2y ago

What's the name of the belief that gods/entities are quasi-semtient memes (the linguistic term, not the cultural term) in the same manner that corporations and governments are considered people?

It's a personal philosophy that I've come to use as my own form of religion, and while I'm aware other people have researched the idea, I'm having some trouble finding the name for the concept.

13 comments

Maybe Egregore?
- Huh, that's a pretty good description. I've never heard the term before, so I'll need to do some more research before I know if it fits. But even if it's a dead end, that's an interesting enough topic that it's worth delving into anyway.
Personification?
Edit: Anthropomorphic Personification!
(GNU Sir Terry Pratchett)
- This was my thought as well.
  Gods exist because humans believe in them. The stronger the belief, the stronger the God.
  As belief fades, so does the Deity and their power.
  
  Yup, that's it exactly.
- That works, thanks!
Carl Jung proposed that gods are characters of individuation drawn from our collective unconscious, just as demons are unconfronted shadows of self. "Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious," by C.G. Jung.
- So like idealized forms sort of? Like that which we could be be aren't?
Sounds like my layman's understanding of the Warhammer 40K universe:
Thoughts and dreams and nightmares of the various races all over the galaxy in the material world create gods and demons in the "Immaterium" (also called "The Warp" for its importance to space travel, for mankind anyway) and those beings occasionally 'leak' to the material world.
GPT-4 is calling it “tulpamancy” with the etymology of that word coming from tibetan buddhism where tulpas are spirits created with the mind.
Modern western adaptations of the philosophy drop the notion of magic or supernatural behavior and just consider them to be personalities which exist in a person’s mind, and for gods to be those personalities replicated across many mind.
There isn't?
that corporations and governments are considered people?"
Also, they aren't. That was a news media taking what a judge said and misinterpreting it.
- Also, they aren’t. That was a news media taking what a judge said and misinterpreting it.
  I don't know which judge from which government you're talking about, but the concept of juridical person is widely used across the world. Specially by governments with civil/Roman law. It's basically a legal tool to assign responsibilities and rights to abstract concepts.
  It's also descriptively useful to explain why corporations/governments often act in a way that the actual people (i.e. human beings) behind them wouldn't.
  
  It’s also the root of the word “corporation”. An incorporated business is a business which has been given a body.

13 comments