I am formally declaring myself the unofficial Wizard of Canada

I will happily discuss giving up the title to anyone who wants it

Hey there!

I’m a wizard. It took me a while to fully acknowledge that I’m a wizard. I’m one of the newer types of wizards and I didn’t realize it was a type of wizard until I spent more time doing what looked like wizardry. It was a very strange way to view myself for a while but now it’s just how I view myself.

Wizard

This is an older article. I’m still the unofficial Wizard of Canada but I guess I’m like a level 2 wizard now or something.

Full-Stack Reality Engineering

Here’s the original article:

I’m an esoteric technologist. This means that I focus on understanding technology that is mysterious or intended to only be known by a select few. I view boundaries placed around ideas as a challenge and encourage everyone else to do the same. Being a wizard has taught me that I’m allowed to think what I want and you deserve the same. Thinking is Magick.

What other kind of Magick do I do?

I don’t do Magick yet*. I don’t trust it yet because I don’t trust myself with it. I only discovered for myself that Magick was real less than a year ago. I’ve since discovered that there’s an incomprehensibly wide variety of elements of reality relating to some sort of metaphysical phenomena.

Magick in this context can be described as “metaphysical events relating to consciousness” if you’d prefer — but it’s definitely Magick. I’ve written about it elsewhere and believe it represents something we need to come to understand and accept in a healthy way. Magick is a part of our shared reality but many of the systems we use to connect with one another do not acknowledge it.

*There is one exception to my non-Magickal status and it exists at the end of this article.

What makes a good Wizard?

I’m going to describe myself a bunch here. You may read this and think “I know that” or “I do that” or “He’s wrong/I know more”. That’s all totally valid and some of it’s probably true. I’m like a B+ generalist.

I’m a good philosopher

I’m not formally trained but I’m good enough that a bunch of formally trained people seem not to be completely opposed to me on the internet.

That sentence is a good analysis of my style of philosophy.

I struggle with analyzing myself because of biases so I try to understand myself in relation to others by understanding their reactions to me. (This is a thing that’s useful for parasocial relationships like on Twitter or podcasts)

Because I’m not formally trained my philosophizing is weird and nonstandard, informed as much by my understanding of people and culture as it is by high level philosophical concepts. I don’t think this makes my philosophy better than others, it’s different and is often lacking nuance or is flawed in ways I don’t understand owing to my ignorance of more established philosophical knowledge. If I can ever get my shit together enough to go back to university I’ll probably go get a philosophy degree.

I understand technology

I’ve worked on very complex digital systems. Code that I’ve written has been used by large organizations like Coachella or the Canadian Armed Forces. I have enough experience building digital systems that I’ve gotten good at understanding non digital systems. I view a lot of things as technology because I consider consciousness to be a form of technology.

It’s just not technology we made.

As a result of that perspective I think that brands and stories are technology, as are more complex things like social movements or religions. I don’t hold this view in a way intended to convey disrespect. It’s obviously incredibly challenging to develop and sustain harmony among individuals at scale and things would be worse if we hadn’t found the success we’ve found thus far.

I understand enough about technology to understand discussions about where technology is going. I think about emergent technology like Neuralink, cryptocurrencies, VR, CRISPR, AI and am often able to follow-along in a way which leads to new and interesting thoughts on my part.

This weird understanding of technology also applies to physics/metaphysics, as evidenced by my other writing.

I can communicate complex things well

I have a long history of teaching complicated things to people and I also have significant experience in customer service. I still really like people even though I’ve met a whole bunch of people, often in an asymmetrical power dynamic where I’ve been subservient to them.

I’m trying to help you

The world is obviously far more challenging than any individual is capable of successfully navigating on their own.

Does anyone look like they’re in charge? Presidents Biden, Xi, or Putin? Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk? The Pope? No. Many people are as freaked out by how wildly out of control everything has become as you are. We’re in denial about this so we can’t understand it. If we can’t understand it we can’t talk about it. If we can’t talk about it we can’t do anything about it.

If people with that level of power can’t keep things from getting all rickety and gross then obviously the acquisition of personal power by elite individuals is insufficient to sustaining a stable global civilization. (I don’t think capitalism is working well but I’m not anti-capitalism — primarily because so many people are pro-capitalism. I would like those people to make a better capitalism though.)

Our media and culture puts focus on those elite individuals at the expense of what’s around us. I don’t want to be another person like that but it looks like that’s how you have to exist to say big things.

The Magick I might have done

I believe that I was [inspired/called/channeled/summoned/manifested] an [idea/spirit/Egregore/entity] in order to do this:

GitHub - EricLortie/Church-of-Earth-Platform-MVP: Church of Earth

I don’t think this “magical” experience is unique or special. It looks like a wide variety of people experience a wide variety of powerful creative experiences.

It’s a social media platform designed to be a problem solving and project management tool for individuals and communities. It’s intended to be a global public utility to address a global mental health crisis. It’s designed to mitigate online conflict and reduce addictive social media behaviour. It includes a wide variety of functionality capable of being combined in complex and useful ways. Using the platform can be the the basis for a cryptocurrency system capable of mitigating income inequality. The data from the use of this platform can be used in the development of artificial intelligence. The branding relates to a spiritual humanist movement I also developed which is built around consent and helping others.

I understand why I shouldn’t have made a religion and I understand how religion can be harmful. I don’t want to be a religious or spiritual leader. I don’t really want to be a leader at all. I think that I’m the type of person who often wants to becomes a leader and then does a shitty job of it.

I’m done working on it. This is evidenced by the timeline of when I worked on it:

In order for that to accomplish anything it needs more people. In order to get more people it needs leadership. I’m not a leader, I’m a wizard, so that’s just sitting on my shelf under a “break glass in case of emergency” sign.

So what am I supposed to do now?

I currently work at a hotel. I do an alright job of it but I’m often very distracted. I can’t seem to write code anymore — I find that the sustained logic required to program over a long term is beyond my abilities and trying to write code causes me a lot of anxiety.

Maybe I experienced a form of psychosis and have either recovered or am simply in a relatively stable state of psychosis. I don’t know.

Update: I’ve received a formal diagnosis for anything despite having spoken to a variety of mental health professionals. I’m able to maintain stable employment in a variety of industries in both management and highly technical positions, and have a varied social life — so I’m mostly functional. 🤷‍♂️

But here I am. I’m Canadian and a Wizard, so I’m declaring myself the unofficial Wizard of Canada.

The unofficial Wizard of Canada

If you believe the title of “unofficial Wizard of Canada” should be yours just let me know and I’ll probably give it to you. If you need any wizarding done here’s my card:

Thanks for reading. If I ever get drone striked or assassinated know that I meant everything I ever said, except for the mistakes I didn’t know about which I would have been open to talking about if I’d known about them.