Considering Religious Robots
Week 2
Robot Personhood: Can Robots Join a Religion? What is the role of rituals performed on or for robots?
Reading Response
I found the reading on modern prayer wheels to be most amusing.
This passage I found kind of ridiculous, but when I think back to the explanation of the purpose of prayer wheels, it seems that the power of the ritual is inherently tied with the object of the prayer wheel in conjunction with the act of turning the wheel and thinking benevolent thoughts, but that the wheel’s importance overshadows the act.
“Because a prayer wheel becomes more powerful with more mantras inside it, Lamas such as Lama Zopa Rinpoche have put mantras on microfilm to increase the number of mantras contained in a prayer wheel.”
In one way, one could argue that the traditional wheel itself was/is a technology created to expedite + exponentialize the ritual.
“The result is the Tibet-Tech prayer wheel.”
This sounds silly now but I wonder if the traditional wheel was also viewed as silly when it was first created.
I found myself thinking a lot about this article about owners of bionic eyes that stopped working when the company failed to function, which Maya shared in their response.
It made me realize that while I have the privilege to have the mobility to travel internationally and indeed be here in the US as an internatonal student, much of my anxiety around moving countries/cities is tied to a specific part of my cyborgness: specifically my current state of my embodiment that is tied to my access to topical testosterone in the US. I’ve been getting my topical T from here for the past 5 years, and as much as a nightmare as the medical system can be, I have established some familiarity with it. It is known.
Sometimes people ask me where I would consider moving to if I do not live in the US. I rarely enough acknowledge that this is what influences my answer the most. I often say Berlin, and that’s because I know I can easily get access to the topical testosterone I use.
Create a speculative design of a rite for a robot, providing an annotated sketch and/or a detailed description.
Also from the same reading:
“Visualizations and contemplations that can be done while spinning a prayer wheel include:
• Focusing your thoughts on loving-kindness, equanimity, and the benefit of others, not oneself.
• Visualizing beams of light, bright like the sun, radiating out from the prayer wheel in all directions. The light beams destroy the negative karma and sufferings of not just humans, but all beings, including animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings, demigods and gods. All the negativity is absorbed into the prayer wheel and destroyed.
• Focusing on a problem, like a war or tragedy, and spinning the prayer wheel to try and relieve the suffering of the people being harmed and hurt.”
Inspired by the above, I thought about how scrolling instagram is a kind of ritual.
