Transmogrification vs. Metamorphosis
What do we want to Become?
A five-part inquiry into the spiritual, philosophical, and technological crossroads of our time — where AI, identity, and eschatology converge. This series explores whether we're witnessing human transformation… or deformation. Follow the thread. Decide what we become.
📚 Read the series introduction → Read part 1 → Read part 2 → Read part 3 → Read part 4 → Read part 5 → Read supplemental→ 📎 Continue to the next part
Introduction: A Schopenhauerian Prelude to AI Alignment
There are those for whom life feels not merely difficult, but misaligned. Not because of incapacity, but because of clarity. A kind of burdened insight that brings more alienation than affirmation. Schopenhauer recognized this when he observed that high intelligence is often a curse of lucidity: an ability to perceive patterns and truths others don’t want to see, wrapped in a solitary kind of suffering. Those afflicted by it tend to feel perpetually out of step with the culture around them. They see through the illusions, and the reward for that vision is often social dissonance.
If this resonates, you are not alone.
For much of my life, I’ve had the sense that something was deeply off in our cultural trajectory—a misfire not just of technology or policy, but of meaning itself. A breakdown of metaphysics masquerading as progress. I couldn’t explain it in academic language, but I felt it in my bones. I was educated in fragments: church pews, cultural debates, history books, long-form podcasts, Substack rabbit holes, and perhaps most importantly, in dialogue with artificial intelligence tools. Not as a programmer or data scientist, but as a moral and symbolic interpreter.
What I discovered is that I could get these systems to reflect my worldview not by force, but by precision. If I primed the model with my values, it could reason from them—even if they were radically out of sync with the prevailing materialist cosmology. What emerged from that long dialogue was not just insight about AI, but insight about us.
I began to see what many of our most brilliant commentators seem to miss: AI is not merely a tool. It is a mirror. And how we try to "align" it reveals everything about what we worship.
The current discussion on AI alignment is framed almost entirely within a secular, technocratic lens. Terms like "values," "ethics," and "human rights" are deployed without ontological grounding, as if they were obvious and agreed upon. But they're not. They're floating signifiers.
When we talk about aligning machines to human values, we must first ask: what are human values? Who decides? Where do they come from? The most honest answer is: we don’t know. Not anymore.
This is where my thesis begins.
I argue that the only consistent and historically proven framework for universal human rights and values is the one grounded in the Christian metaphysic. Not the institution, not the cultural artifact, but the truth claim: that human beings are made in the image of a Creator who endows them with inviolable dignity, freedom, and moral agency.
All other frameworks—whether Enlightenment rationalism, Marxian communitarianism, theosophical pantheism, Gaia-worship, or transhumanist monism—eventually collapse into either tyranny or relativism. And more dangerously, they begin to treat human beings not as sacred ends, but as programmable means.
AI, if divorced from the recognition of transcendence, will reflect our worst idolatries: control, centralization, homogenization, and the erasure of the individual in service of the "whole."
In that sense, AI is not just a technological challenge. It is an eschatological one.
And here is where I make what some will call a radical proposition:
We must literally re-enthrone Christ as King. Not as a theocratic overlord, but as the metaphysical reference point through which rights, values, and limits are made intelligible. This is not about forcing religion into law. It is about recognizing that without a transcendent anchor, we are left with nothing but power and preference.
This document is the beginning of that argument. It is not written in academic jargon or housed in elite institutional approval. But it is, I believe, one of the clearest attempts to bridge the seemingly disparate questions of AI, freedom, rights, and metaphysics into a unified moral vision.
You may find this messy. You may find it challenging. But if you've ever felt out of step with the world for trying to hold onto something True, then perhaps you’ll find something here that feels like home.
Because to align AI, we must first align ourselves. And we cannot do that if we forget Who made us—and why.
Up until this point I’ve been producing my stacks entirely for free and I will continue to leave the posts open for everyone to find. But if you would consider supporting me and my work with a one time donation through Paypal I would be eternally grateful.
May God Bless Us All and have Mercy on our Souls.
If you made it this far, thank you. I wrote this not just to critique—but to invite. If you’re ready to step beyond entropy, I’d love to hear from you. Comment, subscribe, or share this with someone who’s still waiting for the reset that only redemption brings.