Table 1 - from The Collective Unconscious and the Media (original) (raw)

Abstract: The rise of the digital domain has created a new virtual world that is eternal and ethereal and with it, has created a philosophical entropy state where more than ever technology has superseded cultural thought and ethics. What Jung once described as the collective unconscious was deemed once as being parapsychology or too esoteric is now a conscious reality of creation. We now, accidentally or intentionally, take part in creating a collective unconscious that more than ever has a visible presence and massive direct and indirect effect on our cultural groups as well as having a global unconscious appeal.

Abstract: Preface Preparing for the age of virtual illusion In 1962, Thomas Kuhn defined a paradigm shift as a change of basic assumptions within the ruling theory of science. According to Kuhn, an epistemological paradigm shift or a "scientific revolution" occurs when scientists encounter anomalies that cannot be explained by the universally accepted paradigm within which scientific progress has thereto been made. In Kuhn's view, the paradigm constitutes a worldview and all of the implications that come with it—all of features in the landscape of knowledge that scientists can identify. The so-called atomic age presaged such a shift, but that was only the beginning. For decades we have witnessed the emergence of a media age of illusion—a virtual reality as unified field of energy and information—that is based on correlations between principles of physics— multi-dimensionality, immateriality, and non-locality—and the principles of myth—psychology, symbolic meaning, and linguistic structure. The incipient stage of the paradigm shift has already reframed the cognitive unconscious of individuals and collectives and generated a worldview in which mediated illusion prevails in nearly every field of human endeavor. Though professional opinion and—increasingly—research in computer science, cognition, artificial intelligence, and psycho-energetics is contributing to the understanding of reality as illusion, the significance of this demonstrable fact is still unappreciated, and it is not factored into personal and collective behavior nor policy decisions in such critical areas as government, environment, education, and commerce. The literature—both academic and popular—addressing this virtual reality is longstanding and literally vast. The purpose of this book is not to document all these arguments, but to provide a timely and manageable focus for research on the strange and paradoxical nature of virtual reality—reality as illusion. The book includes an array of informed opinion and research from diverse fields relative to this paradigm shift in perceived reality. Chapters focus on the neuro-electrical dynamics at work in dreams and PEG. Video games are a good place to start when addressing cognitive-perceptual reality because they are prime exemplars of the nature of the paradigm shift. The Target audience includes anyone who may inhabit the impending virtual reality, but the critical audience includes policy makers and creative workers in the fields of government, education, media, video games, film, the arts, and commerce. Exploring the Collective Unconscious in a Digital Age investigates the cognitive significance of an altered mediated reality that appears to have all the dimensions of a dreamscape. The hypothesis is that the psychological nature of the global electronic media environment is dreamlike and can be analyzed like dreams using the dream analog of Psychecology video games (PEG). In other words, if the digital media-sphere proves to be structurally and functionally analogous to a Jungian dreamscape, the Collective Unconscious researched by Carl Jung and the Cognitive Unconscious researched by George Lakoff are susceptible to research according to parameters of hard science. Neuro-electrical cognitive patterns simulated by sophisticated algorithms in the digital unconscious—virtual realities—are not only based on what is known about the structure of the brain and nervous system but what is known about molecular levels of Psyche. In other words, the connections between computational reality and perceptual-cognitive reality have already been established, but a great deal of ongoing research will be necessary in order to begin addressing the scope of the paradigm shift.

Abstract: Communicative media have always had the power of being an affective force on our social and psychological lives. Media are not only an extension of the self, as McLuhan stated, existing and functioning as an outer human central nervous system, between all people and social groups, but they simultaneously work to reflect and determine the self and society. This relationship has inherent in it an undefined set of benefits and dangers. It is the goal of this analysis to unearth some of these qualities. It is the aim of this book to theoretically investigate some of these effects in order to further our understanding of the role of media in relation to the self and the organization of society. At the outset we have the self. Beyond the self is the outside social world. How do our media communication technologies fit into this equation? Media, by affective nature and definition, are situated directly between the self and society and, at the same time, are indistinct of both, existing at a “quantum” social level, a phenomenon termed Quantumedia. No longer can media be separated out from either the individual or the community. Further, media act as a multi-layered communicative force field, an informational membrane between the two entities, and serve not only to reflect the self back onto the self, society back onto society, but also, and perhaps most importantly, as a point of interactive inversion where the self becomes part of society, and the society part of the self. This occurs only through a vast, complex layer of reflective light rays, analog signals, and binary code. It is in this way that a principle of mediated knowledge inversion comes to be. To elucidate the reach of this affective nature of media, this study examines a range of political, cultural venues and events across history. Through these examples the work attempts to answer the questions: When did this inversion phenomenon begin? What are the signs of it taking place? Can or does community exist in the midst of our current media-based mass individualization and information glut, or are we going another route? Due to reification, this principle occurs with a suggestive value on or emphasis of the self (“ideology of the self,” McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy), and, more specifically, the image of the self in order to promote commodification. Simultaneously, it is necessary to emphasize that, in our growingly dynamic and information-saturated world one must put their own care into remaining attentive, focusing on the self as a vital and pertinent atomic particle in the much larger picture as defining element to the post-postmodern. This study in no way claims to be exhaustive in naming the effects of mass media on culture, but is an investigative process of observation and recording of some of the perhaps less quotidian phenomena. Its purpose is to share these ideas with the wider fields of the humanities, social sciences, and beyond to promote further understanding of our growingly complex human-technological interactions. Link: Updates & PDF Download: http://www.gregory-otoole.com/autogenous/quantumedia.html

Abstract: Purpose. The article aims to analyse the consciousness of masses in the communication system of the 20th century projecting the individual level onto the social one. Theoretical basis. In the fields of philosophy and other humanities since the middle of the last century there has dominated an opinion that the category of mass and its communication are second-rate and non-elitist phenomena. Condensing the experience of human history (especially – the nineteenth century – the time of the bourgeois revolutions and the two world wars), such parameters were set by the creators of social psychology Gustave Le Bon and Sigmund Freud in their basic research "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind", "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego". Since ancient times the masses have really resembled immoral emotional neoformations, which minimized the individual qualities of the components of the whole and showed the features of a predominantly animal nature. It is no coincidence that those masses were called emotional, or just a crowd, regardless of the topos of existence: streets and squares, or the infospace of the first mass media (newspapers, radio, cinema, television). However, analysing the crowd, the scientists noted that this is only an extreme modification of the mass, and, in addition to it, there may be others – quite the opposite in their nature. With the advent of the World Wide Web, the situation has changed: scientists and futurists have been talking about the mass of intellectuals, which seems to be formed and combined in the field of information technology. And it surpasses the traditional elite in many respects. Originality. Having analysed the works of classic and modern researchers, we came to the conclusion that in fact the masses, like individuals (according to C. G. Jung), are divided into four types. Correspondingly, each of them has its own behaviour, psychology, philosophy etc. This article focuses on beliefs and ideological positions as the basis for the functioning of emotional, sensory, intuitive and rational masses in the context of 20th century philosophy. The object of our analysis was the philosophical schools of neo-positivism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, existentialism, pragmatism, anthropology, phenomenology, and others. Conclusions. According to our assumption, regardless of the type of mass and direction of modern philosophy as a field of its implementation, rationalism comes to the fore everywhere (as a primary source and theoretical basis or motivation). Thus, it can be concluded that the rational mass now dominates, not emotional (which was thoroughly described by Le Bon and Freud). And this is quite natural in the age of digital technology.