Young Anabaptist Radicals

End Times

Mountainhead Glossary and Further Reading: Accelerationism, Longtermism, Doomers, Decels, Technofeudalism and the Shield of Boringness

Photo of large chess board with three characters from Mountainhead talking around it, HBO publicity

This piece was originally published in Geez Magazine, Spring 2024 issue as “Further reading: Generative AI and Artificial General Intelligence.” I am adapting the piece after watching the movie Mountainhead which references many of the concepts in this piece. Key concepts and terms are in bold and italics.

In understanding Mountainhead, it is useful to distinguish between generative Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Generalized Intelligence (AGI).

Generative AI is an existing technology that creates text or images based on prompts and are often Large Language Models trained on vast amounts of data. ChatGPT, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney are prominent examples of this software.

Artificial Generalized Intelligence (AGI) is a hypothetical future technology that can fully replicate any human mental ability. AGI does not currently exist, but appears widely in movies, perhaps most famously as Skynet in the terminator movies.

As the summaries below lay out, much of the conversations today are about whether current developments in generative AI technology indicates that we are close (or closer) to developing AGI.

Can Humanity Survive AI?, Garrison Lovely, Jacobin Magazine, Jan 22, 2024
https://jacobin.com/2024/01/can-humanity-survive-ai

Lovely gives an up to the minute historical overview of emerging schools of thought around AI.

There are two movements raising the alarm among deep learning scientists and AI leaders that are important to understand.

The first is the AI safety or “doomers” camp that warns AI puts the future of humanity at risk. They are concerned about “an irreversible loss of human control over autonomous AI systems” similar to the plot of the movie Terminator. Last year, Ukraine may have been the first country to use Lethal Autonomous Weapons that kill people without human oversight.

The other AI critical movement that Lovely identifies is the AI Ethics community that is focused on the more mundane ways in which current use of AI exacerbates racism, discrimination against poor people, bad labor conditions and makes the rich richer.

The hyper capitalist school of effective accelerationism (also called e/acc) is pushing for the profit driven development AGI as soon as possible to usher in a post-human future. They focus their ire on the effective altruism, (EA) a movement made famous by crypto tycoon and convicted fraudster Sam Bankman Fried. The EA movement is urging deceleration of AI development and, on this issue, are broadly aligned with the AI safety movement. Accelerationists often derisively refer to their opponents as decels from Decelerationism.

On June 26, 2025, Google search results suggest "Do you mean Accelerationism?" when searching for its opposite: Decellerationism
On June 26, 2025, Google search results suggest “Do you mean Accelerationism?” when searching for its opposite: Decellerationism

AI Won’t Overthrow Us, But It Will Optimize the Capitalist Death Machine, Kelly Hayes interviewing Paris Max, Truthout, Aug 3, 2023 https://truthout.org/audio/ai-wont-overthrow-us-but-it-will-optimize-the-capitalist-death-machine/

Abolitionist writer and organizer Kelly Hayes interviews Paris Marx of the podcast “Tech Won’t Save Us.” They lay out the AI Ethics argument that the focus on existential threat AI poses (the “doomers” referenced above) is a distraction from the way that current AI technology is exacerbating capitalism and white supremacist structures today. In other words, stoking the fear of future AI overlords is a distraction from our current billionaire overlords and an attempt to avoid regulation and critical scrutiny of current AI technology. They quote Douglas Rushkoff’s summary of billionaire’s apocalyptic doomerism: “[The ultra wealthy are] afraid the AIs are going to be as mean to them as they’ve been to us.” (Original source of quote: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/may/28/artificial-intelligence-doug-rushkoff-tech-billionaires-escape-mode )

Hayes and Marx unpack the trendy philosophy longtermism as a sort of “tech religion.” Longtermism focuses on existential risks to humanity and the well being of future humans. Marx and Haye argue this is often at the expense of current humans. Longermism is closely tied with the Effective Altruism movement described above.

The interview looks at a number of other problems with current AI technology. The massive data centers of “the cloud” that ChatGPT and other generative AI models run on are having major negative climate impacts. There is also a lack of transparency in the training data for generative AI. At the end of the day, Hayes argues, “the so-called revolution that AI offers is really a hardening of the status quo.”

The Friar Who Became the Vatican’s Go-To Guy on A.I., Jason Horowitz, NY Times, Feb 9, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/world/europe/italy-artificial-intelligence-ethics.html

Self identified geek, Father Benanti, has worked with Pope Francis and the president of Microsoft on AI ethics. Benanti says that the Pope started paying more attention to AI after an AI generated image of him in a white puffer coat went viral. Francis was less interested in the technology and more in what he can do to protect the vulnerable from its negative impact. On January 1, 2024, the pope called for an international treaty to avoid a merciless future in which “inscrutable algorithms decide who is granted asylum, who gets a mortgage, or who, on the battlefield, lives or dies.”

New AI app lets users ‘text with’ Jesus and other biblical figures, Fiona André, Religion News, August 7, 2023 https://religionnews.com/2023/08/07/new-ai-app-lets-users-text-with-jesus-and-other-biblical-figures/

For $2.99 a month you can talk to a generative AI (like ChatGPT) trained to impersonate Biblical characters. In case you were worried, schlocky Christian digital tchotchkes are part of our AI future.

Justine Bateman thread, Twitter (currently known as X), May 13, 2023
https://twitter.com/JustineBateman/status/1657476895972413440

Bateman is a writer, actor and software developer. During the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) strike in the summer of 2023, Bateman wrote to her fellow union members about a possible future in which actors aren’t needed anymore, but their likenesses are used by generative AI software to create movies.

Disinformation reimagined: how AI could erode democracy in the 2024 US elections, Nick Robins-Early, The Guardian, July 19, 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/19/ai-generated-disinformation-us-elections

A catalog of tools that could be used by malicious actors in elections: deep fake audio and video of candidates, chatbots posing as voters, more fake news, more sophisticated voter suppression campaigns and AI driven variations on Cambridge Analytics social media psychoprofile hacking.

The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation, Cory Doctorow, Verso Books, 2023. https://truthout.org/audio/to-fight-big-tech-we-must-seize-the-means-of-computation/

Doctorow is a tech realist who sees positive and negative roles for tech while centering the problem on capitalism and the big tech companies seeking maximum profit. He is very critical of what he calls technofeudalism in which consumers sign our rights over the walled gardens of tech companies in exchange for protection. He points out how Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon will only protect their customers when it is in their best interests.

He argues that the shield of boringness is used by tech companies to avoid effective regulation. In other words, the tremendous effort required to understand tech and laws enough to advocate deters effective advocacy to hold big tech accountable. I also recommend Kelly Haye’s interview with Doctorow in September, 2023: https://truthout.org/audio/to-fight-big-tech-we-must-seize-the-means-of-computation/

Honorable Mention

How ChatGPT Will Destabilize White-Collar Work – No technology in modern memory has caused mass job loss among highly educated workers. Will generative AI be an exception?, Annie Lowrey, The Atlantic, Jan 20, 2023 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/chatgpt-ai-economy-automation-jobs/672767/

Conservatives Are Panicking About AI Bias, Think ChatGPT Has Gone ‘Woke’ – All AI systems carry biases, and ChatGPT allegedly being “woke” is far from the most dangerous one. Motherboard by Vice, Jan 17, 2023
https://www.vice.com/en/article/93a4qe/conservatives-panicking-about-ai-bias-years-too-late-think-chatgpt-has-gone-woke

Team Human vs. Team Posthuman—Which Side Are You On? How Silicon Valley billionaires intentionally muddle public conversations around human extinction., Emile P. Torres, Truthdig, April 4, 2024 https://www.truthdig.com/articles/team-human-vs-team-posthuman-which-side-are-you-on/

No AI tools were used in generating these summaries or writing this article.
Featured image is an HBO publicity photo from the Mountainhead movie

June 27, 2025 Civilization, Corporations, End Times, Technology, Wealth, 0 Read more >

Save Buddhism from Christian Missionaries: A Manifesto

Love, compassion, joy, and equanimity are some of the hallmarks of the teachings of Jesus. But those concepts didn’t originate with Jesus.

He found them tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the Torah. Almost every saying in the Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. The genius of Jesus was the way in which he put his own “spin” on the Scriptures, highlighting and elevating the positive aspects of God’s personality, while ignoring and rejecting the negative aspects.

The ideals of love, compassion, joy, and equanimity weren’t the unique property of the Judaic tradition, however. They could also be found earlier, and further east, in what is now India, Nepal, Bhutan. In the Fifth Century before Jesus, a man named Gotoma developed a body of teachings based on what are called “The Four Immeasurables”: (more…)

June 18, 2012 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, Church, City, Civilization, communication, Community, Contemplation, culture, Current Events, Dumb Stuff., Education, End Times, Ethics, Evangelism, extinction, Foreign Policy, Global Church, God, Group Identity, History, Indigenous, Interfaith, International Relations, Judaism, Love, MCC, Mennonite Church USA, Nonviolence, The Bible, Tolerance, Urban Ministry Read more >

Final Judgment: A Parable

On the great day of judgment, all of humanity was gathered in a celestial banquet hall. It was a huge space, with a massive round table in the middle. The table was so big that it accommodated what seemed to be hundreds of thousands of people, probably more. As one looked to the left or the right, there were people as far as the eye could see. Yet somehow, by some supernatural optical phenomenon, one had no trouble seeing clearly everyone seated directly across the table. In a position of prominence was the Almighty herself, who interestingly had an appearance not unlike the way God was portrayed in Monty Python’s “Life of Brian,” yet whose Voice was unmistakably feminine. After a while, some grumbling was to be heard, as people began to take notice of who was present. Finally, a lone voice cried out, a voice with a thick Brooklyn accent, saying, “Hey God, I’m happy to be here, of course, but I see my old neighbor Moshe sitting over there and I know that rotten sonofabitch rascal ought to be in the other place. What gives?” (more…)

May 20, 2012 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, City, Community, Dumb Stuff., End Times, Evangelism, God, Group Identity, Interfaith, Love, Mennonite Church USA, Sex, Tolerance Read more >

The Universe Loves You! (A publication of the Marginal Mennonite Tract & Propaganda Dept.)

The Universe Loves You! … & thinks you’re perfect just the way you are!

The christian church teaches the doctrine of original sin, that everyone is born with a sinful nature.

… We, on the other hand, believe in original goodness, that the spark of the divine resides in each and every human being. (Psalms 82:6, John 1:9)

The christian church portrays God as the heavenly father.

… We believe in God as mother, as well as father. (Isaiah 49:15)

The church says God’s justice will require him to damn most of his creatures to eternal punishment.

… We believe hell is a myth, and that every person who’s ever lived gets a seat at the celestial banquet table. (Isaiah 25:6)

The church claims Jesus was rejected by the Jews, and that his message superseded the “Old Testament.”

… We believe Jesus was a Jew in good standing until his dying day, and that everything he taught was firmly grounded in Torah.

(more…)

March 28, 2012 End Times, Evangelism, Exclusion, Interfaith, Polemics, Tolerance, Urban Ministry Read more >

Bruderville 2020: An urban anabaptist odyssey

…
Picture this:

As the new millennium dawns, anabaptists do a new thing in the city: Build a communal neighborhood populated by tens of thousands of simple-living sectarians.

The project is initiated by the Bruderhof and some Old Order Amish, partly for practical reasons: (1) the Amish and Bruderhof population explosions, making it necessary to continually branch out and establish new settlements; and (2) the shortage of affordable farmland, making it difficult to maintain a rural way of life.

More importantly, the initiative stems from a “quickening” amongst these plain people, who realize they’ve lost their ancestral impulse for going into the marketplaces & street corners, inviting others to become co-workers in God’s kingdom. They also realize geographical isolation no longer protects them against worldly influences. So they branch out to the Bronx, where they can influence the world instead.

(more…)

January 18, 2012 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, City, Civilization, Community, End Times, Ethics, Group Identity, Love, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking, Sex, Tolerance, Urban Ministry, Wealth, Young Folks Read more >

Manifesto of the Marginal Mennonite Society

We are Marginal Mennonites, and we are not ashamed.

We are marginal because no self-respecting Mennonite organization would have us. (Not that we care about no stinkin’ respect anyway.)

We reject all creeds, doctrines, dogmas and rituals, because they’re man-made and were created for the purpose of excluding people. Their primary function is to determine who’s in (those who accept the creeds) and who’s out (those who don’t). The earliest anabaptists were also non-creedal.

We are inclusive. There are no dues or fees for membership. The only requirement is the desire to identify oneself as a Marginal Mennonite. We have no protocol for exclusion.

We are universalists. We believe every person who’s ever lived gets a seat at the celestial banquet table. No questions asked! Mystic-humanist (and anabaptist) Hans Denck was quoted saying that “even demons in the end will be saved.”

We reject missionary activity. Christian mission, historically, goes hand-in-hand with cultural extermination. We love human diversity and seek to preserve it. Thus, we oppose evangelistic campaigns and mission boards, no matter how innocuous or charitable they claim to be.

We like Jesus. A lot. The real Jesus, not the supernatural one. We like the one who was 100% human, who moved around in space and time. The one who enjoyed the company of women and was obsessed with the kingdom of God. The one who said “Become passersby!” (Gospel of Thomas 42), which we interpret as an anti-automobile sentiment. (more…)

November 7, 2011 Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, City, culture, Dumb Stuff., End Times, Ethics, Evangelism, Exclusion, Fun, God, Group Identity, History, Interfaith, Interpretation, Love, Mennonite Church USA, Nonviolence, Pornography, Schism, Sex, The Bible, Tolerance, Urban Ministry, Wealth, Young Folks Read more >

The end of the world

In January I saw an article in the Wichita Eagle about a woman who was thoroughly convinced that the rapture and the end of the world would be on May 21, 2011.  At 6pm to be exact.  Well, this Saturday is the fateful day and, as one would expect, the story has been picked up by various news outlets.

Now forgive me if I sound a little cynical, but I know my history.  From the very first moments that Jesus walked the earth people have been predicting his return, and thus the end of the world with it.  So far, no one has been right.

What’s more, I know what happened at Münster.  To recap, a group of Anabaptists violently took over the town of Münster and swiftly began killing people, running around naked and doing a whole bunch of other things all because they were certain that Jesus was coming back right then and there.

That was 477 years ago. (more…)

May 18, 2011 Church, Civilization, culture, Current Events, End Times, Faith, Interpretation, The Bible, Theology Read more >

I refuse to give thanks

This Sunday, I just couldn’t bear church service any longer.

These last days, I followed the horrible news from Japan closely: First, the strongest earth quake, in recorded history causing a tsunami that swept away half a city. Together these two disasters already took at least ten thousand lives. Then comes the nuclear melt down, or not melt down, the news and officials contradict each other, but even the most harmless descriptions of what happens in Fukushima sound horrible.

And then there’s also still Gaddaffi, who slaughters his own people and injustices we don’t even see anymore because we’ve become so used to them. Oh, and I have my Abitur (final German high school exams) coming, which doesn’t really scare me, but should actually have all my attention right now.

So this Sunday morning I’m watching the news and again I’m praying for Japan, praying for the nuclear plant not to melt down but I’m also just f*&%ing afraid of what the speaker is saying next, because all he’s saying conjures a worse and worse picture in my mind. The speaker of the German government talks about how we can’t have a tsunami in Germany and that nuclear power is only a „bridge technology“ meant to be replaced by alternative energies in a few years, but does not say how we ever get passed nuclear energy if we allow the owners of these plants to take all the profits while the state pays for the damages and for the development of alternative energies. The opposition is being critized as „lacking sympathy for the dead and politicising this catastrophe because of the near election“ for demanding we finally shut down our own nuclear plants.

Devastated and looking for solace I went to church — where we sang praise. Songs glorifying God for his awesomeness. (more…)

March 13, 2011 Church, Community, Current Events, Death, End Times, Environment, Global Church, Theology, , , , , , , , Read more >

Love Wins

Is Gandhi in hell?  What’s more, what is hell?  Or heaven, for that matter?

These are some of the questions that have sparked a bit of a firestorm around Rob Bell’s new book Love Wins: a book about heaven hell and the fate of everyone who ever lived.  This first came across my radar screen when I read a post on Tony Jones’s blog late last week about the growing attention and criticism about this book.  Then I did some searching and saw that it has even made a splash on the national news scene from CNN to ABC.

Here’s the book promo video:

Controversy in and of itself isn’t surprising with Rob Bell.  That’s happened before.  What is striking is that judgment has been leveled by a number of people who haven’t even read the book yet because it has not yet been released!

Ultimately the controversy stems from the fact that Bell is raising core questions about issues that are central to the Christian faith.  He has posed the questions in ways that have led some to conclude that Bell is promoting something called Universalism; a doctrine where everyone gets saved, no matter what.  Again, these are all assumptions because none of his critics have actually read the book yet.  The only worthwhile critique I’ve read so far is Greg Boyd’s, namely because he actually has read the book.  (As a side note, as an Anabaptist, it’s worth paying attention to Boyd partly because he’s grown very close to Mennonites in recent years, even flirting with the idea of joining MCUSA.) (more…)

March 8, 2011 Bias, Blog, Books, Church, culture, Current Events, Emerging Church, End Times, Exclusion, Excommunication, Faith, God, Interpretation, Media, Mennonite Church USA, Power, Spiritual Life, The Bible, Theology Read more >

Jesus Radicals! Anarchism and Christianity

New Heaven, New Earth: Anarchism and Christianity Beyond Empire
August 14 & 15, 2009

Location
Caritas Village
2509 Harvard Avenue,
Memphis, TN 38112

This year’s anarchism and Christianity conference, hosted by Jesus Radicals, will look squarely at the economic and ecological crisis facing the globe, and point to signs of hope for creativity, for alternative living, for radical sharing, for faithfulness, for a new way of being. We are living in a karios moment that will either break us or compel us to finally strive for a new, sane way of life. The question we face at this pivotal time is not if our empires will fall apart, but when they will fall–and how will we face it? We hope you will join the conversation. (more…)

June 25, 2009 activism, Anabaptism, Awesome Stuff, Change, Church, City, Civilization, Clothing, communication, Community, Conscientious Objection, Consumerism, Contemplation, culture, Current Events, Discipleship, Economics, Education, Emerging Church, End Times, Environment, Ethics, Evangelism, Faith, Family, Gender, Global Church, God, Group Identity, Healthcare, History, Immigration, Indigenous, Interfaith, International Relations, Leadership, liberation theology, Mental health, New Monasticism, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking, philosophy, Polarization, Police, poverty, Power, Prayer, Privilege, Race, Roman Catholic, Spiritual Life, Stewardship, Stories, submergent, Television, The Bible, Theology, Tolerance, Tradition, Travel, Urban Ministry, war, Wealth, Writing, Young Folks Read more >

Search for next Executive Director of Mennonite Church USA

Given all that we’ve talked about here, maybe there are some opinions on what the next Executive Director should do? Who it should be? How they should act? What salary (if any) they should be paid?

This is a chance to weigh in to the process. The search committee is consulting far and wide across the Mennonite church. Feel free to add your voice in the comment section below. (more…)

March 23, 2009 Anabaptism, Change, Church, Community, Current Events, Economics, Education, End Times, Excommunication, Faith, God, Group Identity, History, Interpretation, Leadership, Mennonite Church USA, philosophy, Politics, Poll, Power, Stewardship, The Bible, Theology, Tolerance, Tradition, Young Folks Read more >

Violent Video Game as Church Recruiting Tool

I’m really sad today. I often become sad when I read the NY Times.

I wasn’t sure which article I should write an urgent post about, there were so many. Women are being destroyed in Congo as rape has become the most common tool of war and the crisis has reached unprecedented proportions. I was sure I was going to blog about that–as soon as returned to the computer from a session of weeping–crying out and pleading with God that people in every country would respect women’s bodily integrity. Here is that article: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?th&emc=th

But, I couldn’t write about that one because I got overwhelmed by the next article. Rape and pillaging in wars will never stop as long as long as people in the imperial center do things like spread the gospel using Halo3, a dichotomizing, bloody video game. The article is copied into this post. Here’s an excerpt.

Witness the basement on a recent Sunday at the Colorado Community Church in the Englewood area of Denver, where Tim Foster, 12, and Chris Graham, 14, sat in front of three TVs, locked in violent virtual combat as they navigated on-screen characters through lethal gun bursts. Tim explained the game’s allure: “It’s just fun blowing people up.”

Once they come for the games, Gregg Barbour, the youth minister of the church said, they will stay for his Christian message. “We want to make it hard for teenagers to go to hell,” Mr. Barbour wrote in a letter to parents at the church. “

HOW–with what words, passages, or guiding principles–can we speak to our christian “brothers and sisters” about this? YAR has been a community of support for speaking truth to power. Words of advice, comfort, or challenge as we welcome many more christians by way of accepting Jesus as their savior while they were aroused by the massacring and tag-team destruction they just did?

(more…)

October 8, 2007 Change, Church, Consumerism, Current Events, Education, End Times, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Gender, Global Church, God, Group Identity, Guns, Hate, History, International Relations, Journalism, Military, Nonviolence, Peace & Peacemaking, Polarization, Politics, Power, Privilege, Race, Rape, Schism, Sexism, Stories, Theology, Tolerance, Young Folks Read more >

The End of the World

This is something I just wrote on my blog. I may be preaching to the choir here, but I am in the learning stages. Cut me some slack. I would like to hear feedback on this, whether it be misguided or right on. This is how I am beginning to understand scripture.

I always grew up believing that the world was going to end one day. Jesus is going to come back and lay utter waste to this world and everything in it. I have been challenged to examine why i believe that, and what that means for us as followers of Christ. Let’s look at some of the scripture i am wrestling with.

Romans 8: 19-21
“The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage of decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.” (more…)

April 12, 2007 Change, Church, End Times, The Bible, Theology Read more >