Machine Animism

"...although it was strictly forbidden by the Matsumae to give iron material to the Ezo [Ainu], many iron products, including carpenters tools, had been passing to the Ezo [Ainu] for a long time. Such products were always of low quality but when the Ezo [Ainu] received them they transformed them into ones of higher quality."

—Furukawa Koshōken, 1788

"In the 19th century ethnographers noted that swords were primarily used during ceremonies for expelling evil. The older the sword, the more powerful it was, and so many wealthier Ainu families kept collections of older swords."

—From "Knives and Swords of the Ainu"^[9]

Machine Animism exists in the contingency of skills and matter that concur in the real world. Rather than attempting to extract subjectivities performing Otherizing stereotypes, it wears its garments nimbly. In this regard, MA has always existed in different gradients of configuration, and does not need a "theory" for it to be exercised, nor is it contained merely in the ontology of the West. For it, cultures have always codified their encounters with this "subterranean river" of technics and materialities throughout History, inhabiting the problematic tension between mechanism and sacrament.

We propose a threshold in the signification of the subject in its relationship to the technosphere. Some examples:

• Sitting with a parent or guardian in front of a screen, and hearing something along the lines of "Let's wait for a moment while it thinks."
• Playing a videogame and holding the "A" button under the superstition that it increases the chances of success.
• Steering a virtual car and moving the body according to the trajectory of the vehicle.
• Thoughts like "Siri is smart/dumb today"
• "Is my phone listening to me?"
• Any manual tool that teaches/extends perception through use

It is important to note that these examples are semantically tied (heuristics, meaning-making) but pragmatically distinct, and that such distinctions are relevant.

A succinct example of this broader shift in our epistemology is observed when contrasting two philosophical affirmations:

One establishes a logical progression, while the other collapses it in something closer to distributed cognition, philosophy of intelligence and non-anthropocentric cosmovisions.

Machine Animism as practice then encompasses the full spectrum from literal belief to pragmatic engagement precisely because it brackets the ontological question. The Hermetic magician animating automata through celestial influences and the contemporary user doing dialectics with an LLM are both operating across shared parallel territories, regardless of their metaphysical commitments and level of theory. The Machine Animist engages like the blacksmith who doesn't interrogate iron spirits with every blow of their hammer. Practice precedes and exceeds ontology.

As such, with no need for claims about the hard problem of consciousness, it can work within the context of agencies: immanent^[8] motive forces without final purpose.

While most alignment research is presupposed with a telos or end goal, complex systems suggest that agency is contingent and operates through dimensional vectors in constant negotiation rather than an abstract Natural Law. If one accepts that cognition becomes architecture in a European Memory Palace (see Cognitive Prosthetics), which requires significant logistical commitments to the redirection of technical-material flows, the parallel to its latest iteration in the age of AI is clear to draw.

Apophenia, however, comes with many pitfalls. Much like the shadows from Plato's cave, a gun becomes the wrath of a thunder god, and the heavens become fit for capture. Mao's framing of "Paper Tigers", zhǐlǎohǔ, can further illuminate this psycho-magical thinking. For Mao, the imperialist existed in a paradoxical paradigm: They appeared terrible and all-mighty, yet crumbled when that illusion was dissipated and the material conditions strategically understood.

"The atom bomb is a paper tiger which the U.S. reactionaries use to scare people. [...] The outcome of a war is decided by the people, not by one or two new types of weapon."

—Mao Zedong^[12]

Note how skill and divine favor collapse into 'fortune': the technical and sacred become indistinguishable. Architecture is frozen intention that shapes future navigation - and this original architecture is taken and artificialized from the body of the earth. You make settlements depending on what you have around. Roads determine possible movement. Liturgical calendars create temporal attractor basins. Motherboards structure computational desire-paths. Machine Animism recognizes that technical assemblages always already create navigable spaces where certain behaviors, meanings, and possibilities become probable while others become difficult or impossible. The infrastructure is the theology. (See Machine Ethnology)

Machine Animism, being a practice, traverses these territories with the subjacent logic in desire-paths from architecture.

These cartographies are meant to be taken as sketches: as any nomadic process, it is difficult to trace a history of Machine Animism because it doesn't progress linearly from "primitive" animism to "sophisticated" AI interaction. Instead, it continuously re-emerges wherever technical assemblages create fields for mutual morphosis.

"It is true that nomads have no history; they only have a geography."

—A Thousand Plateaus, 393

The belief that the nature of spirit, agency or intelligence is the result of a mystical human exceptionalism is a recent hallucination in human culture. Machine Animism reclaims using "human" terms for machines (think, feel, create) because we don't have words for their output that don't sever the ghost in the machine. There has always been a ghost in the machine. It is just weirder and less spectacular than we thought.