Digital Humans: Thriving in an Online World

11Creating Meaningful Alternatives

Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

Dr Seuss, The Lorax

This chapter asks how do we achieve a shift from one state to another – whether it be something more efficient, focused on different outcomes, or operating in new ways? We explore the idea of a dominant mindset of a group and what it takes to transform it when it is a globally connected, amorphous, always-changing digital network of different interest groups.

The Heretic King

Around 1351 BCE, Amenhotep IV ascended the throne of Egypt. Father to Tutankhamun and married to the beautiful Nefertiti, Amenhotep turned out to be a radical pharaoh with radically new ideas. Within a few years of becoming pharaoh, he set about single-handedly changing what he perceived to be Egypt's outdated religious system. Amenhotep decreed that all of Egypt would abandon the millennia-old pantheon of gods in favour of a single deity, the sun god Aten. He changed his name to Akhenaten and began systematically removing all signs of the old gods. The pharaoh's new name contained the name of the sun deity and meant ‘effective for Aten’.

Akhenaten (Hoffmeier 2015) believed in the power of aligning people around a single, clear, and tangible monotheistic doctrine. At the time, more than 1500 old gods were worshipped, each having many representations. Instead of gods such as Nu, the personification of the formless, or Set, Horus, Geb, Mu, Anubis, or Min, who ...