, a method by which those like myself are marginalized and essentially sidelined in a society that practices ecocide as a legitimate buisness. Why would I for one moment supine myself before such intolerable behavior?
No thanks, I firmly refuse.
Nor have I ever discovered, despite a few spiritual experiences that this life is but a brief artificial dalliance.
The fact that soulless psychopaths run around killing whatever they can does not make this place a fantasy. Rather it should remind us that beauty and grace require space beyond that controlled by demented assholes.
There simply IS a spiritual side to nature. Literally spirit, in the sense of essence that makes up this complex manifestation. All is living, the canyon breathes, storms have personality, the depth of life is endless.
If there was a politics, or a religion that made room for art, that allowed the special places to live. If this politic/religion was about something else besides power then perhaps then I would listen. However, all of this is unrealized.
Since this is the case I will continue to honour spirits. It will be the dream and vision that guides me, and I will continue to pursue my love this society killed, to discover in what way it may transform and become immortal.