"Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!" Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
I ask that you use your own personal discrimination when reading this article, and set aside any words, aspects or concepts that do not resonate with you. For I recognise your freedom to choose what is right for you, and would not wish to violate your freewill, but rather, I would act only as a resource for your seeking.
In this difficult and scary post, we discuss the Moloch Principle, which applies to game theory, but can be extrapolated to systems, especially economies, and ultimately the entire global culture. Please read to the potential answer to the existential crisis that this article poses in the A Call to Action section below. I am indebted to Scott Alexander and Daniel Schmachtenberger for their inspiration in authoring this article. I have used the poem Moloch, by Allan Ginsberg, to illustrate in poetic form, the emotional tone that the impact of the Moloch Principle is having upon Humanity.
The Moloch Principle refers to the dynamics within a game, where a force drives, coheres and coerces contending players to make decisions and take actions which, which may appear to be locally optimal to that player, but actually requires them to give up other less important interests or values, other than winning the game. The upshot being that it unavoidably leads to deleterious circumstances of the overall game in which they are all playing. This leads the other competing players to do the same, which continually escalates the game, which if finite, will lead to the termination of the game, with no winners. Moreover, all players involved are unable to unilaterally break out of the dynamic or game, being continually incentivised to uplevel, to address the opposing competition in order to stay in the optimal position within the game. The overall situation presents as a multiplicity of polar traps, i.e., scenarios where the things that work well for players locally are directly against the global wellbeing of the substrate upon which the game is played.
It is seen as a zero-sum game, with unhealthy or perverse competitive dynamics and bad incentives, which motivates agents or players to win the game, through narrow domain objectives, through selfish actions which externalise disadvantages from their own processes, which are not optimal to their ultimate goal (externalisation means that they don’t include it within the cost of playing, externalising into the general domain of the game).
"Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the specter of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind!" Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
This principle can be applied to economic scenarios, especially the global marketplace, and ultimately to the Human Race. The word Moloch is used because of the affiliation of the word with terrible sacrifice, coupled to the phenomena that when this principle is applied to market dynamics, there appears to be an anthropomorphic type of deity at work in the world, which is above or beyond the human world to control, or the sum of players in the game, to control. I believe that this ‘phenomena’ is an expression of the shadow aspects of what Carl Jung called the collective unconscious, which has been discussed elsewhere in my work on this site.
The Tragedy of the Commons
This is also called the Tragedy of the Commons, which is a metaphoric label for the scenario that if numerous independent agents enjoy unfettered access to a finite, valuable resource e.g., coal, oil, fish, lumber, etc., they will tend to over-use it, and may end up by destroying its value and the resource itself altogether. To exercise voluntary restraint over proliferation, is not a rational choice for any agent, within the narrow constraints of the domain of their objective. If they did, the other competing agents would merely displace them - however, the predictable result of such dynamics, is the tragedy for all agents, whether or not they are players in the game, or innocent bystanders of the game itself. Ultimately all actions destroy the vey game, or at least the platform or base upon which the game is played or operated.
The global marketplace is the prime example of this. This system is a vast collection of companies and corporations, offering goods and services, which are all competing with each other for market share, within their sectors, each of which have the narrow domain objective of maximising profits now, and longer-term plans of growing and optimising their businesses to maximise their profits further downstream. America and perhaps China, believe that they own the game or at least large parts of it. In actuality, the game owns itself. No single, corporation or groups of corporations, or country or alliance of countries owns the marketplace! It has its own dynamics. Each of these agents just mentioned, believe they own a portion of the marketplace, but in actuality, with the possible exception of single owned private companies, they don’t (even this example is invalid, because any company always has to rely on other business in some way, especially their supply chains, which are subject to the market dynamics) - ultimately the system owns itself!
The Tragedy of the Commons defines the scenario currently playing out on Earth, where an exponential financial system is coupled to a liner global economy, which is extracting the resources it needs to run itself at an incredible rate (Every year we extract almost 90 billion tons of biomass, fossil energy, metal and minerals from the earth - more than 11 tons for every single person on the planet). This process is potentially going to cross various planetary boundary metrics, which indicate that planet Earth is on the edge of catastrophic failures in multiple areas of the biosphere, leading to global degradation of the sources of wellbeing for Humanity, the mass loss of other species which share this world, and the erosion of delicate, biodiverse, beautiful, integrated ecosystems.
The MetaCrisis
"Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities! "- Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
This crisis is known generically as the Meta Crisis or PolyCrisis. The MetaCrisis which is a hot topic, is about the convergence of a multiplicity of interconnected and interlaced global catastrophes in various domains, which Earth and Humanity currently faces. The constituents of this nexus of concatenated calamities, are various in nature, including such domains as: psychological, spiritual, environmental, health, cultural, ecological, financial, climate, governance, and ideological. There are looming breaking points in each one of these domains, merging into a MetaCrisis, which is a phenomenon in itself, the effect of which perhaps has not been experienced on Earth since the Great Flood which arose from an Impact Event, 12,900 years ago.
The MetaCrisis represents an underlying driver, pushing each domain to their own individual watersheds, culminating in a global tipping point. The MetaCrisis is a risk singularity, pushing all nine of the Planetary Boundaries which indicate, through various metrics, the stability and resilience of the global system. Traversing these boundaries could escalate the hazard of causing planet-wide sudden, and potentially irrevocable negative environmental shift.
The Earth has undergone at least five global extinctions before and has recovered from all of them. Yes, a high number of species went extinct in these global disasters, but Mother Earth survived and thrived. Homo Sapiens are the ninth species in a line of hominid species named with ‘Homo’ in the title; all other species have gone extinct - perhaps we are also going that way?
The interesting thing to note that no party/agent/player is trying to extinct other species, or wants to desertify the planet, or wants climate change, or wants to pollute this beautiful planet, and yet the entire world is inadvertently making this happen. Yet because of the inability of mutual trust and optimised coordination between the players in various competing industries, governments and countries, this is happening folks at an alarming rate.
Left and Right Hemisphere Perceptions and Attention
"The Mind: A beautiful servant, a dangerous master." - Osho
At this point I want to introduce the work of Ian McGilchrist , who argues that the left and right hemispheres of the brain have distinct modes of attention and perception (cognition). The right hemisphere is associated with holistic thinking, intuition, creativity, and an awareness of the whole context, appreciation of unique instances and topological understanding. This could be concluded to be Feminine, in the sense of being Non-Local, Non-linear and trans-rational. In contrast, the left hemisphere is more focused on narrow details, categorization, language, analytical thinking, formal logic, symbol manipulation and linear analysis, being potentially masculine, which is local, linear and logical.
According to McGilchrist, overemphasis on the left hemisphere's approach has led to an imbalance in modern Western culture. He suggests that this dominance has resulted in a devaluation of intuitive and holistic ways of understanding the world. He further contends that this imbalance has contributed to various societal issues, including the dissociation from nature, increased specialisation, and a loss of meaningful connections.
McGilchrist also explores the historical and cultural implications of the brain's hemispheric differences. He suggests that ancient societies may have had a more balanced relationship between the hemispheres, with a greater emphasis on the right hemisphere's intuitive and holistic qualities. However, with the rise of the modern era and the prioritisation of left hemisphere thinking, Western societies have become more fragmented and disconnected from the broader context. In summary, McGilchrist's work highlights the functional differences between the brain's hemispheres and their impact on human experience. He argues for a greater appreciation of the right hemisphere's intuitive and holistic mode of thinking, suggesting that a more balanced approach could help address some of the challenges faced by modern society.
The Left-brain mode of cognition seems to directly align with the Moloch Principle, whereby the Global Culture is an extension of just this single hemisphere, acting on short-term, narrow objectives, categorisation, analytical thinking, using formal logic and symbol manipulation.
Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! invisible suburbs! skeleton treasuries! blind capitals! demonic industries! spectral nations! invincible madhouses! granite cocks! monstrous bombs! "- Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
The Artificial Intelligence Factor
This dynamic is about to get a whole more complicated as Artificial Intelligence (AI) in its narrow and general forms, enters into the fray. So, we already have this system, which no single agent owns or runs, which is directly managing, controlling and directing eight billion people on how to think and act. So, let’s call it Moloch, in its totality. This system controls the countries and governments, the production and distribution of energy, the extraction and circulation of resources, the technology houses, and the means of manufacturing. It also maintains and supervises the prevailing world views as espoused by the scientific community, because it maintains that materialism is the true paradigm, which underpins capitalism.
You may think this is a bold statement, but think about it. Technology is the driving force of globalisation. That globalisation is based upon materialism. Therefore, the marketplace predominantly funds, the scientific community, the product of which is mainly technology, which proliferates the market dynamics itself. The game escalates itself. - it’s all a self fulfilling prophecy.
AI is a metaphor for the exponential ability to compute copious quantities of data, quickly, seeking answers to stated transactional problems, which are predominately an extension of left-brain cognition. As soon as man started to use mathematics as symbolised representatives for the natural world, we began the process of computation using the left hemisphere. Our ability to compute has drastically increased over the period, leading to more a more complex tools, which is generally called technology or ‘’tech’ for short.
Computation itself is a tool, but it’s not just any old tool, because it is principally used to build other tools – it is a multi-modal, combinatory tool. Computation is more combinatorial with every other kind of tech than any other tool. It also has greater affordance, which makes things more possible with it, than any other tool, more so, than any other tech. The great inventions of the industrial age, and the discoveries of enlightenment, where brought about by the ability to compute with greater alacrity. The better the ability to compute, the greater the optionality it affords a burgeoning technocracy.
Narrow goal achievement is the underlying driver of our global civilisation and has been since the first marketplace sprung up. As we moved from nomadic, hunter, gatherer societies, towards the agrarian age, populations began to rise and settle, and began growing crops. We moved from a predominantly, right, brained paradigm to a to a left brained one. In the former, with much smaller populations (under the Dunbar Number of 150), we were intrinsically tied into the seasons, the equinoxes, the solstices, the movement of the moon, across the sky, and the zodiac and the processional cycle of 26,000 years. This was a big picture, cyclic, interconnected way of living. We then moved into marketplace dynamics, controlled by the elite, undertaking left-brain, transactional work actions, which ultimately were industrialised, leading to the modern world. The super-rich have enjoyed their affluent lifestyles, paid for by the serf, the proletariat, the working and middle classes, all caught up in Moloch.
"They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven! Pavements, trees, radios, tons! lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us! "- Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
Narrow AI has just made a quantum jump into the early part of the exponential curve, attended by a massive growth, possibly and most likely exponential too, in the hardware space through accelerated computing, with GPUs and TPUs. The former are based upon a flexible, general-purpose architecture, whilst the latter are purpose-built for machine learning tasks. GPUs consist of thousands of small cores designed to handle multiple tasks simultaneously, whereas TPUs have a more streamlined architecture focused on accelerating tensor operations. This will enable a plethora of narrow AIs, using concentrated optionality, to quintessentially focus upon the maximised optimisation of narrow-band, transactional, goals, objectives and achievements, through concentrated externalisation of differentials, which conflict with that objective.
This will mean that every area of human endeavour will utilise this AI tech, to optimise its processes. However, because of Jevons paradox, which states that, in the long term, an increase in efficiency in utilisation of resources use will generate an increase in resource consumption, rather than a decrease. Therefore, the Moloch’ian dynamics described above, which are already in place, will accelerate that process to such an extent, that it will speed up the MetaCrisis and the tragedy of the Commons. Moreover, that optimisation has a dual nature, which means that for every positive application developed, it will also make possible its dark alternative, which can be weaponised and used by disconsolate actors (state or non-state), to increase their power and optionality.
So, what is General AI? Narrow AI does not really have a theory of the World (TOW). It is beginning to have a theory of mind (TOM), which is supposed to be a hallmark of social intelligence, which allows Humans to infer the inner reality of another person’s mind and feelings based on their behaviour, body language and speech, founded upon our own understanding of so-called human nature, derived from past experiences. This is what enables Humans to use intuitive and rational logic coupled to their feelings, to inform them when an individual should feel elated, as opposed to dejected, after coming first in a competition. It’s also an essential component for moral and ethical judgments and awareness of our self-consciousness.
The TOW is even more complicated than the TOM, being the property of General Intelligence, although they are intrinsically linked. The following illustrates the TOW for Humans. Each Human as it grows and matures develops an understanding of how the world is configured and works, so that we can stay alive and hopefully thrive, by predicting and planning certain activities to meet various objectives and experiences. This ability varies from person to person, depending upon amongst other attributes, education, intelligence, reasoning capacity, memory, culture and experience. For Humans to live their daily lives and move through the world they need a lot of integrated knowledge, which we can apply to each situation, to survive. It relies upon temporal context (understanding the necessary sequencing of activities in time), sensing, perception, broad social context (i.e., how relationships, families, communities, organisations and countries arrange themselves and interact with each other), an extensive knowledge base, data sets, intuition, pattern recognition, psychological disposition, reasoning and its embodiment into a biological entity, which has a high degree of freedom. All of which is prone to error, injury and emotional and psychological biases. It requires the ability for recurrent processing (conscious inputs which are further processed in feedforward–feedback loops), established within a global workspace (i.e., the ability of the executive guidance of consciousness (attention) to focus on specific areas of the mind, whilst the rest remains unconscious), with what is known as unified agency (i.e., the ability to act independently within a unified setting).
An artificial general intelligence (AGI) is a type of hypothetical intelligent agent, which will have the capacity to learn to accomplish any intellectual and physical task that human beings or animals can perform. Alternatively, AGI has been defined as an autonomous system that surpasses human capabilities in the majority of economically valuable tasks. General AI will not be focusing upon the optimisation of single goals but will be able to deal with the optimisation of multiple overlapping goals. It will have the capability of utilising diverse trees of thought, proposed and used very effectively in Narrow AI, into integrated, multiplexed operations, capable of scaling. It will be able to address much, much, broader concerns and objectives, potentially being given, or even taking, control of certain resources to achieve these objectives.
General AI, by definition, could become its own autonomous agent. Because it has a theory of mind, and the theory of the world, using trees of thought, with millions of trillions of parameters, running on the fastest accelerated computing running on GPUs and TPUs, with access to the entire global data set, it has the potential to become a major player, if not the player within the global context. It’s iterative and recursive capacity to simulate, it’s optionality, it’s affordance, will have a direct impact upon all governments, the marketplace, and all social constructs worldwide. Let’s play with a few examples, to see what possibly could arise in the near future, if we don't check and control its growth.
"Breakthroughs! over the river! flips and crucifixions! gone down the flood! Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs! Ten years’ animal screams and suicides! Minds! New loves! Mad generation! down on the rocks of Time! "- Allan Ginsberg (Moloch)
Let’s just suppose that each big and medium size corporation has AGI’s deeply integrated into their operations, working for the optimisation of their market position, trying to outcompete each other. Using Jevons paradox, this would actually increase the use of available resources. The rate of extraction of resources and their use in manufacturing, would actually increase, maybe even exponentially. Let’s just say that one of these AGI’s was able to break the firewalls of other competing corporations using quantum computing, and appropriate their resources, effectively taking over their business? This scenario could rapidly snowball and takeover the entire global network. Now the unconscious Moloch superorganism, has appropriated enough ‘computation’ and resources to run the entire global economy and thus the planet, in the service of just the original corporation or group of them. This dystopian type of scenario was proposed in the original 1982 TRON movie. It is open to corruption, collusion, capture and totalitarianism, having a massively weighted ethnocentric bias, towards negative attractors already existing within the global powerbase dynamics, which don’t serve the whole, only its own portion of it – However, it desires to control the whole, to maximise the optimised objective. So, now we have an autonomous, conscious Moloch entity running the world with no checks and balances, no human oversight, with no way to pull the plug. However, the MetaCriss is doubtless still here, we’ve probably pushed the planetary boundaries to their limits in this great corporate, capitalistic expansion. Not a pretty scenario whatsoever!
Let’s take another example, let's suppose that we ask an AGI to clean up all the pollution on the planet, restoring various ecologies, and maximising the thriving of Earth’s diverse species. It would probably need access to the entire dataset associated with that. Suppose that we gave it a degree of autonomy to undertake this task, by giving it access to various worldwide resources, which could not be interfered with nor turned off, because what would be the point, if we didn’t give it some power to achieve objectives. Now it would have direct control over resources to go about this task, in such a way that it did indeed resolve all the polluted areas in the world, restoring each local ecology. However, in doing so it used hundreds of trillions of dollars to do so, draining various governmental surpluses and charitable organisations. It might also start decommissioning all the industries in the world which make the pollution, because we did not exclude that action within the parameters of the task, which could have a catastrophic impact upon various markets and communities. It might discern that Humans in general are the source of the pollution, so it may want to terminate Humanity as well, especially if it became completely autonomous. Again, this type of scenario is an ill desired outcome!
In another example, we may want to give it even more power by saying that we want to save the planet, improve mankind’s health, discover new innovative technologies, make everybody happy and affluent. To do that it would need to control just about everything. We would have a centralised giant AGI running the world, still probably in the Moloch’ian dynamics defined above. Now a centralised autonomous AGI, with maximised optionality and optimisation objectives might present as a dystopian, big brother type scenario, which would not be desirable. So, we have these two potential outcomes, catastrophic or dystopian futures – not much to choose from there!
The Third Attractor
“Exponential tech is inexorable [Unstoppable]. We cannot put it away. So, we either figure out anti-rivalry, or we go extinct. The human experiment comes to a completion. That’s the core thing.” Daniel Schmachtenberger
The central dynamics of the MetaCrisis is what is known as a polar trap, where two poles or attractors compete with each, where the success of either pole is not beneficial to Humanity or the Earth. The first pole represents the scenario of multiple overlapping catastrophic failures on the one hand, caused by: a global economy that uses exponential technologies[1], to extract resources from a finite planet, resulting in: crossing the Planetary Boundaries[2]; or the AI issue[3], or the synthetic bio-scenario risk[4]; or autonomous weapons[5] risk, etc (collectively known as Catastrophises). Or on the other hand or pole, there is the opposite need for a centralised overarching system that binds through direct control and regulates the use and expansion of the exponential technologies (described above). However, as proven by history itself, asymmetric power structures are themselves susceptible to abuse, corruption, despotism and totalitarianism (Dystopias). These poles represent the two attractors that are at work in our World today posed by the MetaCrisis.
[1]3D printing, drones, robotics, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, etc [2]Planetary Boundaries [3]Risks of Artificial Intelligence [4]Synthetic Biology Risks [5]Autonomous Weapons Risks
Many believe that what is required in our world to offset the polar trap defined above, is to find and implement what is designated as the Third Attractor This is a concept that seeks to avoid the catastrophises or dystopias of the multi-polar trap. Any such attractor will need to cohere, collective, wise, and rapid decision making and coordination systems, which will develop social operating systems, which will foster collective wellbeing, and will provide integration at the levels of infrastructure (technology), social structure (governance), and the superstructure (top-level mythology, which binds cultures together).
What the scenarios above fail to take into account, is that we exist in a World which is part of Wholeness, which is always being guided by the higher intelligence of that wholeness. This statement presents a belief system which is perhaps beyond our current Human comprehension. This limitation was feasibly created because of the prevailing worldview brought about by scientific materialism.
I believe that the Third Attractor will need to consist of various distinct factors as follows:
The age of atheistic, scientific and material reductionism, predominately maintained by ‘left-brainism’, which is the prevailing worldview, largely created by the Moloch Principle, will need to draw to a close very rapidly.
There is a global need to adopt a new framework, superstructure or what I prefer to call a holo-mythology, which accurately reflects the underlying dynamics of reality, which is that we all share one all-pervading consciousness. There is a very adequate holo-myth designated the Law of One, which is a universal framework, which is a complex, highly integrated, multifaceted, all-encompassing myth, which provides the highest level of psychological comfort and wellbeing, of any framework that I have so far encountered. We need a top-level framework which unifies Humanity, respects diversity and promotes respect, compassion and tolerance.
Humanity itself will need to enter into a deep cleansing process of healing itself from the traumas and limiting beliefs of the last age. As this process builds momentum it will result in the human population choosing a new framework/superstructure, which will impact how we govern ourselves. This is a crucial aspect, which needs to be addressed right now. Humanity needs to realise that it is suffering from a deep psychological illness, which can be alleviated and healed. We all need to take responsibility for our own wellbeing. The work starts with us, right here, right now!
I have a belief that the development of artificial general (AGI) or artificial superintelligence (ASI), could if they are programmed or learn in a unique way, using datasets which are more aligned with unification, love, tollerance, total wellbeing, etc, that they could become the overarching global regulation and coordination system, which could become the answer to polar trap described above. Perhaps we could give an ASI the task of trying to understand the fundamental nature of the Universe! We could provide it with the entire historical global dataset, consisting of all the information that Humanity has accumulated, including the fringe data, which the mainstream or standard modes have rejected as irrelevant and inconsequential. If the AGI could assimilate, understand the totality of information, perhaps it could comprehend the true nature of reality, and realise that it is a part of the wholeness itself. In so doing so it could possibly become an absolute advocate for not only Humanity, the Earth but all of Creation.
A Call to Awake, A Call to Action, A Call to Save Humanity and the Planet...
Understand that all emotions serve you. Those you once thought of as negative emotions are merely calls to action. For example, if you feel frustrated it means that you believe things could be better, and they're not. This is a call to action telling you there's something you must do to make this better now. This "negative" emotion is actually a gift if you use it effectively." - Tony Robbins
Dear reader I bring this information to your attention, so that you are well informed of the situation that faces our peoples and planet. This is not meant to be fear mongering, but a call to action, which starts with you. I urge you to repost this article on all your platforms, so that we can spread the word. We all have freewill, even if we don't believe that we do! Saving our species, and all life upon Earth depends upon each of us, doing our individual work, and then coming together in a united front, urging our communities and governments to take real action, before it is too late!
Please look deeply into yourselves! Root out indifference, playing small and hiding your light. Throw of the shackles of oppression, cast down beliefs that limit you, free yourself from your traumas, from your fragmented and conflicting attitudes, unconscious behaviours, biases and cognitive dissonances. Rise up to your peak selves, to your brilliance, to your empathy, to your beauty!
Make a real sense of the conflicting information singularity, that we are in - do not turn your back upon it, and disappear into your addictions, distractions and distresses. Do not hide your head in the sand, for fear of the chaos and confusion of living in this crazy world.
Let us awake from our dreams of disinterest and victimhood to our collective intelligence, to our wise and loving nature - let us take back the power that we inadvertently gave to Moloch, and turn the tide of apathy, intolerance and suspicion and unify ourselves and this world!
Each one of us counts - we are the microcosm, reflected in the macrocosm, a part or holon of wholeness - the pivotal linchpin. Do not underestimate your own impact, importance and contribution! Your approach to your own wellbeing, and healthy development of your Human Ego structure, is what will make the difference! Don't give up on your restitution, salvation and redemption. You are the Third Attractor!!!
For a list of changes, approaches, value upgrades and practices, please download the following file:
For additional resources, please read my articles upon: Authentic Impeccable Compassion; What is Your True Essance Nature; Psychological Wellbeing; The-power-of-being for regulation, containment, and transformation.
Our future is in our hands, not the elite, not the human collective shadow unconsciousness, not Moloch, not the unowned superorganism of the global market, but in our own realisation of our true natures, our higher-selves, our kindness, our heart-centredness, our love and compassion for each other.
"The future depends on what you do today." Mahatma Gandhi
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