Oct 25, 2021
The Dangerous Reality of Esoteric Systems
What happens when the complexity of the systems that sustain us exceeds our capacity to understand or influence?
I like the word esoteric for two reasons. The first is that it includes my name and I’m a big vain man-baby. The second one is that it’s super appropriate to describe a lot of things in the world and it doesn’t get used enough. Those aren’t great reasons but branding is a funny thing. My brand, like me, appears to be esoteric. I can infer this because it often feels like people have no sweet fucking clue what I’m doing.
What does it mean when something is Esoteric?
adjective
- Intended for or understood by only a small group, especially one with specialized knowledge or interests: synonym: mysterious.
- Relating to or being a small group with specialized knowledge or interests.
- Not known by or suitable for the public; private.
You are surrounded by Esoteric Systems
Silicon Valley pumps out esoteric systems like there’s no tomorrow. Building and controlling an esoteric system is how the biggest corporations in the world become the biggest corporations in the world. They also build new components for existing esoteric systems. A lot of the big problems you see when you watch the news relates to the struggles of various esoteric systems: the economy, the global supply chain, major religions, social media platforms, nations.
There are esoteric systems in nature as well. The hexagon at Saturns north pole is the result of an esoteric system. Consciousness is an esoteric system. Science is often the exploration of natural systems that aren’t fully understood and can be described as esoteric.
The foundation of modern science is built on older ideologies/fields of study/disciplines which were designed to understand reality that have since fallen out of favor and are disregarded by modern practitioners.
You participate in Esoteric Systems
The understandably imperfect civilization that has sustained you and your ancestors is built on esoteric systems. As our science and technology advanced esoteric systems are replaced in an unending dance of growth and progress powered by the desires and dreams of everyone who can understand and influence them. The rest of us simply consume what we can from them and engage with them in whatever ways we seem appropriate. Sometimes we must participate because we don’t have an alternative. You engage with esoteric systems as a result of where and when you were born.
We use esoteric systems to understand the impossibly complex world around us. The powerful have always used the best available systems. The current systems are always viewed as the best available systems.
An appropriate level of generalization can provide meaningful insight into complex things. Why you’re looking for insight and what you’re trying to do with that insight is where the rubber meets the road.
Esoteric systems are “Quantum”, man! [*bong hit*]
The word quantum gets misused a lot. Like a lot. I’ve misused it because the version I’ve used is from pop culture and not the actual science behind the term. Usually what people mean when they say “Quantum” is “I don’t understand this” or “magick”. There’s a strange, complex element to something that doesn’t make sense to us. Part of this has happened because of pop culture, part of it has happened because of heavily commodified new age spiritual movements, and part of it is very understandable ignorance about an incredibly complex and as-yet-not-truly-understood thing.
Sometimes people say “Quantum” when they mean esoteric. An esoteric system can be understood but is too complex or obfuscated to fully grasp. In pop culture a “Quantum” system is one which behaves in a way that is contrary to an intuitive understanding of reality. If you don’t know enough about both you’ll think they’re the same.
The main point I’m trying to get at is that complex things are complicated for a variety of possible reasons and it’s real hard to get everyone on the same page when it comes to understanding them: even when the complex thing applies equally to everyone, or has the potential to.
A concrete example I personally struggle with:
I struggle with accepting tarot or astrology. I have a bias that leads me to believe that they can’t deliberately make accurate predictions about me. I suspect that if they did make accurate predictions about me I’d be likely to write those predictions off as being the result of chance or some sort of trickery. Those are both possible reasons alongside “the system has functioned as intended”. I feel this way because this is the common narrative I’ve been presented around these subjects and also these subjects have histories that are rife with manipulative individuals.
I’m clearly displaying a bias. Even though I understand this I haven’t been quite able to change it. I’m also, and this is noteworthy, mostly OK with that. I don’t think that other people shouldn’t participate in this stuff. I understand how these esoteric systems have value for others. I disapprove of manipulative individuals in these fields in the same way I do every other field, so I don’t think it merits extra consideration for that. If people harm themselves here they are harming themselves of their own free will. Their agency is as important to them as mine is to me.
I’ve also seen a bunch of times where these tools have provided valuable insight to their practitioners.
These are tools.
Astrology and Tarot were the Quantum Computing of their days. They are rules-based esoteric systems which can be understood and utilized by practitioners and specialists. The imperfection of the systems of Astrology and Tarot relate heavily to the imperfections of modern prediction systems like machine learning algorithms: the complexity of reality and the imperfection of our ability to understand reality. It’s very hard to accurately predict outcomes of complex systems and we’ve never been able to consistently do it successfully. That might be impossible. This means that people can be wrong by accident or on purpose... just like many other things.
This doesn’t negate the fact that the most powerful people in the world, for huge swathes of the development of many civilizations, relied on Astrology and Tarot as esoteric systems capable of solving predictive problems. I used to reject Astrology and Tarot because I didn’t consider this. I didn’t yet understand that huge swathes of the modern corporate world rely on Machine Learning predictions which are equally esoteric and imperfect. I didn’t see the repeated pattern of behaviour and I didn’t understand how I was living in a more “evolved” version of that mindset. It’s not the same though and parts of the comparison can be rejected, so some folks use this as an excuse to fully reject the comparison. I choose not to.
I choose to believe that the general intention of many flawed systems is to provide generally well-intended support and accurate information because I believe that most people are generally well-intended and we all power these systems, even if we don’t control them.
Systemic trust is faith in esoteric systems
We all engage in faith-like behaviour. We accept that things will work out a certain way through participation in systems or culture even though a significant portion of the determining factors are beyond our awareness or understanding. Some people have faith in elements which can be described as spiritually metaphysical and others have faith in elements which can be described as systemically metaphysical. Economic, cultural, and scientific systems have metaphysical spaces relating to ideology and consciousness which often requires the adoption of faith-like behaviour.
We often expect other people to demonstrate our faith-like behaviour because we project our views, understanding, and awareness of esoteric systems onto them. Without deliberate effort we often fail to form cognitive empathy for how they may actually feel about complex and unknowable things.
Digital technology has fully disrupted all esoteric systems.
This is very important: You can’t fully trust the origins of the feelings you have when you’re using the internet. Big parts of the internet are designd to convince us to think things without thinking about it. We don’t fully understand what this is doing to us. We don’t fully understand what it’s doing to the people around us. Maybe we understand individual components of what’s happening, and maybe we have the ability to learn more and improve our understanding, but we do not understand what the internet is doing to our civilization.
You can and should trust yourself and your intuition, but it’s important to be mindful of the fact that we’re all capable of sufering similar cognitive biases as a result of the technological and culture ecosystems that connect us.
The impact of the internet is the biggest, most obvious, and most direct manifestation of the disruption of esoteric systems on most people.
Digital technology makes everything more efficient along specific metrics and it disregards others completely unless it’s designed to pay attention to other metrics. It has made the global supply chain more efficient. It has made capitalism more efficient. It has made our ability to connect with ideas and information more efficient… but it doesn’t do anything about the ability of our minds to understand these ideas or information.
What is the solution?
The best way to understand an esoteric system is through a multidisciplinary approach, and also with the support of other people. Just because you didn’t build the internet doesn’t mean you can’t understand it. You need to. The people around you need to. You can come together and have honest conversations about how scary this is and then work together to figure things out.
You (yes you who is reading this right now) need to do more. You probably can’t do much more on your own. You need to collaborate. You need to connect with the people in your lives who are struggling with many of the same problems so you can work with them. They’ll help you feel better about things.
Maybe you can’t understand or fix all of the esoteric systems that dominate our lives but you can try. You can lift up those around you in shared effort and purpose. You can take any of the small steps you don’t want to take because all of this is someone elses’ problem. It’s not. It’s your problem and it’s everyone’s problem.
Stop consuming media that scares you into feeling powerless. You’re not. Look closer to your life and your lived experience. That’s where your power is. If you can read this on the internet you can can probably do more. You have to even if you don’t want to. You have to even if others are doing less. You have to even if you didn’t cause these problems. You have to because everyone has to, including me and everyone who says they don’t have to. Since we can’t force people to do more we just need to do even more than what would be considered fair. Oh well. That sucks. Do it anyway.
We need to have better conversations about all of this.
I wish I could offer a better solution but I can’t… “the solution” is just “more collaboration” because so many of the same problems are everywhere. This solution needs to come from people who are able to convince people to collaborate. You know: Influencers. These are the people we choose to follow and give our energy to. They need to start doing more than putting us at odds with one another or standing back and analyzing from a detached perspective: there needs to be greater collaboration among all of the new social and cultural groups that exist.
Some communities are collaborative and will require a democratic shift toward deliberate collaboration. Some communities are formed around specific individuals or systems and must be led towards deliberate collaboration by those elites. This isn’t about saying “this is the right way for all systems to exist” because if we only have that conversation many of us are more likely to cease to exist.
Ask or tell your leaders to collaborate more if it’s at all possible even if it makes your life a little harder. It’ll be an imperfect lurch towards whatever is required to ensure the reduction of a number of shared challenges but that’s actually the only possible next step for us and we need to fucking take it.
