What kind of god do you want to be?
In Jewish tradition the first real sin was “the satan” refusing to bow the knee to God (YHWH). He was the first rebel. He wanted to be God.
This has always resonated with me. Not that I have always wanted to be god, or at least that I thought that, but it seems to really explain the human condition. We lust for power. Some believing that would use it for good. Others just for the sake of power.
The recent Marvel/Disney show “Loki” took a run at this as well. Loki has always been a lost soul of a god in the Marvel movies. And rightfully so, he was essentially kidnapped and raised as a second class adopted child. Never fitting in, never knowing his true origins and family. So, he lashed out as a “god of mischief”. Understandable.
The show Loki was his “hero’s journey”, his quest to find out who he was while saving the Multiverse and this friends in the process. Ultimately, that was his driving force: His friends.
He finally fully owns this when challenged with the question: “What kind of god do you want to be?”. His answer was to sacrifice himself (in a way) so that they “have a chance”.
We don’t need to really wrestle with this as humans, at least, not with this level of responsibility. We have very little power. Even the President of the “most powerful country in the world” can’t really move the needle that much. Thank the gods for checks and balances.
Let’s imagine we get our genie capable of giving us that power. Maybe it’s AI? Maybe it’s a researcher alone in the basement who flips the on switch for the first AI capable of god-like powers. A prompt appears on the screen: “What kind of god do you want to be?”.
Well, let’s fix the health thing. BOOM. Wish granted. The AI generates the necessary code to 3d print nanobots that are able to not just fix your biological foibles, but enhance them. The perfect immune system. Forget sickness, and you’ll heal wounds in the snap. Thicker skin, stronger metal-like bones. Throw in a bit of solar power so you don’t need to eat as much. Who knows? This is a book in and of itself. The point is, you are essentially immortal now, barring a catastrophic destruction of your body.
What’s next? How about increased memory? Sure, let’s had a few petabytes of storage with remote access to the “cloud”. Done. You know everything. Well, not quite. You’ll also want to be able to discover knew thing or be free of flawed human logic and mistakes. So, the best bet is to be able to learn things yourself. To do this you’ll want to be able to run simulations to test all possible outcomes. So, we’ll add some hardware and software to help augment the brain’s already pretty good ability to visualize situations and their outcomes. Now, you can run experiments in a virtual world that mirrors our own. Not quite omniscient, but still pretty god-like.
Okay, we got into the weeds a bit. You are essentially god-like. Now.. what kind of god will you be? Will you focus on justice? Solve poverty? Just protect your friends? Make everyone “happy”?
I think about the gods in popular culture… Superman for example. What kind of god is he? Justice focused, saving the oppressed. But, he was overwhelmed by it. I remember in one of the movies he was flying over the Earth, listening to the cries and sirens of those who needed him, and it was too much.. so he just.. left. That makes sense to me. I don’t think I could take that much responsibility, the guilt would be overwhelming.
Or, Dr. Manhattan from “The Watchmen”. There was one particularly haunting scene where a fellow “hero” shot a pregnant woman in front of him. They then turned on Dr. Manhattan and said, “What’s wrong with you? Why didn’t you stop me?”. Dr. Manhattan didn’t reply. At the end of the movie he decided to leave Earth and create new life somewhere else, a simpler life form than humans as they were too complicated.
In a follow up series he decides to give up his powers and live as a human so he can experience love as a normal human.
There are definitely some serious considerations when wanting to be god.
So, what kind of god would you be?