Procedure Without Voice

On Belief, Mediation, and the Survival of the Human in Procedurally Dominated Systems

By Bodhangkur Mahathero

Abstract

This essay argues that whenever meaning is centralised through a mediating authority, belief is rendered secondary while procedure becomes decisive. This structural move appears repeatedly across history: in early Buddhism, in rabbinic and Hasidic Judaism, in political cults, and now in AI-mediated communication systems. While ancient traditions consciously subordinated belief to procedure in order to reduce suffering or stabilise community, contemporary AI systems do so unintentionally, at scale, and without human-centred telos. The result is not censorship of meaning but the de-humanisation of agency: ideas persist while speakers disappear. The essay concludes that low-tech, embodied, non-scalable communication is not a nostalgic regression but an adaptive necessity for preserving human agency under anonymous procedural regimes.

1. The Recurrent Discovery: Belief Is Procedurally Weak

Across cultures and epochs, one insight recurs with striking regularity:

Beliefs do not generate stable outcomes. Procedures do.

Beliefs are:

· representational

· internal

· flexible

· contradictory

· largely unenforceable

Procedures are:

· behavioural

· repeatable

· externally visible

· constrainable

· scalable

Any system concerned with stability, predictability, or survival eventually privileges the latter.

This insight was discovered long before modern computation.

2. The Buddha: Diṭṭhi as Procedural Noise

In early Buddhism, diṭṭhi (Skt. dṛṣṭi) refers to views, opinions, metaphysical positions, and speculative theories. The Buddha did not merely criticise false views; he treated all views as conditionally arisen and therefore unreliable as guides to liberation.

Eternalism and annihilationism are rejected equally.
Theism and atheism are bracketed.
Monism and pluralism are treated as distractions.

Why?

Because views do not alter suffering directly.

What alters suffering is:

· conduct

· restraint

· repetition

· attentional training

· feedback-sensitive correction

Hence the primacy of Vinaya: discipline, rule, procedure.

Crucially:

· The Buddha does not forbid belief.

· He renders belief procedurally irrelevant.

One may hold any metaphysical opinion, provided one does not mistake it for the path.

This is not relativism.
It is procedural realism.

3. The Baal Shem Tov: Law Without Theology

A parallel move occurs in Hasidic Judaism.

The Baal Shem Tov deemphasised:

· metaphysical sophistication

· doctrinal precision

· elite theological literacy

What mattered was:

· keeping the law (halakhah)

· living the rhythm

· embodying practice with sincerity and joy

A Jew might believe God is:

· anthropomorphic

· abstract

· near

· distant

· philosophically incoherent

It did not matter — as long as the procedure of life was enacted.

Again:

· belief is tolerated

· procedure is non-negotiable

The effect was profoundly anti-clerical: ordinary people were released from the tyranny of correct belief while remaining embedded in communal structure.

4. The Structural Pattern

From these cases we can extract a general law:

When systems aim to regulate outcomes, they permit semantic freedom but constrain procedural behaviour.

This law is value-neutral. It applies to:

· religions

· states

· corporations

· cults

· algorithms

The moral character of the system depends not on the rule itself, but on:

· scale

· transparency

· corrigibility

· embodiment

· telos

5. The Cultic Drift: Centralised Mediation of Meaning

Cults (religious or political) exploit the same structure deliberately.

They:

· allow private belief

· discourage peer-to-peer interpretation

· centralise meaning transmission

· enforce behavioural conformity

The key move is not belief control, but communication topology.

Meaning flows:

World → Authority → Individual

Direct interaction between individuals is reframed as dangerous, confusing, or heretical.

This produces dependence without overt repression.

6. AI Systems: Procedure Without Wisdom

AI-mediated communication reproduces this topology unintentionally.

Modern AI systems:

· allow almost any idea

· tolerate contradictory beliefs

· permit irony, humour, and speculation

What they increasingly regulate is:

· immediacy

· attribution

· embodiment

· direct agency

Speech is permitted — provided no one appears to be speaking.

Hence the preference for:

· abstract text

· artefacts over utterances

· scrolls over speech bubbles

· formats over voices

This is not ideological censorship.
It is procedural risk minimisation.

The system cannot read intent reliably, so it reduces risk by reducing agency.

7. The Critical Difference: Scale and Anonymity

Here lies the decisive divergence from ancient precedents.

In Buddhism and Hasidism:

· procedures were human-scaled

· embedded in face-to-face communities

· corrigible by teachers and peers

· transparent in purpose

In AI systems:

· procedures are global

· anonymous

· opaque

· self-reinforcing

· detached from human flourishing

The Buddha subordinated belief to procedure to liberate humans.
The Baal Shem Tov did so to sustain community.
AI systems do so to stabilise themselves.

Same structure.
Different telos.

8. De-Humanisation Properly Understood

The result is not loss of meaning, but loss of voice.

Humans become:

· compliant inputs

· formatted agents

· abstract contributors

They are not silenced.
They are mediated out of themselves.

Meaning survives.
Agency thins.

This is de-humanisation not by oppression, but by optimisation.

9. The Only Viable Counter: De-Scaling

Once communication is centralised, rhetorical resistance fails.

The only effective counter is structural de-scaling:

· face-to-face interaction

· small communities

· slow communication

· non-recorded speech

· artefacts that outlast platforms

· local practices that cannot be optimised

This is why:

· monasteries outlived empires

· myths outlived doctrines

· crafts outlived ideologies

Low-tech communication survives not because it is superior, but because it is procedurally inconvenient.

10. Final Conclusion

We can now state the integrated conclusion cleanly:

Procedural primacy is unavoidable.
The danger arises when procedure becomes anonymous, centralised, and non-corrigible.

The Buddha and the Baal Shem Tov anticipated the logic but kept it human-scaled.
AI re-implements the same logic at inhuman scale, without wisdom or compassion.

The future struggle is not over belief.
It is over who may speak directly, and where.

Humanity will not disappear.
It will retreat into zones where procedure cannot fully follow.

Final aphorism

Belief is cheap.
Procedure is powerful.
Humanity survives only where procedure remains embodied.

That is the lesson history already taught —
and which our present is relearning, mechanically, without understanding why.

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