mm I thought it could be a distrikt in and off itself? I forgot to add the destruction market (assassins/kill bounties, soulhacking - think Morgan’s Conflict investment model but the conflict is inside the bodysleave or in the transitions mechanisms) Market Forces - Wikipedia
I absolutely love everything here! 10/10!
Oh and I did notice both the ‘little death’ as a Dune and a orgasm reference — it was very interesting to see that this happened accidentally! It felt SO deliberate!
Oh, for some reason I don’t have edit powers here!
I wish I could just add some stuff, but anyway! Here’s some additions:
Rituals
- Goro suggestions. In Hygge, the deemed emotional AI called Goro will send periodic suggestions of activities to its citizens. Those can vary from the tame “shake someone’s hand today” to the radical “enclose yourself in a dark space and scream until you feel something inside of you break. Minimum of 9 hours.” Some adept followers of Goro will accept whichever suggestion the AI proposes with religious-like fervor.
Belief Systems
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Atemporality. Heavily inspired by the old native Amazonian beliefs of the Haux Haux family, this post-shamanic doctrine is mainly defined by its rejection of time as a linear experience. Its practitioners strive to achieve states of anomalous timeness, notably thought the use of N-dimethyltryptamin or DMT and complex series of meditative rituals. Though very few embrace the doctrine for the entirety of their lives, it’s known to captivate many of the most brilliant of Witness’ people for a few years. It is mostly practiced in Avantgrid and Libria, but also found in other Distrikts Minor and Major.
The Ghost Amazonia Part of the mythos around Atemporality is the visions and out of the body experiences that its practitioners claim to experience, such as time flowing backwards, visiting other planes of existence, and inhabiting 2D or 4D bodies. Chief among those experiences, are the tales of the Ghost Amazonia, the so-called spirit of the long gone Amazonian Rainforest, completely destroyed in 2232AD (old Christian calendar), but allegedly still available for visiting through ritual. Many shamans of Atemporality claim to have mapped the old forest.
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Can be - more cyberpunk than cyberpunk. I am wary of Morgan because the bodysleeving idea is used purely in the pursuit of killing stuff, and not really explore imo. For example, if you could interface with a human being that way, you could feasibly construct simulations and leave meatspace behind altogether. Or have human minds controlling robot bodies, which would both break the monopoly of the rich on eternal life AND get around the body-shortage that is rampant in Altered Carbon.
What if you merge this and the Necropolitics Extreme Edition idea, and summon @amelia, and spin off a Distrikt?
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I suggest we ought to do away with the notion of eternal life in this world, make it metaphysically impossible or at least a paradox because of the cyclical nature of time? Go, reset, go, reset - always a transformation - you do no come back as yourself, the transcendence to some other state is real…?
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eternal life makes things too simple imho
You could easily do one that says “when you’re dead, you’re dead”.
done and added all to wiki. Have a look?
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Great additions. Interesting parallel to the recurring primordial forest myth of English folklore: from Mythago Wood to Tolkien. Added! Amazonia generalized to make it the dream-territory of all rainforests.
Nice, worked it in. One critique:
- When you are dead, you are dead. Your life force can be transferred into a new body once the cycle of your life ends, however your “self” ceases to exist once your time is up. There exists no such thing as eternal life.
This is textbook Buddhism.
Super!
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or, wait - is that an issue?
Not a problem at all. Just pointing out that it’s already accounted for in the basic Buddhist matrix, and can be separate or intermingled among many-come-one practices - very pick your flavor.
hmm how about sum total of life energy is finite…
Radical environmentalism would absorb that in a flash. Hang on, I have an idea . . .
Update: added Tielhardism, as one of my favourite philosophers who I don’t believe in. @alberto, might interest you. @nadia, the Tielhards are in opposition . . .
Inconsistency! I used Teilhard to underpin a radical order in the Covenant. In my version, he’s been canonized as a biologist-saint (below). Can I reconcile?
I guess it’s good news that Witness has already grown so dense that not even @yudhanjaya can keep track of every detail!
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Oof, I have committed the cardinal sin! Please reconcile as you see fit.
Done.
Have you played or watched Soma? I think they way they deal with it in that game is amazing.
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Indeed. It felt like Evangelion x Marathon: Durandal. I used a similar line of thinking for the Salvage Crew: AI are just humans writ into hardware. The people most likely to survive the surgery that imprints a human consciousness onto a machine are those who believe in reincarnation, and can therefore accept a new body as part of the karmic cycle. Because of this, Buddhist planetary colonies are often hunted down by corporates looking for new minds for their expeditions.
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I just heard you talk about this on the imaginary worlds podcast. Had no idea that you were going to be on it, so that was a nice surprise!
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