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"What kind of technopagan are you?"During a recent discussion on Slashdot, I mentioned I was a technopagan. Someone asked me "What kind of technopagan are you?" This was my reply:
My off the cuff answer is "a pathologically eclectic one". :) After following your hyperlink, I'm not sure if I can give a better answer, but I'll take a stab at it. I guess you might say I'm something of the technoshamanic type. I always giggle at the phrase "software engineer", since how I write code has nothing in common with what most people think of as engineering. It's an intuitive, artistic talent, based almost entirely on ones sense of aesthetics, or at least that's my experience. I completely dumbfounded my boss when he discovered I can't tell a resistor from a, well, I can't even think of the name of another electronic component to complete this sentence. I have no idea how computers work. Everything below the level of assembly language is simply magick as far as I'm concerned. I believe ideas exist independently of people, and I believe they sometimes desire to be expressed into the physical world. Philosophers have often wondered at how mental events cause physical events and vice versa (the lack of a plausible mechanism is the primary argument used against Dualism). I don't know and/or care much how it happens, but I know it does. Because of this, we serve as perfect conduits for ideas (completely mental things) who want to find physical expression, to actually affect the physical world. ESR has been known to describe programming as scratching an itch nagging at you. That itch is an idea trying to being expressed. For me, though, this would be a gross understatement. Some ideas I can ignore, and they either continue to hound me or go look for another conduit. But some are far more powerful than an itch. The really powerful ones take over completely. I am ridden, as a voudon priest ridden by the loa. I achieve a state psychologists call disassociation. I watch, passively, as this living, willful force expresses itself through me. I do not tire, I do not hunger, I have no sense of touch, I do not hear the events around me, I do not see except in the narrow tunnel before me, if that much. I feel the idea, I feel its presence. I don't think about algorithms, I feel them. There's no normal sensory analog, but I liken it to that feeling you get when you walk through a dark room that you're familiar with -- you can feel where all the furniture is. It's like that -- I feel the program taking shape, and I feel the idea moving about to flesh it out, and not being the kind of person who can easily dismiss the evidence of my own senses, I cannot possibly rationally disbelieve in the real, independent existence of the ideas, and their ability act independently of us. The ancient Greek philosophers were right, the Forms are there, I know for I have seen them. I communicate with them, in a way, and they communicate with me, "speak" to me, "speak" through me when I let them (and sometimes I cannot help but let them). Sometimes they are not around. Then, I plod through code like the untalented students I went to school with, producing mediocre stuff. But eventually, the spirits return, and I produce works of great beauty and efficiency. And I thank the gods for allowing me to serve this function. I hope this answers your question...
The person who asked me this question runs a website about technopaganism, which can be reached by clicking here. |
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