Big Data — your missing link to God?
Tags: Self, Big Data, God, Faith, Religion

If God knows everything that I am going to do, then why is it my fault?

This is the most popular question among the intellectually religious. More so among those who want to run away from the burden of their choices. We prefer wasting time over building rhetoric rather than spending time on disposing of a narrative. Why reject a choice when you can get validation in countering it?

One thing big data has proven is that we as people are predictable and malleable along with vile and manipulative. We can be beaten into any form or shape and we wouldn’t know. We genuinely wouldn’t. It’s even more worrisome that we don’t have the capacity to find out unless and until it is spelled out for us. The quality of the argument has progressed without responsibility. Every few hundred years we find a way to not talk about what is right, but find a way to protect what is wrong. We can turn everything into a matter of personal sovereignty even if it is spewing evil in the world. The world is at the mercy of the poison chosen by the select few.

If anything, this should be a wake-up call for all of us. The negative implications of using data to cause destruction cannot be ignored, but this entire fiasco has multiple perspectives. The above is just one. Let the Governments, lawyers, and activists do their jobs. You do yours. It’s time you reflect. What has made you so predictable? What choices are you defending? What all have you done in the name of privacy?

We are not just concerned about our data; we are also ashamed of it. One major reason why we want to hide it is that it is covered in filth, among other things.

Photo by Larm Rmah on Unsplash

Once upon a time we had closed doors, now we have the ‘incognito’ mode. If the thought of your browser history being exposed is worrying you more than the kind of thought pattern you have fallen into, there is a bigger problem at hand. Not only are you pliable, but you are also breakable. You are like a clay pot waiting to be dried so you can be smashed to the ground.

The questions on data privacy and protection are new and have only begun to form, but this is not the first time the human race is facing the brunt of its choices. It has been happening for thousands of years. Each era has its way to play God. Our obsession is with superlatives. Great pyramids, Great empires, Great wars, Great corporations. It’s not long before the ‘big’ in the ‘big data’ turns to great. I’d say ‘only God knows what will happen then’, but I guess we already have an algorithm to predict that. Don’t be angry at the technology, it was only created to pick up on a pattern. That pattern happened to be ours, and it happened to be pathetic. It was turned into destructive later. All of it has and will have the same end because we don’t learn from our mistakes, we just find different ways to repeat them.

How is it that some are using this technology and some are getting used by it?

This is what God meant when He said He knows what you are going to do. You are a product of your choices and it can be guessed based on your ‘data’ what your likely next step is going to be.

Did data take that next step for you? No.

Did God? No.

Did you? Yes.

You have tuned your mind in a certain way that it has started to follow a pattern. It responds to a few things you claim to be your choices. You have allowed it to fall prey to perceptions.

This should be a realization of the insane capacity of human intelligence. Imagine what we can build if we put our minds to good use. But you can’t build anything on the outside if you are falling apart from the inside. Everything you do is a reflection of your mind, and those who exploited the dynamite to those who are now exploiting data have committed the same crime. They have killed their conscience.

It all boils down to choices. Whether you put everything online or take it offline, you mine data or burn data, you live in a cave or live in castles, your life will not cease to have a predictive end until your choices are not governed by values and your mind is not free of perceptions.

But, you don’t know who you are, what you are doing, why you are doing it, and worst of all — you think you have no choice in the matter. Maybe we don’t know how to be creative with goodness like we do with evil. The difference between righteous and self-righteous is one — you.

If anything, data should revive your faith. Let’s see them predict that.