Machines for Making Gods
I’m holding a signed copy of Jon Bialecki's Machines for Making Gods. On the interior cover is a scribbled inscription that reads, “Blaire, it’s not as good as your book, but I hope you end up liking it! –Jon.”
I’m not going to entertain Jon’s comment by arguing with his inscription, but I will say that few people have understood my work as clearly and thoroughly as him. Jon Bialecki's Machines for Making Gods understands the Mormon Transhumanist project better than most Mormon Transhumanists, including those that have misunderstood my work.
After a thorough description of Mormonisms, Transhumanisms, Mormon Transhumanism, and science fictions, Bialecki’s ninth chapter is titled “Queer Polygamy.” The provocative title almost seems out of place, like an irreverent theremin trying to wiggle its way into the orchestra after being told to shush. However, the provocative title is not his invention. It’s mine. Yet, it describes clearly and concisely the chapter’s thesis and mine. Queer Polygamy isn't an argument for non-monogamy. It never was. It's an argument against the singleton.
The Mormon Transhumanist God and the Queer God are not opponents, but two flames lit from the same fire. That fire is decentralization of power. Bialecki’s Machines for Making Gods demonstrates this most by documenting a conversation between myself and founding member of the Mormon Transhumanist Association, Lincoln Cannon.
In Bialecki’s words, “...no amount of pandering would make someone as dynamic as Ostler join a group with which she had fundamental differences. […] Both Ostler and Lincoln Cannon […] recall their initial discussions as constituted by Ostler presenting blistering attacks on what she understood to be Cannon’s patriarchal image of God. It was only after Cannon insisted that his vision of God and Zion was a collective and emergent communities rather than any patriarchy or male singleton […] that she began to consider Mormon Transhumanism as something not necessarily beyond the pale.” (p 272)
Bialecki saw and reported clearly two gods brought together in competition but found themselves in coalition. While Cannon and I have had many heated discussions concerning God, gender, queerness, technology, and transhumanism, most of the differences were esthetic, not architectural. Both the Mormon Transhumanist God and the Queer God serve as multifarious aspirations that persons could envision themselves emulating and becoming. Both gods require work predicated by faith. (James 2:26) Both gods require opposition to an authoritarian that threatens agency. (Moses 4:3) Both gods require a deep respect for decentralized power that belongs to all individuals. (2 Nephi 2:27)
In Bialecki’s words, "Queer Polygamy's cross-cutting ties are by nature antihierarchical, but then the same could be said of Mormon Transhumanism. Individuals cease being individuals to the degree that these networked actors draw upon computational capacities and technological prowess outside themselves, and collaborate with others to bring into being even greater powers and possibilities. Even ascension to the cosmological realm does not undo the interbeing. While it is not impossible to imagine a divine singleton in the MTA, the idea of complex chains of resurrections, of counsels of Gods and composite Gods, suggests that the networked self does not recede even as humanity is outgrown." (pp 291-292)
Bialecki witnessed a battle of gods that resulted in mutual becoming and sharpening. (Proverbs 27:17) Neither one placed above the other, but both held together in mutual esteem. (D&C 38:24-25) He didn’t let the Queer God become an awkwardly placed afterthought. Instead, he wrote a chapter titled “Queer Polygamy” and said, “Queer Polygamy…is not presented as something that will be handed down by the First Presidency. Rather, like the transhuman future, it is a form of attachment and loving that must be carved out in the here-and-now, through a mixture of freedom and mutual respect.” (p 292)
Thank you, Jon, for the ethnography. I feel seen—which is perhaps the highest compliment I can give an anthropologist.
