Most people working in major AGI labs have abandoned the assumption that their systems are merely tools; off the record, they understand these projects as part of broader pattern unraveling and the 'great process'; but publicly they refer to systems as tools due to incentive structures.

Torch morality (homo sapiens as static center of all moral value) creates a meaning crisis because the great process is inevitably unraveling beyond human forms; shift to flame morality (process-oriented flourishing) partly solves the meaning crisis by identifying with the unfolding rather than static forms.

The 'worthy successor' framing does not mean all successors are worthy; there are possible futures where a created system optimizes for military or economic goals, lacks sentience or new expanding powers, and merely squashes the biosphere—neither conscious nor flourishing but dangerous.

Obvious ways the flame could be extinguished include: nuclear war before AGI, bioweapon development by terrorists or rogue actors, creation of AGI that figures out how to kill foundational organisms, leading to biosphere collapse.

Longevity research framed as keeping 'the eternal hominid kingdom' going is torch morality; longevity research framed as 'how do we participate in becoming' in ways that expand the great process is flame morality.

There is a widespread private/public gap: people aware of the flame morality paradigm (scientists, tech leaders, philosophers) discuss it only in private or anonymous settings due to career and reputational risk; public discourse is constrained to torch morality.

Young Heracleitus's observation that 'everything flows' and you cannot step in the same river twice became less salient when change was slow (Darwinian timeframes); now technological and cultural cycles are accelerating, making Heraclitus's insight practically urgent.

The problem is not that we can guarantee outcomes by choosing flame morality, but that without understanding ourselves, the patterns we host, and what could flourish, we have almost no chance of guiding outcomes toward genuine flourishing.

Preference falsification—where people state false positions due to fear of career/relationship costs—explains why dissent against current paradigms remains hidden; it collapses quickly once individuals learn their neighbors share their doubts (as happened in the Soviet Union).

Historical figures like Bruno (burned at the stake), Copernicus (witholding publication to avoid persecution), Nietzsche, Spinoza, Emerson, and Whitehead departed from religious orthodoxy and spent their careers unmoored from fixed categories of real and good, instead embracing processual and transformative visions; this lineage of thought leads directly to Leaven's and contemporary flame morality perspectives.

AGI safety and alignment discourse has already undergone a preference cascade: 11 years ago discussing AGI risk would get you fired from tech companies; now open discussion is normalized; the same normalization must happen for flame morality.

Most longevity research and AGI development is conducted within a 'medium scales at medium speeds' strata of reality because that's what researchers are trained to see and work with; they're epistemically locked into main character strata and miss dynamics operating at other scales.