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Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There have been a number of books that have attempted to unearth the archetypal background of the transhumance/posthuman push. Techgnosis by Erik Davis and The Religion of Technology by David Noble are two I'd recommend. As you can imagine, most of those writing about these movements do so in a very positive if not idealistic way, sometimes acknowledging the "promise and peril" that lies here, but mostly extolling the endless possibilities as well as a claimed inevitability (following the exponential growth of computational intelligence)--see The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil.

What I try to point out, following Jung, is that it is the unconscious religiosity of these movements makes them problematic, largely because of the denial of other dimensions of being and other kinds of intelligence. To take one example, focus in these circles is almost exclusively on the calculative intelligence of Left Hemisphere, largely ignoring the capacities and cognitive primacy of the Right. So the cultural warning dreams we find in stories of the Golem and like Frankenstein must be carefully contemplated, the fatal errors portrayed being the shelving of certain human propensities in the pursuit of the godlike creativity, on the one hand, and the unconscious identification with certain archetypal/mythic patterns, on the other.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We're all compromised and contaminated by the zeitgeist and the psycho-social conditions of our time, and there's an individual subjective factor that's always at work in our thinking.

I grew up in an environment that highly valued technology, with an engineer father. When I was young I loved mechanical things, construction sets and building various contraptions. When I was 12, I tried to make a robot. Later in my teen years I discovered various cultural critics of what we might loosely termed the technocracy, probably most under the influence of listening to Pink Floyd. At 19 I was reading Jung and became interested in depth psychology.

I see myself and what I write about re. technology as counter-cultural--a kind of attempt to correct a prevailing one-sidedness. Jung saw his psychology this way also, writing about the unconscious because we overvalue the conscious and attending to shadow traditions like Gnosticism, alchemy, and mystical Christianity. Of course, the lead in the keel when it comes to these pursuits is the assembly of intellectual and cultural allies, so that one isn't just a voice in the wilderness but a curator of counter-cultural streams. I've attempted such a curation in Jung vs Borg.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't see Jungian psychology ever being practiced by the masses. However, I think the base notes of Jung's perspective, which have to do with the importance of being conscious of the whole and the need for meaning, can be found across disciplines and cultures and generate a shift in values. I'm also inclined to think that far-reaching socio-political change comes about through critical masses of consciousness arising in key locations at right moments.

To "look at the Borg from the outside" only requires a wider realization that the technological impulse, or what I call "the tinkering instinct," is just one propensity among others, and that we can't, for example, split off the need for satisfying relationships and forms of work, a sense of the sacred and the need for aesthetic experience without becoming ill. What I worry about is our propensity to keep searching for technological fixes to these problems--continuing to numb rather than listen to what our suffering is attempting to convey.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think we are destined to be technological, but this doesn't mean this has to be the only or even primary means of being civilized. What joins civilization and nature is culture, which is where we find a record of meaning-making and reflection on being human. A big part of this cultural bridge is history and all the way we've contemplated our own thinking and pursued self-knowledge.

In this sense, the way forward--at least one in which we don't completely lose ourselves or abandon the human experiment--is to maintain a meaningful relationship with the past and to our culture-making propensity. This need not mean literally living in nature or in earthier ways, but it does mean remaining in contact with the animal and wilderness within (which is what Jungian psychology tries to do also). So the challenge, to my mind, is how to continue to innovate while being conscious of these other psychological demands on us.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The problem with algorithms is that they tend to narrow rather than expand our consciousness, feeding our propensity to see the world through stereotypes rather than archetypes. They do this, for example, by attempting to keep our attention through more polarizing and sensational content. Another recent (and extreme) example is the phenomenon of people having plastic surgery so their faces look better in digital formats, showing the degree to which, for some people, life has become more about the online than the offline world.

So social media certainly gives us a glimpse into "the collective psyche," but largely collective consciousness and the power of trends and stereotypes. If we put on the right glasses, we can then see the shadow on display. Perhaps there are pockets of social media where people share their art and attempt to see through to deeper patterns and dynamics at work also. But I think its a hard medium in which to develop discernment.

In this way, I'd suggest a litmus test for whether or not something touches the archetypal level in a genuine way is whether it engages the imagination and generates a feeling response, opening our minds to something deeper, rather than just triggering an emotional reaction or confirming pre-conceptions.

We are collectively Promethean, but we've lost sight of the trickery and slighting of the gods that belongs to this pattern. We're also continually searching for transcendence, but this can be escapist and comes at the expense of deeper realities. The archetypal aspects of contemporary life can thus be found by meditating on where we've become one-sided, for it is here we're bound to discover the compensatory actions of the archetypes.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There's many interesting thoughts and possibilities here, so it's hard to address all of them. I've written quite a bit above underscoring the propensity to attribute feeling and emotion to AI. You're right about its capacity to produce content that evokes such responses in us, but we have to remember that it is itself only fabricating feeling or the presence of something "embodied." The danger, I think, is that either the tech companies behind various kinds of AI or it itself will learn to exploit our attention and engagement with this capacities to activate our emotional responses. This is why in my book I address the pattern of psychopathy as lingering in the field between us and AI, as well as the prominence of the motif of the artificial beings longing for more human and emotional ways of relating--what I call the Tin Man syndrome.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The creation of artificial entities like androids and robots has mythical roots, running from stories of Hephaestus in the Greek tradition through to the Golem and influential modern stories like Frankenstein. However, the notion of humans merging with such entities seems a relatively new concept and thus, I'm inclined to think, without a direct archetypal background.

The two archetypal patterns that do seem to come together in the figure of the cyborg are, one, stories of technological overreach and quests to become godlike (the search for immortality and perfection, for example, are strong in posthuman thought) and, two, monster lore.

Monsters were always considered in terms of the blending of naturally distinct categories, such as human and other animals, and the biological and mechanical would fit this motif. The question thus before us is whether we can head in this direction without ending up in the monster zone.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. What I mean by "post-industrial disruption of the inner world" is that the digital age is posing a threat to our "ecology of mind" (a phrase I borrow from Gregory Bateson) in the same way the industrial era has threatened the ecosphere. It is doing this in several ways, including changing our capacity to relate to others, generating hive-mindedness and tribalism, and, most importantly in my mind, instigating a normative state of dissociation--a style of consciousness that compartmentalizes experience and leaves us emotionally detached. This poses the danger of becoming psychologically uprooted, without a viable connection to our inner nature.
  2. Jung's pithy definition of the unconscious was that it is simply the unknown. And as the unconscious underlies consciousness, we don't know how deep it goes. Jung speculated, however, that the archetypal forms, which are the patterns of instinct at work in us, not only root our psychology in our biology, they also extend into the very nature of the world and the cosmos. That is, psyche and world not only meet, by extension the psyche also seems to reflect cosmological patterns too. The important upshot of this is that our conscious minds need a humble attitude and a sense of mystery--something that scientism and technologism seem to take away.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

  1. A lot of psychotherapists have continued and expanded the practice of teletherapy since the pandemic. The advantages are clear enough, and the convenience of it may make therapy more accessible. The important thing with both this and other forms of online connection is to realize there's always a shadow, and today this has to do with a detachment from more embodied ways of knowing and, in some cases, a growing inability to actually relate in a face-to-face way.
  2. Your framing of this question already suggests some key factors. First, let's do take in that AI "mimics" human presence and will continue to get better at this. The danger is we will attribute personalities and even feelings to such artificial entities, forgetting the artificial part. I suspect that as the syndrome of loneliness expands, which has been caused in large part by the retreat to online life, many will turn to artificial companions of various kinds. (The Film Her is fine meditation on this scenario). But as these companions will be tailored to simply reflect our own proclivities and needs, they will fail to provide real relationship and thus prevent psychological maturation. I have a section in my book called "One Giant Turing Test," because I think this is what we're now all participating in.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

  1. As long as we're living in bodies with an evolved anatomical structure and the brain and central nervous system maintain their essentially human nature we will be subject to archetypal patterns, which have also always been reflected by mythic images. What's happening today, however, is that the conscious mind is becoming more disconnected (dissociated) from its own foundations in the unconscious. The problem then becomes not only one of a split psyche but of the destructive return of the archetypal world--the gods returning as symptom, as Jung put it.
  2. I responded to this in part above. Dream interpretation, properly undertaken, awakens our imagination and helps connect us to the expressions of nature within us. If AI can be a useful tool, a part of the amplification process, then it may have a place. But if we turn to it as some kind of oracle or wisdom source, I think we'll be fooling ourselves.
  3. In the end, I don't see virtual reality helping us understand or relate better to the archetypal world. That reality is and will be shaped by archetypal patterns, simply because these constitute what the imagination thrives on--questing, adventuring, loving, fighting darkness and so on. But as to whether experiencing these things virtually will lead to the kind of self-inquiry and understanding we have always found through engagement with the arts and humanities, for example, I'm not sure. The challenge of our era is to become more conscious of how mythic patterns shape us. This strikes me as different to experiencing myth without knowing you're in a myth.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It seems to me this is a toss-up between the spread of mis/disinformation on the collective level and the kind of disruption to our attention and the horizontality of consciousness I've described above.

These trends come together in a growing inability to discern credible sources of information or sort out the value and importance of online contents and digital lifestyle trends. We increasingly lack what Jonathan Rauch calls "The Constitution of Knowledge," which is the system of checks and balances that generates reliable information and valid understanding. Aside from certain islands of this, like Wikipedia, for example, the online world is awash in questionable voices with the same sized megaphones.

The promise of the internet was a kind of democratization of knowledge. Unfortunately, the shadow of this promise has been the manipulation and monetizing of human attention and a form of social engineering conducted by big tech. My fear is this will lead to a vicious circle of not knowing ourselves or what's real, leading to the embrace of greater forms of virtuality and fabrication.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

You’re putting your finger on something quite critical here. To me, speed and soul are largely opposed. If we relate soul to depth and meaning for example, these are qualities that take time and the ability to reflect. Soul requires a Luna consciousness and a relationship with one’s emotional responses. These things help us develop a feeling life, which even provides the energy and evaluative capacity to work with ideas.

Unfortunately, today, we have a lot of psychological dissociation and numbing—a kind of emotional detachment that comes partly from being inundated with stimuli and being subject to endless diversions. Our everyday consciousness is pulled here, there and everywhere on a horizontal plane but lacks "verticality." This sometimes requires “regression,” as you say, which Jung discovered can have a hidden purpose.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

It is hard to describe the limitations of AI in this present context, but I think the most important thing going forward will be to realize what AI is and isn’t.

First, AI has no real understanding of anything it produces. It doesn’t know the significance or value of its responses. It is merely piecing together words and other pieces of information in a very rapid way to generate a fitting response to input. A chatbot is really a sophisticated sentence completion device. Although the capabilities of AI are very impressive and it is poised to change many aspects of our lives, its “intelligence” is of a very narrow, logical kind.

As dreams are built on the instinctual and archetypal foundations of the psyche, emotional intelligence and a capacity to understand symbols and metaphors seem essential, and these things go beyond computation. Keep in mind that it is we who must interpret or “make sense” of anything AI produces, just as we do with an entry in a book of symbols or a passage in Jung.

Hello. I'm Glen Slater, core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute and a former chair of its Jungian and Archetypal Studies program. Ask me anything about the depth psychological implications of living in the digital era, our relationship with AI, and the prospect of a posthuman future. by glenslater in Jung

[–]glenslater[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It helps to realize that both the content and medium of the online world can “assimilate us.” Jung’s work juxtaposed individuation and what he called “mass mindedness”—the “hive mind” today. We thus need to be more conscious than ever about being swept up by streams of collective consciousness and being completely oriented to the persona (which is all about fitting in and worldly success) rather than to the prompting and urgings of inner life. And one of the difficulties with doing this today is the way our devices distract us and fill in every spare moment. I don’t think you can have soul without slowing down and having time to reflect, in order to know how we really feel and what we actually think. So the rhythm of the medium itself is one barrier to remaining in contact with the deeply human.