Egregore and Not Getting What You Want

One recurring theme in this blog is that a system has a life of its own, or more precisely lives through the people who make it work. When you try to solve your problems with a system, you end up getting more of what the system wants, than what you wanted from your ostensible invention. You invite a god into this plane of existence.

The moderns thought they replaced the gods. Modernity is really an attempt at engineering social and economic systems from a rational basis, rather than rely on cultural traditions, which in the worst cases were long standing means of oligarchic control. Rationalism replaces the voice of received traditional wisdom in an attempt to free human beings. (It really frees them to engage in rational enquiry)

The moderns model of reality is the natural world is entirely passive and can be endlessly modified according to human whim and that everything is isolated and malleable on its own. (This is really exemplified by transhumanists.) In the worst cases, this belief is applied to nations and people, which some believe can be modified and shaped according to the whims of social engineers, and the most malignant case is that social engineers create a new religion and enslave people to ideologies like race supremacy and communism.

The egregore is a better and more subtle model for what actually happens. The engineer really builds a bridge for a new god to cross into our plane. It seems like older modes of design and engineering were possibly more conscious of this. The amish (again with the amish) skepticism of new technologies and systems is really another way to prevent malignant gods from entering into our world.