I am a fool. I have no business writing this book or starting a religion. I am not in communication with the divine, I am not enlightened, I am not even a scholar of anything, I am nobody. In fact, I feel weirdly criminal even writing this book. The founders of most religious movements in the last 200 years have either been delusional, ego-maniacs, con-men or fools. I hope I am just a fool. Religion is very much an inter-disciplinary topic encompassing psychology, philosophy, history, cosmology, economics, sociology and many other disciplines and I am not an expert in any of them. Any real experts in these fields would know better than starting a religious movement. It is a career-ending move for any academic and might even be a life-ending move given the state of affairs in today’s world. To misquote a famous line, fools rush in where the wise fear to tread.
But in addition to being a fool, I am a curious person, interested in understanding how the world works and how to best live my own life in it. I am also a concerned citizen of the world and see the suffering all around me, even in the midst of material prosperity and wonder if something can be done to fix it. Humanity has to navigate even trickier issues in the next 100 years. How we handle the looming problems of social inequality in face of a climate crises, increasing automation of work, genetic engineering of humans and the proliferation of destructive technology, will determine if we die out, get knocked back 10000 years or elevate ourselves to the next level of a civilization, whatever that is. But how can we tackle these challenges effectively when we are so divided by our ignorance about our place in the universe and how to care for ourselves and each other.
In humanities’ past transitions from apes to hunter-gatherers and hunter-gatherers to peasants and peasants to industrial city dwellers, this has been done by religions. Religions use the triple pillars of belief, behavior and belonging to shape our values and desires and give meaning to our lives. But unlike the religions of the past where belief was based on superstition, behavior was forced upon the individual by others and belonging could be quite exclusionary, I believe that in the 21st century we might just have the right ingredients to introduce all three of these pillars without any of their past drawbacks. I have resisted this foolish idea of forming such a religion for many years but have been drawn to it repeatedly. Finally, after the 2016 presidential election in the USA, I could no longer hold back and have decided to jump in.
My inspirations for the organization structure of this project which gives me hope that such a religion is possible
- Open source softwares like Ubuntu, Linux etc
- Crowd sourced wisdom on online platforms like Reddit, Hacker News and Quora.
- Consensus based cooperatives.
A large proportion of the content in this book is also not original. It is either paraphrased or inspired from other writers especially Sam Harris author of End of Faith and Waking Up, Yuval Noah Harari author of Sapiens and Homo Deus, Jonathan Haidt author of Happiness Hypothesis, John and Hank Green at Crash Course and uncountable other authors, Ted Talks and a myriad youtube vloggers. All of whom, themselves, stand on shoulders of philosophers and scientists, named and unknown, going back thousands of years and many of whom may not agree with each other on everything.
I state all this, not with any pride but as a warning for the imperfection of this author and his material. It is meant to be updated and perfected. That is why it is v0.1
-Ordinary Seeker
