It’s originally an occult term, but my more-materialistic definition of it is “something that acts like an entity with motivations that is considerably bigger than a human and is generally run in a ‘distributed computing’ fashion across many individual minds.” Microsoft the company is an egregore; feminism the social movement is an egregore; America the country is an egregore. The program “Minecraft” is not an egregore, an individual deer is not an egregore, a river is not an egregore.
Unreal’s point is that these things ‘fight back’ and act on their distributed perception; if your corner of the world comes to believe that academia is a wasteful trap, for example, “academia” will notice and label you various things, which will then cause pro-academia people to avoid you and anti-academia people to start treating you as a political ally, both of which can make you worse off / twisted away from your original purpose.
It’s possible to create an organization in a technical sense that isn’t an egregore though. Lots of people have tried to create secular churches, for instance, but they mostly just fall flat because they’re not a viable design to create a living distributed entity.
Some parties (as in, a group of people at some gathering) fail to congeal into an egregore. But when they do, the scene “clicks”. And sometimes those spawn egregores that outlast the party — but not often.
It’s originally an occult term, but my more-materialistic definition of it is “something that acts like an entity with motivations that is considerably bigger than a human and is generally run in a ‘distributed computing’ fashion across many individual minds.” Microsoft the company is an egregore; feminism the social movement is an egregore; America the country is an egregore. The program “Minecraft” is not an egregore, an individual deer is not an egregore, a river is not an egregore.
Unreal’s point is that these things ‘fight back’ and act on their distributed perception; if your corner of the world comes to believe that academia is a wasteful trap, for example, “academia” will notice and label you various things, which will then cause pro-academia people to avoid you and anti-academia people to start treating you as a political ally, both of which can make you worse off / twisted away from your original purpose.
Is it fair to say that organizations, movements, polities, and communities are all egregores?
Pretty much, yes.
It’s possible to create an organization in a technical sense that isn’t an egregore though. Lots of people have tried to create secular churches, for instance, but they mostly just fall flat because they’re not a viable design to create a living distributed entity.
Some parties (as in, a group of people at some gathering) fail to congeal into an egregore. But when they do, the scene “clicks”. And sometimes those spawn egregores that outlast the party — but not often.
So, it’s a little complicated.
But to a first approximation, yes.