Recent decades have been marked by secularisation at the expense of open discussion of faith, spirituality and religiosity. Yet, in truth, everyone has a world view, whether or not they chose to label it. The big tech companies have generally tried to ignore the needs of people of faith and many such adherents have felt marginalised. But religion and religiosity are not going to disappear. Then we must take seriously, as has been said many times, that there will be no peace in the world without peace between religions. We need social media, especially social networking sites, to support dialogue, homogeneous and heterogeneous.

I have been immersed in interfaith since birth. My father, Tony, is native to the British Isles, being primarily English, with some Irish blood, enough for him to be a practicing Roman Catholic, whereas my mother, Fuengsin, was from Thailand and a practicing Buddhist. They got married in 1964, when it was still customary for the non-Catholic partner to give way in terms of how children were brought up in faith, though at that time the Vatican was reviewing such marriages.

But Fuengsin, who was for ten years a member of the pioneering Multi-Faith Centre in Birmingham, was not one to deny her training in Dhamma and so I was brought up with exposure to both. In fact, my first formal involvement in interfaith was as a teenaged resource person at the Centre, where I naively declared to an audience that included Catholic nuns that the Bible needed to be rewritten using relevant language. They were bemused.

I became more involved with interfaith activities whilst working at the University of Derby, ostensibly on technical projects, but I also helped with fundraise for and generally promote the Multi-Faith Centre there. I subsequently became Trustee of the International Interfaith Centre in Oxford (2000-2002) and was the Buddhist ‘rep’ on the working group directed by David Paterson, that led to the establishment of the Oxford Council of Faiths.

At the heart of interfaith is listening respectfully, which means giving full attention, being open and sincere. Whilst large gatherings can inspire, I tend to view as more effective small grassroots groups such as those in the Interfaith Encounter Association that meet on an ongoing basis for friendly and informative sharing. This is the kind of ethos which I would like to underpin social media activities.

The Problem

Why is there so much discontent with existing the social media provided by the ‘big tech’ companies? One trite answer is simply because social media fosters discontent!

How does it foster discontent? By promoting craving and addiction, which is why paradoxically people continue using these services despite their reservations about them. As confessed by Sean Parker, former President of Facebook:

“The thought process that went into building these applications, … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?'” “And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.” “It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.

Mike Allen, ‘Sean Parker Unloads on Facebook: “God Only Knows What it’s Doing to Our Children’s Brains”’, Axios, 9
November 2017

A Solution

To redesign social media from the ground up rooted in the principles of Buddhist ethics and the cultivation of wholesome relationships. This should improve the quality of awareness, enhance human agency, encourage independence of thought, and not foster addiction. This is what the Sigala project is all about.

Why ‘Sigala’?

The name is derived from the name of a follower to whom the Buddha gave the most definitive teachings on how lay people should conduct themselves for human flourishing. Actually the layman’s name was Sigāla (long ‘a’), but the diacritics can easily get omitted. Also, with a short ‘a’, it can be pronounced in the same lively way as ‘Figaro’!

Current status

Research has been ongoing since 2007 and explored various themes. From 2018 onwards, in response to Parker’s admission, special attention has been given to mind and cognition. For descriptions of these investigations, please consult the dedicated Sigala research site: https://research.siga.la/.

The next step is to code a proof of concept, for which I have established Symfony PHP framework as a suitable candidate.