The Spirit in the Net: Jean Gebser & C.G. Jung on the effects of technology upon the psyche
Jean Gebser and C.G. Jung are not generally thought of as philosophers of technology, yet their often overlapping insights as to its effects become more clear and prescient as the Zeitgeist advances beyond the postmodern to the post- or trans-human era. Philosopher Martin Heidegger and Carl Jung delivered significant texts on the subject of technology in the same year as the publication of part 1 of The Ever-present Origin and Erich Neumann’s Origins and History of Consciousness, 1949. This multi-media presentation will focus on Jung and Gebser’s contributions to what is arguably one of the most significant questions of our time: What are the effects of technology on the psyche?, with special attention paid to the consequences of the electronic media that have so radically altered the human to human interface.
The presentation will address the question posed by the call for proposal: “How do we concretely engage/integrate processes of personal and collective emergence/individuation in 21st century societies?” It speaks to the nature of the “dangers of collective dissociation, confusion, social and cultural disorder and degeneration” that appear to be undeniably concomitant with the ubiquity of the Internet, resulting in what could be the diagnosis of our time: “generalized media disorder” (Grossman).