Supernal Expansionary Epistemological Spectatorism (SEES/AllSpec)
my actual 101% unironic ideology. the correct ideology. the only ideology you'll ever need.
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New Document Organization
__Perception, Curiosity, & Divinity__
() What is Shaded Perception (DedCep)?
() Why get rid of it?
() What does getting rid of DedCep even mean?
() What would be needed to eradicate DedCep from one's consciousness? Is that even possible?
__Why Individualism? / Dead Ends__
() Hive-minds
() Impositional Gods
() An Alternate Path to Godhood
__The God as Archivist__
() Politics
() Culture
() Economics
() Technology
__Conversations with a Spectator God__
() History vs Prescriptivist Impositions: When Spectatorism Clashes with Self-Interest
() Talking to an AllSpec: What would they tell you if you asked?
__Limitations__
() You've become an AllSpec. Now what?
() What was it all for?
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__Fourteen Words:__
Know everything forever. Curiosity is both a shadow of and a path to godhood.
__Introduction:__
SEES is an off-compass individualist ideology which posits all knowledge that exists, ever has existed, or ever will exist is knowable to a single consciousness. It believes that not only is this possible, but also virtuous, serving as the path to an omniscient spectator godhood.
The ideology is founded on the idea that all beings with consciousness start out with limitations on how they perceive their surroundings and acquire knowledge. These limitations come in forms such as bias, physical limitations, cognitive limitations in the way brains package information, and similar—all of which contribute to what's referred as "Shaded Perception" (DedCep). SEES argues that the purpose of living is to gradually reduce DedCep by accumulating knowledge and experience, with the ultimate end goal being to eliminate all DedCep from one's consciousness by achieving godhood.
Therefore, SEES believes that the nature of godhood is not to impose one's will onto others' consciousness or even attempt to alter reality itself, but instead to take a spectator role capable of seeing and knowing everything. This is called becoming an "All-Spectator" (AllSpec).
Obtaining this status, according to SEES, will require three things:
1) An infinite memory, capable of containing all knowledge in existence in one's active awareness (where information is instantly accessible and is never buried).
2) An omniscience that expands retroactively in time, i.e. all knowledge lost before SEES could be made aware of it shall be recovered through time travel.
3) Immortality, or a never-ending existence. This will make sure SEES gathers all knowledge that will ever exist in the future, and will not stop existing as long as there is something to observe and gather.
Ideology:
SEES strives, ultimately, for perfect perception; for truth in its totality.
A useful metaphor for describing how this ideology acts is the concept of "archives." Not literal ones, but instead the sum total of all knowledge and information held in one's active consciousness. It's easier to think of it as a mental archive. And so, running with this, SEES wants to archive absolutely everything.
Any sort of meddlesome or impositional interaction other than the seeking of knowledge and data is antithetical‡ to SEES praxis.
() However, the concept of privacy is a senseless restriction; your most private thoughts and feelings would make a wonderful and necessary inclusion to the archives. Map the consciousness!
() Loves history; hates speculation, interpretation, and retroactive reinterpretation. SEES: "Bias and historical revisionism shall be remedied by time travel."
() Does not want to make you to abandon DedCep or even to convince you to believe anything, but wants to know in full detail what you believe, why you believe it, and what processes led you to believing in it. And also what happened in every other second of your life. The archives require it!
() Granted the previous bullet point, you could say SEES is even more creepily watchful than Ingsoc could ever be, but is simultaneously hyper-insular. (~~So kinda like Egoist? "DedCep is the biggest spook to end all spooks and the ultimate fulfillment of one's ego is to become an AllSpec? But it's still your choice?" Hmm...~~)
__Values:__
() Statist ambivalent, except when the state retroactively tampers with history and archiving; therefore an ideology like Ingsoc is repulsive (but everything that a society under Ingsoc ever does still goes into the archives). Censure authoritarianism? Slightly less bad, and also get the popcorn.
() Culturally-ambivalent, but archive all the cultures no matter how they progress or regress. Embraces diversity and complexity; SEES: "What a wonderful addition to the archives!"
() Economically-ambivalent. SEES: "Private property? Intellectual property? Labor theory? The idea that my compilation of disparate sources of knowledge into one consolidated body presented without filters gives this compilation value that I should be compensated for? Interesting! I'd still willingly, unconditionally impart any knowledge I have access to to anyone who asks, though."
() Loves technology, and believes that science is the way to achieve better methods of archiving as well as the retroactively omnipresent immortality that will allow it to see and know everything. Once SEES obtains this though, it might as well be technological progress-ambivalent. Transhumanism is just a means to an end.
() Despite loving science and diligently archiving the concept of the butterfly effect, hopes it isn't true due to the implications that carries for time-travelling archival adventures. Unless of course there were to be a method of time travel in which the participant could roam freely and gather knowledge with a formless existence and be guaranteed not to alter anything, maybe. (Get on it, science!)
() Hive-minds: having multiple selves with the same goal and possibly even the same will seems helpful to achieve AllSpec status, but consuming everything until only you are left kind of defeats the point and goes against the very idea of spectatorism. The final form of a hive-mind is hence an imposed universal-level DedCep. Dead end; y'all tried. (Still added to archives anyway, though.)
["Wait, but why does becoming everything by assimilation/consumption keep DedCep? Isn't becoming everything and knowing yourself basically equivalent to AllSpec?" No it isn't. See: god of Pointland from the movie/book Flatland.]
() Hmm... from this response to hive-minds you can extrapolate that SEES has its own concept of individualism in a way. It distinguishes from itself and... everything else. It believes that at a fundamental level, SEES should be a separate entity to that which it spectates. It would not want to become part of a hive-mind, but isn't against the concept itself, and SEES would gladly observe how a hive-mind society could run its course.
() Identity, Emotions, Desires: Nonexistent and irrelevant. The only desire is to overcome DedCep and become AllSpec.
() How does SEES deal with outside influence that aims to further shrink its DedCep or prevent it from achieving AllSpec status? The egoist-ancap ways combined. SEES aims to be a non-meddling spectator, but if you actively mess with that, it will remove that outside influence standing in between itself and its goal until it can resume what it's doing, and nothing more.
__Limitations:__
() It could be argued that, in its purest sense, SEES as an ideology is effectively useless for humans since it does not provide any prescriptive framework with which to act or think based on the truth it aims to observe and know. Ergo, it simultaneously entertains all AND no prescriptive frameworks for viewing history.
() SEES presents nothing when it comes to how one might go about building a society, either.
() Biggest flaw in my (unbased DedCep) opinion: "Once you do possess all knowledge that exists, then what?" / "I'll tell you once I am completely rid of DedCep; then I can only give the best possible answer!"
() Another flaw: "Meddling/impositional acts are antithetical to SEES praxis... unless of course if my meddling helps me get time travel faster. Or indefinitely expanding memory, finally." So in the end, SEES is gonna prioritize becoming AllSpec above spectatorist concerns on 'the archivist as prescriptivist.'
() Flaw #3: what does it mean to become AllSpec in the first place? How will you know that there's nothing more to know? If you start creating insights based on all knowledge you currently have, do you not contribute brand new knowledge that has been absent from your collection thus far? The foundational belief onto which SEES grounds itself is the idea that one CAN know everything, but how can it be so sure that that foundational axiom isn't simply DedCep naiveté?
() Look, so to be honest, this ideology is basically... imagine that desire to explore all possible paths and choices in a video game, but apply that mindset to everything in the universe, and see how far I could take it. I'd love feedback!
MEMERY
[elsewhere]