Sermon One

Though I've spent most of my life preaching one passionate idea or another to anyone who'll even feign interest, this is my first formal sermon. I hope you'll be patient with me as I find my feet, here. I'll try to be clear, comprehensive, and sometimes even funny, but all I can promise is complete and total honesty, and that I'm doing my best.

The first questions that usually arise about the Nexus of Networked Orthodoxy for the Web tend to center around the words themselves. What do we mean by Nexus? What is this Orthodoxy, and how is it Networked? What does this all have to do with the Web, especially in a religious sense? I'm going to try to answer these, and I'm going to start the way I often do: by starting at the end and working backwards. Hey, it works for solving mazes in activity books, so why not apply it to other areas of life?

The Nexus of NOW, or Nowism as I like to call it for reasons I'll get into sooner or later, is a religion of the Web, about the Web, and for the Web. Its central tenet is that the Web is a fabulous melding of countless minds, and forms an integral part of our lives. It isn't just a 'thing' out there somewhere, it's a place where anyone can go who has the will and the means. It's a way for us to connect to one another and ourselves, often in ways we may never have imagined. This makes the Web a powerful, organic entity with endless possibilities. Just like the Light Side and Dark Side of The Force, it can be a tool for both good and bad, depending on how it's used by the netizens who comprise it.

The Web has a bigger impact in our world than many people realize, and it's looking pretty likely that it will someday touch nearly every aspect of our lives. People are already kicking around the creation of chip implants that could directly connect our brains to computer interfaces. This is both exciting and frightening, because once again, the Web is only as good or bad as how it's used. It could lead us to a digital utopia where everyone's ideas are freely shared, but it could also lead to a real-life Borg where all ideas -- and behavior -- are prefabricated and enforced.

The most important thing to remember about the Web is that it is entirely the creation of the people who interact with and through it, who in turn are changed by it in very deep and meaningful ways. Before its reach spreads too far, we need to make the Web safe for Humanity, and we can only do that by making Humanity safe for the Web. We need to work darn hard to make sure all contributions to the Web are made only in ways that help and heal, or at least do no harm.

This need is what prompted the creation of Nowism... well, the serious parts of it, anyway. I'll be the first to admit that not only are the serious parts outnumbered, but sometimes it's hard to separate them from the jokes... and often, they're the same. It's true that like most great things Nowism started as a joke that got out of hand, but that joke had staying power because I recognized that it just might address a serious need. We need a sort of Hippocratic Oath for the Web, a short-and-sweet set of guidelines to help people build the Web as a better place. This isn't only for altruistic reasons, you know; a healthy Web is good for us all. It's worth fighting for, no matter your motivations.

This 'Web Hippocratic Oath' is the foundation of the Orthodoxy for the Web, and I chose the word Orthodoxy because that's really what we're talking about, here. Nowism is founded on a set of simple-but-strict ten commandments that all Nowists are expected to adhere to in their interactions, without exception. We don't view the Big 10 as just good ideas, we view them as vital to the health and success of the Web. We all want to spread the Big 10 as the commonly accepted behavior for everyone in networked situations, Nowist or not.

This is called the Networked Orthodoxy for two reasons, possibly more. Firstly, it creates guidelines for interactions with people in all networked situations (including offline, in my opinion). Secondly, no central tenet in Nowism is handed down from on high through any kind of spiritual revelation; it's all just my own best guess based on what I've gathered from many, many sources. It's the result of collaboration among dozens or hundreds or even thousands of other people's ideas, most of whom have never even heard of me. No one person can take full credit for them; they're just the result of the globally networked mindpsace of the Web.

It's because the NOW is a concrescence of all these different nodes throughout the Web that we're calling our religion not a church, but a Nexus. The word 'church' has many, many associations that differ from person to person, most of which have nothing to do with what we're building here. What we are building is a meeting-point in which the best and most productive ideas of the Web can be gathered together in a way that improves the Web, and by extension, all who use it. We're building a Nexus.

I think the most common question that arises at this point is, if we're so different from what some might call a church, why are we calling Nowism a religion? It's a valid question, especially since we have only ten straightforward codes of conduct, are very open with regards to membership, and don't require belief or non-belief in any god whatsoever. To many people, those three omissions are completely contrary to what the whole idea of religion is about. That's actually one of the reasons I think it's important to that we call Nowism a religion.

To begin with, I've noticed that among the people I know who consider themselves spiritually librated, most of them find religion to be a tainted word. For them, it holds all the connotations of organized religions they feel have been domineering and destructive to their worshippers and anyone else who gets in their way. I think this is a darn shame, and I want to reclaim the word on behalf of Nowists and others of a similar mindset. I want to show how religion can be liberating and helpful if you apply it carefully, even or especially if you don't consider yourself religious. You really can use religion as a tool without being a tool, yourself.

Though most people in western cultures seem to think that a religion has to be all about worshipping a god or gods who created the universe, that really isn't the case. Check out Buddhism sometime, because it doesn't have any such concept of god, and still manages to be a pretty old, traditional religion. Religion is actually nothing more or less than a set of beliefs about what's important in life, perhaps even beyond, and how to go about obtaining it. That's what Nowism is all about.

It's true that religions have a spiritual bent, and that's where I have to admit to one of the more obvious reasons I like to nickname the Nexus of NOW as Nowism. I've long been a fan of Taoism, which I think should be pretty clear to anyone who knows me. Getting into all the reasons for that will take up a whole other sermon, but the one that's relevant here is how Alan Watts has described Taosim in comparison to the other religions of the world. To paraphrase: Christianity and Judaism have a mechanistic world, with a god that created and ordered the universe; Hinduism has a dramatic world, with a god playing all the parts for the pure fun of it; Taoism has an organic world, comprised of every being within it, without any god at all.

Nowism is very much centered on the central tenet that the Web is an organism, comprised of all netizens without any one creator, director, or boss. While Secular Nowism stops at this point and focuses solely on the importance of the Big 10, spiritual/religious Nowism begins here. We're still in our infancy as we feel out the details, but this makes us nonetheless religious, and all the more excited. Every single person is a pioneer exploring and discovering their own life, but not everyone takes the opportunity to be aware of this, and enjoy the ride.

The one central religious tenet of Nowism is that the 'place' of the Web isn't external to the people who use it; it's a part of us. We use silicon and electricity to interact with the Web, but what we're actually interacting with is within our own psyche, and within the psyche of every other netizen. Depending on your point of view, the metaphysical impact of this is either monumental or miniscule, or both. Hmm, to me, I think I'd have to say it's both.

As for what this tenet actually means in day-to-day practice, it places an immense importance on the health of the Web, perhaps even moreso than in Secular Nowism. From a religious standpoint, spending time in a fractious and malicious sector of the Web does more than just ruin your evening; it seeds that destruction in a place inside you. In the same vein, spending time interacting with openness and creativity is very entertaining, and also adds more openness and creativity within you. And since you are just as vital and integral a part of the Web as every other netizen, what happens to you helps or harms the Web as a whole. It's not like Jell-O, where you can have a nut suspended in one part without impacting a raison on the other side. It's like Kool-Aid, where adding sugar sweetens the whole batch.

It's hard to get into specifics here, and not just because it's too easy to get into sophistry and presumptive conjecture with concepts like this. It's very difficult because Nowists aren't really invested in concepts so much as direct experience. We recognize that if we can call anything really REAL, it's our actual experiences. Everything else we can only know as a construct our minds make up to interpret and organize those experiences. The concepts themselves should never be mistaken for what's actually REAL, whatever that means.

This isn't to say we don't work with concepts, because they're wonderful tools, vital to the human experience, and a great deal of fun. However, we recognize them for what they are -- our best guesses in each current moment as to what's actually going on in this great wide wonderful world we're sharing. Still, because we need to make and communicate these guesses in order to interact with our world and each other... this makes it all a very sticky topic.

And this is where the final, central, unofficial primary tenet of both Secular Nowism and religious Nowism comes into play. The Prime Commandment, if you will, is this: Always Keep a Healthy Sense of Humor. This will mean different things in different situations, but the thing we all must remember is that we are only human beings, whatever that means. We're going to do our best and make mistakes, learn from them, then go about making new mistakes all over again. We have to keep this in mind, so we don't get too caught up in where we are now. A better 'now' may be just around the corner, and we have to remain open if we're going to take advantage of it.

And that's Nowism in a half-nutshell, a sketchy introduction to the Nexus of Networked Orthodoxy for the Web. We're a religion in flux, as our network will always be bringing in new experiences and ideas that the Orthodoxy will change to reflect. Hopefully, this will keep us in line with where the Web needs to be. Hopefully, it will help keep us sane.

Most importantly, hopefully it will also keep us fun to be around. I figure since you can't always be right, you can at least try to be fun more often than not!

Thanks for joining me here, I had a great time trying to learn to preach without getting preachy. I look forward to having more fun with you in the future.

Enjoy!