Aliens have come and kidnapped the first human they came across, unfortunately, that was you. They take you to a new planet almost identical to our current Earth, but without anything man-made.
The aliens say you can have 1 million real humans to start “New Earth” and you can put them anywhere and teach them anything you want. You’ll have 1,000 years to make a good New Earth and if the Aliens like it, you’ll get to keep it, if not they will blow it up and try again with someone else. You will have access to old Earths internet so you will have the choice on what technologies you introduce and when. You live in the ship, but you can choose to pop in and out of New Earth as you please. You will not be burdened with all 1 million humans at once. You can choose to add a small number of them at a time until you get the proper resources established.
Edit: The humans can reproduce, and will unless you implement some form of birth control to prevent them from doing so. Also the first 1 million humans will start with the basic knowledge of how to human and you can pick personality traits for them, like you would a Sim, but the babies they make are blank slates.
You don’t have to try and make it a good society, you can choose to watch the world burn for 1,000 years. Up to you.
First steps would be to create a religion with all the usual “be kind and caring and patient and forgiving and nice in general to others and yourself” and then “do not be an asshole unless the others were an asshole first and then you may respond in moderation with an appropriate pinch of extra salt” and the ritual of an Aztec pyramid with slice and dice and flush them down the sewage sacrifice of any billionaires and power hungry totalitarians and corrupt public servants. Every year that do not require any sacrifice pleases the gods. But any year it is needed, the gods are content that required action was taken.
Do you think you would make yourself God? Because you can pop in and out as you please, it would be very easy to convince the populace that you are all-powerful and all-knowing.
I’d prefer not to. I’d like to make it Buddhist philosophy inspired non-religion if possible. But people seem to have this need of something to gather around and have rituals and festivities and believe in so religion is still useful. I’m thinking it would be easier to get everybody pulling together early on in a theocracy though the deep teaching aims to dissolve itself.
The teachings would promote (or demand) something of an egalitarian society with food and shelter and healthcare for everybody and encourage learning and education and culture and arts and own responsibility and critique and discussion and questioning the whole shebang in orderly fashion with ongoing goals of improving it for everybody.
I like this idea. Being new humans the concept of “God” doesn’t really exist to them yet so you can make it anything really. Like instead of God you can just have Dave. “Oh, thats Dave, he’s got some wild ideas but he’s the reason we all exist so we like make him Tacos on Tuesdays.”
It doesn’t have to be a person or an entity or deity.
I haven’t been nerdying on religion for much long many moons but AFAICR Buddhism has this core idea that “yeah we have symbols and chants and icons and totems and rituals and we pray but the more we dedicate ourselves we understand that they are just there for us to see beyond them into the nothing and the everything”. In Buddhism this has evolved into place, so it would be interesting to see if it was possible to kickstart straight into some sort of non deity centric anti religion without the animistic precursory heritage.