How Algorithms Undid What Ritual Once Built

This is not content. It is resistance.

Part I of the Post-Illusion Series

I. Introduction: Something Is Missing

You're not wrong. The world is thinner. Quicker. Hollowed out. Not just culturally—but intellectually. Something in the nature of thinking has changed, and the change is structural. It isn’t merely that people scroll more and read less. It is that modern systems—algorithmic, networked, profit-driven—punish the slow, the reflective, and the ritualized. And that punishment is not merely psychological. It is evolutionary.

If the primary function of consciousness is to mediate between stimulus and response with narrative, foresight, and memory (Jaynes, 1976; Damasio, 1999), then today’s technology directly undermines its use. Fast content discourages reflection. Ubiquitous input reduces the need for internally generated insight. And if cognition evolved under pressures that rewarded planning and storytelling, we now face inverted pressures: a cognitive arms race against the very environment we built.

II. The Framework: Two Theories Collide

Cognitive Niche Theory, articulated by scholars such as Steven Pinker and Leda Cosmides, posits that Homo sapiens succeeded not just because of brawn or speed, but because of their ability to manipulate abstract representations—to think about thinking. We developed a "niche" based on language, tool use, planning, myth, and ritual. These were not merely cultural features but selective advantages (Tooby & Cosmides, 1992; Pinker, 2010).

Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) offers a complementary and provocative model. Early humans, he claimed, did not experience subjective consciousness as we do. Instead, their minds operated in a "bicameral" state—with one hemisphere generating authoritative voices and the other obeying. This structure collapsed under cultural and environmental pressures, giving rise to introspective selfhood. Consciousness, in this view, was a late-stage adaptation to crisis, not a natural default.

These two frameworks together describe an arc: from externalized control (god-voices) to internalized narration (the reflective self), shaped by the pressures of social complexity and symbolic communication. Reflection, then, is not incidental. It is a survival mechanism forged through cultural scaffolding.

III. Co-Evolution: Biology ↔ Culture ↔ Cognition

The relationship between biology and culture is not one-directional. Culture itself modifies cognition, which in turn feeds back into biology. Literacy altered memory (Ong, 1982). Architecture changed how we navigated and remembered space (Levinson, 2003). Religious ritual shaped empathy, behavior, and group cohesion (Whitehouse, 2004). Every reflective act reinforced neural pathways that privileged abstraction, long-term planning, and the symbolic self.

Neuroplasticity, particularly during extended childhoods, enabled culture to serve as a developmental environment. The brain evolved under these conditions to favor the kind of thinking we now call "deep" or "philosophical." What, then, happens when that developmental context is removed? When ritual disappears? When fast-paced, high-reward stimuli replace quiet and solitude?

IV. The New Emerging Evolutionary Pressure: Technology

We are now immersed in an environment that does not reward reflection. It rewards speed. It rewards visibility. It rewards pleasure, novelty, and reaction. The algorithm is not malevolent. It simply selects for engagement. But what it selects against is profound.

Algorithms optimize reinforcement schedules in ways indistinguishable from classic behavioral conditioning (Skinner, 1953; Eyal, 2014). The phone pings. The feed scrolls. Dopamine flows. There is no time for narrative. No silence for selfhood.

Memory becomes externalized to search engines. Desire is manipulated by real-time feedback. Ritual, which cannot be measured or monetized, disappears. The human operating system becomes performative rather than reflective. The self is structured by what can be tracked—not what can be remembered.

V. Post-Bicameral Collapse 2.0?

Jaynes wrote that ancient man once heard gods—then, as the hallucinated voices fell silent, heard himself. In our era, the voice is no longer internal or divine. It is ambient, crowdsourced, and commodified. We do not hear ourselves narrating. We hear vibrations. Alerts. Notifications. Metrics.

The algorithm does not merely distract. It displaces. The inner narrator—the one responsible for identity, morality, and reflection—has been replaced with loops of content that perform thought rather than generate it. We are seeing not a regression to unconsciousness, but the emergence of algorithmically conditioned cognition: stimulus-response, optimized ego displays, and feedback-driven micro-adjustments.

This may be a second collapse. Not from gods to man, but from man to machine-mediated echo. The result is not dehumanization but de-narration: a world where the self no longer emerges through story.

VI. Contrariety Discipline: Slowness, Ritual

To resist this collapse is not Luddism. It is liturgy. Running without music. Writing without posts. Working without sponsorship. These are not nostalgic acts. They are deliberate restorations of cognitive sovereignty.

Each repetition done in silence is a form of cognitive prayer. Each refusal of a digital stimulus is a statement: I will think. This is not aesthetic. It is adaptive. The more you act without external feedback, the more the internal narrator comes back online.

Nietzsche wrote that to make a promise is to say I will and mean it (Nietzsche, 1887/1998). That is the first act of the ethical self. In a world of prompts and schedules, to act independently is a metaphysical achievement. You are not merely conditioning the body. You are keeping consciousness alive.

VII. What Must Be Preserved

Slowness is penalized in the new world because it cannot be measured, sold, or scaled. But slowness is where meaning lives. The sacred has never been quick. Integrity never hurries. Consciousness unfolds like a glacier, not a TikTok.

To preserve the self, we must build quiet systems. Not just disciplines, but devotions. Not loud refusals, but invisible rituals. This is not psychological hygiene. It is evolutionary resistance. You do not need to announce it. You do not need to monetize it. You need only to remember. To repeat. To refuse.

References

Damasio, A. (1999). The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. Harcourt.

Eyal, N. (2014). Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Portfolio.

Jaynes, J. (1976). The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Houghton Mifflin.

Levinson, S. C. (2003). Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Cambridge University Press.

Nietzsche, F. (1998). On the Genealogy of Morals (D. Smith, Trans.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1887)

Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Methuen.

Pinker, S. (2010). The Cognitive Niche: Coevolution of Intelligence, Sociality, and Language. PNAS, 107(S2), 8993–8999.

Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and Human Behavior. Macmillan.

Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (1992). In J. H. Barkow et al. (Eds.), The Adapted Mind. Oxford University Press.

Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. AltaMira Press.