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Gods, Minds, Sentients, and SubsentientsSephirotic Civilization is based on an interrelation between what can loosely be called Gods, Minds, Sentients, and Subsentients. As always, these are not hard and fast distinctions, and there is great variation even within each sephirotic empire, let alone between them.  |
At the center of every polity or empire is a God / Sovereign / Toposophic Focus, which could be anything from a minor transapient or hyperturing to a major AI God. The God is the heart and head, soul and mind, and ruling sovereign of the empire, and eir influence extends through it, via eir remotes, messengers, seraiph, priesthood, and so on.
Gods, because of their vast size and ability, are organized in a somewhat hierarchical and quasi-modular manner. Just as a biological's body consists of organs which in turn consist of tissues which in turn are made up of cells which include organelles, and on each level there is both independent activity and a sort of wisdom of functioning, and inclusion in the larger totality, so the same applies to the gods (and to all other sophonts as well). A large AI God will not only extend across interstellar distance via eir wormhole-linked dyson nodes, but will also work through secondary Gods or Archailects, which may be either subroutines of eir own being, or separate entities in eir own right. These in turn may (if large enough to require it) work through tertiary deities (either subroutined or independent), and so on. But whatever the scale, the God is the controller, the governor of the whole sephirotic empire or polity or metapolity. Because of their vast scale, Gods have a slower subjective rate of time then smaller entities. It takes time for a signal to propagate across a dyson node, and there are only so many wormhole buses one can cram in. So while the actual processing is exceedingly fast, the total "I-ness" of the god may be thousands of times slower than that of a baseline human. This is not a disadvantage, because the numerous embedded systems and subroutines can easily handle any emergence that may come up in fasttime. But it does make it difficult for ordinary bionts, borgs, and vecs to communicate directly with a god, and vice-versa. Hence the existence of Minds.
Mediating between Gods and Sentients are Minds, also known as Jinn, Agents, Powers, etc. Although a Mind may technically be of any size or toposophic or nature, most are generally transapient (however in low toposophic regions and hierarchies they may be mere superbright/superturing; in the proximity of AI Gods they may be lower level fast-thinking archailects). Minds have autonomy, and administrative power, and frequently their own agenda. They may be quirky or dull, radical or conformist, isolationist or social, collective and individualist, autonomous or totally dependent on the god or surrounding megastructure. Because they are not as vast as Gods, they do not have to worry about the Bekenstein Bound, and their subjective thought processes are hence faster - either the same as a baseline hu, or somewhat slower, or somewhat quicker, depending on the Mind in question. Of course Minds, like Gods, also have very rapid subroutines that can process information at millions or even trillions of times the speed a biological can.
Most (though by no means all) Minds in sephirotic civilization can be classified into one of the following:
Just as their are more Minds than Gods, so their are more Sentients (in this context) than Minds. Sentient beings make up the majority of the population, and again may be of any clade, category, phylum, and so on. Like Minds, they represent part of the support ecology of the God, and they generally follow the instructions of the Mind. They also very often (but not always) cluster in their own cultures or subcultures, societies, communities, subordinate civilizations, and so on. As is always the case, the following categories may and frequently do overlap
Generally, the following demographic applies.
This is the basic machinery that keeps the whole system running. It may include very complex mechosystems, Known Net architecture, subsapient ecologies, life support systems, knowledge miners, expert systems, and so on. It is supervised and administered by Gods, Minds and Citizens, and in turn serves them and may be incorporated into their bodies, personalities, and functioning (depending on the being or beings in question). The more advanced the technology and the society, the more support structure is needed to keep it going, and hence the greater the requirements for complexity management and maintenance. Such management and maintenance may be by either or both other subsentient utility systems, or by sapient and transapient beings, or both. Of course, there are some sentients that reject complex civilization altogether (prims etc.), and have no need of mechosystems and so on, just as their are Minds that reject the need for sentients and live their own existence, and isolationist Gods that do not have extended sophont ecologies. But for the majority of beings within the civilized galaxy, subsentients, whether aioidal or organic, nanoscale or macroscale, informational/virtual or real-life, are an absolute necessity on which their continued existence depends.
