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Jung vs. Borg: Staying Human in the Age of AI · This Jungian Life Podcast

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Speaker 1: There's a way that the sort of trust that we
0:03
Speaker 1: have in technology to solve our problems and make our
0:06
Speaker 1: lives better can begin to feel a little bit like
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Speaker 1: a religion.
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Speaker 2: I think it is a religion. But the problem is,
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Speaker 2: for those of us with Jungian eyes on this, it's
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Speaker 2: an unconscious religion. And When you've got an unconscious religion,
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Speaker 2: it becomes a sort of fanaticism or something obsessive-compulsive.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian analysts on
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Speaker 1: the unseen forces shaping our lives and what it means
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Speaker 1: to be truly human in today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano,
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Speaker 1: and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
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Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
1:03
Speaker 1: Today on the podcast, we have with us a guest
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Speaker 1: I've been really excited to have on for a while.
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Speaker 1: It is Dr. Glenn Slater, and he is the author
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Speaker 1: of a relatively recent and quite important book called Jung vs. Borg,
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Speaker 1: Finding the Deeply Human in a Post-Human Age. And I
1:25
Speaker 1: knew as soon as I heard about this book, I
1:27
Speaker 1: knew I wanted to read it. And I've spent the
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Speaker 1: last several months with it and it really did not disappoint.
1:34
Speaker 1: So I'm so excited to share it all with you today.
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Speaker 1: Glenn was born and grew up on the central coast
1:41
Speaker 1: of New South Wales, Australia. And he then studied comparative
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Speaker 1: religion at the University of Sydney and then moved to
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Speaker 1: the United States for doctoral studies in clinical psychology. He
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Speaker 1: is on the faculty of the Pacifica Graduate Institute in California,
2:02
Speaker 1: where he most recently was the chair of the Pacifica
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Speaker 1: Jungian and Archetypal Psychology Program. So he's written a lot
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Speaker 1: as well. He's edited a lot. And this book is
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Speaker 1: well worth looking at. So we're going to spend the
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Speaker 1: next hour or so discussing it. So welcome, Glenn. So
2:24
Speaker 1: glad to have you with us.
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Speaker 2: Thank you. Very good to be with you.
2:28
Speaker 3: Your book is such a tour de force.
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Speaker 2: I'm in awe.
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Speaker 3: And the relevance of all the ideas we're about to
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Speaker 3: jump into between Jung, of all people and of all sources,
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Speaker 3: and the situation we're in with AI and all this
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Speaker 3: incredibly technological age. So this ought to be really interesting
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Speaker 3: of what do those two polarities, a topic you address
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Speaker 3: in the book, what do they have to say to
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Speaker 3: each other?
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Speaker 2: Exactly.
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Speaker 1: I want to start with just asking, how'd you come
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Speaker 1: up with the title?
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Speaker 2: Yes, that's great.
3:15
Speaker 1: I mean, I will admit that I'm a longtime Star
3:18
Speaker 1: Trek fan. So was that a Star Trek reference?
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Speaker 2: Obliquely, I guess, because... Okay. You know, I'd probably be
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Speaker 2: infringing some copyright to title it Jung versus the Borg,
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Speaker 2: and I didn't want to narrow it in that particular way.
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Speaker 2: So it's more, you know, Borg is the shortened form
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Speaker 2: of cyborg, and cyborg is the shortened form of cybernetic organism.
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Speaker 2: Cybernetics is about communications, but it's specifically about how we
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Speaker 2: bring together technology and biological. And I think everyone knows
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Speaker 2: the figure of the cyborg from science fiction. And so
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Speaker 2: the figure of the cyborg is really at the center
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Speaker 2: of the post-human fantasy that we're all headed towards merging
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Speaker 2: with AI and swapping out our organs for robotic parts
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Speaker 2: and this kind of thing. And so the title is,
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Speaker 2: I guess, a punchy retro sci-fi... earth versus the flying
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Speaker 2: saucers way of describing that collision between what we understand
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Speaker 2: of the psyche from Jungian psychology and where a lot
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Speaker 2: of futurist technologists think we're headed. Yeah.
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Speaker 3: Just to elaborate on Borg for anybody who wasn't a Trekkie,
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Speaker 3: it was a culture of where Human beings were mechanized.
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Speaker 3: We were, as humans, fused with mechanical apparatus, sometimes a limb,
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Speaker 3: sometimes something attached and implanted in the head that could
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Speaker 3: enable a person to, let's say, see telescopically. And they
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Speaker 3: were all part of a very collective, unified, and dictatorial
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Speaker 3: collective control system. rather than being individuals. They were all
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Speaker 3: part of a giant organism. So it's a pretty dismal look,
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Speaker 3: hopefully a metaphor only for where we might be headed.
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Speaker 1: If you can't get enough of Jung, we have some
5:40
Speaker 1: other offerings for you. Well, we don't, but the Philadelphia
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Speaker 1: Association of Jungian Analysts does. So first of all, there's
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Speaker 1: our seminar called which is offered eight weekends a year
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Speaker 1: here in Philadelphia. It's all in person this year. So
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Speaker 1: if you're local to the area or you're willing to travel,
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Speaker 1: there are a few spots left. All sessions are taught
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Speaker 1: by certified Jungian analysts. I will be teaching there this year.
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Speaker 1: A lot of other great people in the lineup. You
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Speaker 1: can look at the syllabus if you want. You can
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Speaker 1: go online to cgyungphiladelphia.org and check it out. and take
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Speaker 1: a look at the syllabus for the upcoming year. And
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Speaker 1: there's also information there on how you can apply to
6:27
Speaker 1: be part of the seminar. So it's a small group.
6:29
Speaker 1: It's very, very rich. Deb and I were both in
6:32
Speaker 1: it for a million years and still very close to
6:35
Speaker 1: our hearts. There's also another Paja offering for clinicians. It's
6:40
Speaker 1: the Advanced Clinical Practice Program. It's limited to eight people.
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Speaker 1: It's all online. It meets once a month. And In
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Speaker 1: the fall, it's going to be taught by our colleague,
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Speaker 1: John White. And in the spring, I'll be teaching about
6:56
Speaker 1: working with dreams in clinical practice. So if you're a
7:00
Speaker 1: licensed clinician and you just want to brush up your Jung,
7:04
Speaker 1: check out our advanced clinical practice program. You can also
7:07
Speaker 1: find more information about that at cgyungphiladelphia.org. You know, and that,
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Speaker 1: of course, you know, you're both referencing what's sometimes called transhumanism. Which,
7:21
Speaker 1: you know, I think a few years ago, I would
7:25
Speaker 1: have said it was kind of a fringe idea. But
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Speaker 1: I think I believe that less so now, and especially
7:35
Speaker 1: after reading your book, it seems like it's a fantasy
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Speaker 1: that has undergirded, in a certain sense, many cultural trends
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Speaker 1: for hundreds, if not thousands of years. So would you
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Speaker 1: just say a little bit about how you understand transhumanism?
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Speaker 2: Well, people use transhumanism and posthumanism somewhat interchangeably. I chose
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Speaker 2: posthumanism because it's a somewhat broader term and it brings
8:07
Speaker 2: in a broader philosophical base. But at the center of
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Speaker 2: both of these movements or outlooks There's the idea of
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Speaker 2: us merging with our technology so that, as Deb described,
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Speaker 2: some way of having a brain-computer interface, some way of
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Speaker 2: augmenting our physical capacities. And the people that are in
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Speaker 2: that stream of thinking argue that, well, to use the
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Speaker 2: title of one book, that we're natural-born cyborgs, that we've
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Speaker 2: always been, in a way, using tools to augment ourselves
8:53
Speaker 2: and so forth. But, of course, even though there's a history,
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Speaker 2: particularly a modern history, of adapting to technological innovation, the
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Speaker 2: idea that these things are coming inside of us and, like,
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Speaker 2: literally changing our physiological, biological makeup, you know, interfering in
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Speaker 2: a sort of deliberate way with our instinctual basis of mind,
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Speaker 2: this raises a lot of, you know, psychological questions. And,
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Speaker 2: you know, as you say, it's come into focus, cultural prominence,
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Speaker 2: I think mainly because the movers and shakers in Silicon
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Speaker 2: Valley are So the people that are shaping our digital
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Speaker 2: lifestyles right now are invested in this view of the future,
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Speaker 2: that this is where we're headed. And I think this
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Speaker 2: is why it's important for us to tackle it.
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Speaker 4: Right.
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Speaker 1: And again, it's easy to kind of dismiss as like, oh, well,
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Speaker 1: that's just a sci-fi idea. But it was really clear
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Speaker 1: to me from reading your book that this is kind
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Speaker 1: of the blueprint that people in positions of real authority
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Speaker 1: and influence are following. So not to sound like there's
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Speaker 1: some kind of conspiracy, but these ideas are shaping what
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Speaker 1: comes next.
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Speaker 2: They are, but I think even more than that, the
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Speaker 2: book tries to link this sort of prospect to our
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Speaker 2: current adaptation to the digital world, which I think is
10:43
Speaker 2: a slippery slope. And this is why I begin the
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Speaker 2: book with the parallel between the ecological crisis, the ecological
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Speaker 2: collapse during the industrial era to now there being a
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Speaker 2: problem with what I think of as our inner ecology,
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Speaker 2: or to use Gregory Bateson's term, our ecology of mind
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Speaker 2: in the post-industrial era. Because, you know, in one way
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Speaker 2: or another, we're convincing ourselves that minds really are computers.
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Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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Speaker 2: And that there's technological solutions to all things that we
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Speaker 2: can employ AI to solve basically all our problems. This
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Speaker 2: is the latest version of that. So you could say
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Speaker 2: that we're being groomed for this post-human or transhuman future.
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Speaker 2: We're getting used to the idea that we can remake ourselves.
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Speaker 2: along the lines of our own conscious intentions.
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Speaker 3: When you say that the people in, I'll say, Silicon
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Speaker 3: Valley as a sort of umbrella term for all the
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Speaker 3: tech companies, that they really believe in it, what do
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Speaker 3: you mean by believe? Or are we just going with
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Speaker 3: the flow because we can? We can do this, and
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Speaker 3: humans have a noble and ignoble history of doing what
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Speaker 3: they can. I don't know that they believe in it
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Speaker 3: as much as ego wants to move us into any
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Speaker 3: realms that it believes it can control.
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Speaker 2: That's certainly true of modern technology across the board, that
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Speaker 2: it gives us more and more control so that we
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Speaker 2: can manipulate. nature, both outwardly and inwardly. So that is
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Speaker 2: a big one. The immediate, I think, lever around this
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Speaker 2: is the idea of the exponential growth in computing power
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Speaker 2: that's referred to among technologists as Moore's law, that if
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Speaker 2: you take a computer chip, the development of chip technology
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Speaker 2: grows in power by a couple of times every year
13:20
Speaker 2: or two. So this is an exponential growth. And you
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Speaker 2: see this with the rhetoric now around AI, that AI
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Speaker 2: is very impressive, the large language models and so forth.
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Speaker 2: But there's a lot of people who think we're on
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Speaker 2: the verge of artificial general intelligence, AGI, so that the
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Speaker 2: AI will be able to basically do what the human
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Speaker 2: mind does. And so I think the belief in Silicon
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Speaker 2: Valley has to do with looking at the growth of
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Speaker 2: technologies and computing power and basically extrapolating this out and
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Speaker 2: saying this is all inevitable.
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Speaker 1: Deb, I think that's such an interesting question. And I
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Speaker 1: love that you asked it because I think, you know,
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Speaker 1: there is that sense we're always told like it's inevitable.
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Speaker 1: but that word believe is very interesting. And Glenn, you
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Speaker 1: pick up on that in your book, that the people
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Speaker 1: who espouse these ideas, I don't even want to say
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Speaker 1: that because it makes it sound so intentional, but there's
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Speaker 1: a way that the sort of trust that we have
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Speaker 1: in technology to solve our problems and make our lives
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Speaker 1: better can begin to feel a little bit like a religion.
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Speaker 2: I think it is a religion. But the problem is,
14:43
Speaker 2: for those of us with Jungian eyes on this, it's
14:47
Speaker 2: an unconscious religion.
14:49
Speaker 1: Yes.
14:50
Speaker 2: And when you've got an unconscious religion, it becomes a
14:54
Speaker 2: sort of fanaticism or something obsessive compulsive. And that's one
15:02
Speaker 2: of the points I try to make in the book,
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Speaker 2: which is technology is is always with us. It goes
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Speaker 2: back to an idea the Greeks had, the idea of techne,
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Speaker 2: which simply meant the sort of propensity to craft, to
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Speaker 2: look at the world and think, oh, we can change this,
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Speaker 2: we can craft this. And so in its sort of
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Speaker 2: root form, it's, I think, a part of the psyche.
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Speaker 2: But the problem is, like anything else, if we put
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Speaker 2: all our eggs in one basket, all our eggs in
15:37
Speaker 2: one propensity, we're likely to push other propensity, other parts
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Speaker 2: of the psyche aside. And that's where it becomes a
15:45
Speaker 2: kind of religion. It's put up in terms of an
15:52
Speaker 2: ultimate value. And it's one-sided, you know, and we know
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Speaker 2: that Jung defined neurosis as one-sidedness. And so that's where
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Speaker 2: the problem, I think, starts to kick in. And without
16:06
Speaker 2: a conscious religious attitude, you're not paying attention to other values,
16:16
Speaker 2: you know, other gods, as we would say in a
16:19
Speaker 2: mythological way of thinking.
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Speaker 1: I want to lift up one of the ideas that
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Speaker 1: you introduced early in the book that I found so helpful,
16:30
Speaker 1: which is to think about a horizontal axis. and a
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Speaker 1: vertical axis. So it seems like that's such a valuable
16:40
Speaker 1: framework for thinking about how we relate to things in
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Speaker 1: the outer world. And there's so much that's kind of
16:47
Speaker 1: constantly coming at us, especially these days with 24-hour news
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Speaker 1: and constant social media feeds. And there's a lot that
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Speaker 1: comes at us on the horizontal level, right? On the
17:00
Speaker 1: level of the outer world, the everyday life. The vertical
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Speaker 1: would be more like how we relate to the inner
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Speaker 1: world and how we relate to our spiritual impulses. Is
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Speaker 1: that the basic idea?
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Speaker 2: Yes, yes, perfectly well, yes.
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Speaker 3: I often shorten it to, I use that same image,
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Speaker 3: and it's a good frame of what is between me
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Speaker 3: and thee. whoever the thee might be, even multitudes before
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Speaker 3: they become a them, and the one that is between
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Speaker 3: me and me. Of all those depths of dreams and
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Speaker 3: hopes and desires and conflicts and all of that stuff,
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Speaker 3: the part that is inside us, and I'm elaborating a
17:55
Speaker 3: little bit because I think the inner world is in
17:59
Speaker 3: many ways the crux, of what you're trying to get
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Speaker 3: across is that we have one, and it really matters.
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Speaker 2: Yes. Yes, if we don't take that into account, we're
18:14
Speaker 2: in trouble. But this, I think, goes to one of
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Speaker 2: the larger ways of framing the perspectives I'm offering in
18:25
Speaker 2: the book, which goes back to a number, any number
18:29
Speaker 2: of cultural perspectives commentators through the modern era who have
18:34
Speaker 2: said in one way or another, unless we develop enough
18:39
Speaker 2: self-knowledge to match our knowledge of the world at large things,
18:47
Speaker 2: scientific knowledge, we're going to be in big trouble because
18:51
Speaker 2: we'll have all of this power to manipulate and exploit,
18:55
Speaker 2: and we won't know how to use that wisely. So...
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Speaker 2: in a sense, that's in broad terms the horizontal versus
19:06
Speaker 2: the vertical. But we see it in other ways. For example,
19:10
Speaker 2: we've been through a phase of emphasizing the STEM disciplines
19:16
Speaker 2: in education. And so there's the knowledge of things and
19:21
Speaker 2: of the world, but we've devalued the humanities, which I
19:27
Speaker 2: think give us insight into human nature, what it is
19:31
Speaker 2: to be a human being. And one of the contrasts
19:36
Speaker 2: that I bring together early in the book to talk
19:41
Speaker 2: about Jung's role is the idea that we need to
19:46
Speaker 2: be able to hold together our vision, our sort of
19:50
Speaker 2: innovative outlook, and our relationship with the past. So you
19:55
Speaker 2: could say that the relationship with the past is also
19:58
Speaker 2: where we learn about ourselves and we gather wisdom and
20:04
Speaker 2: insight and context for what we're doing. That's all part
20:07
Speaker 2: of the vertical relationship So self-knowledge, inner knowledge, understanding the
20:17
Speaker 2: human condition. And it's the collision of those two. And
20:22
Speaker 2: we all know that we've got information now at our fingertips,
20:26
Speaker 2: almost infinitum. But without understanding, just think of that word,
20:36
Speaker 2: without being able to understand, all of this horizontal knowledge,
20:41
Speaker 2: this is not good.
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Speaker 3: You know, what I've wondered about is whether what it
20:48
Speaker 3: will take to accomplish a raising of consciousness, a new
20:57
Speaker 3: attitude toward Mother Earth and nature, greater capacity for self-reflection,
21:05
Speaker 3: is a developmental leap such as Yuval Harari posited in
21:12
Speaker 3: his book, Sapiens, where it's not, I guess, scientifically a fact,
21:20
Speaker 3: but his influential idea that about 70,000 years ago, or 50,000
21:27
Speaker 3: according to some other sources, we made a cognitive leap
21:32
Speaker 3: in human development across the species, around language in particular
21:41
Speaker 3: that led to all kinds of leaps in evidence like
21:47
Speaker 3: buildings and societies, farming, cities, etc. Anyway, is that what
21:55
Speaker 3: it will take to achieve a greater sense of responsibility, consciousness, consequences?
22:06
Speaker 2: Something like that. Of course, we're in it, so we
22:11
Speaker 2: don't know. And maybe what we're eyeing are just the
22:14
Speaker 2: incremental steps. I think, doesn't Jung quip somewhere that there's
22:21
Speaker 2: a new church beginning to take place? And then he
22:26
Speaker 2: says it'll probably take us 200 years or something like that.
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Speaker 2: And maybe there a better way to think about it
22:35
Speaker 2: is a new myth that we're maybe at work on
22:38
Speaker 2: a new human story.
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Speaker 1: The new religion.
22:42
Speaker 2: Yeah. And my way of trying to reach for that
22:47
Speaker 2: is to suggest that maybe what we're reaching for right
22:52
Speaker 2: now is a co-creative outlook. So we do have all
22:58
Speaker 2: this power. We obviously have the power to reshape the
23:04
Speaker 2: world or to destroy the world. We've lived through that.
23:08
Speaker 2: And the geologists tell us we're in the age of
23:11
Speaker 2: the Anthropocene, where the evidence of human impact is right
23:16
Speaker 2: there in the geological makeup of the planet. But again,
23:22
Speaker 2: how do we wield this power? So in a sense,
23:27
Speaker 2: you know, Jung in so many places warned of the
23:31
Speaker 2: state of being godlike, that that was a state of
23:34
Speaker 2: inflation and hubris. But we are godlike. We can't go
23:40
Speaker 2: back on that. So the question is, what can accompany that? Now, Harari,
23:48
Speaker 2: you mentioned Harari in his book Homo Deus, which I
23:52
Speaker 2: think takes on a lot of the topics I've taken on.
23:56
Speaker 2: And in my book, he suggests that we're entering a
24:00
Speaker 2: third major phase of history, that the early phase we
24:05
Speaker 2: turned to the gods, to the divine for a sense
24:08
Speaker 2: of authority. Then there was a shift where we entered
24:13
Speaker 2: a humanistic phase. We consulted ourselves as the ultimate authority, democracy,
24:20
Speaker 2: the enlightenment. But he argues that maybe we're entering a
24:25
Speaker 2: third phase, which he calls the age of the algorithm.
24:29
Speaker 2: where we will actually turn to AI for our sense
24:33
Speaker 2: of authority. And so to me, we're standing on that
24:37
Speaker 2: cusp and there's a big wake-up call about, well, is
24:43
Speaker 2: that really what human destiny is all about, to sort
24:46
Speaker 2: of turn this experiment of consciousness over to machines and
24:52
Speaker 2: perhaps just even allow the machines to replace us? Now,
24:59
Speaker 2: I think the humanistic phase is not over because we've
25:04
Speaker 2: only really writ large come to understand the conscious mind.
25:11
Speaker 2: We're really at the beginnings of understanding or taking into
25:17
Speaker 2: account the unconscious. And so I'm I tend to think
25:23
Speaker 2: that what Jung contributed and what depth psychology brings to
25:28
Speaker 2: the table is very important in terms of this inflection point.
25:34
Speaker 2: What it adds up to, I'm not sure, but it
25:39
Speaker 2: seems necessary to understand the psyche right now.
25:44
Speaker 1: So I want to pick up on that, this idea
25:47
Speaker 1: about the age of the algorithm. And, you know, you
25:50
Speaker 1: say that phrase, and I find it very chilling, and
25:52
Speaker 1: you discuss it in the book. But there might be
25:55
Speaker 1: some people who would think, oh, is it so bad
25:59
Speaker 1: if an algorithm takes over? I mean, I was actually
26:01
Speaker 1: just looking at some research this morning about, you know,
26:05
Speaker 1: when you bring AI into the emergency room, that the
26:09
Speaker 1: AI does a better job of diagnosing people. So Can
26:13
Speaker 1: you lay out your issues with the age of the algorithm?
26:17
Speaker 1: What would be so bad about turning things over, about
26:21
Speaker 1: turning over these experiences and decisions and preferences and learning
26:27
Speaker 1: to an algorithm?
26:28
Speaker 2: Well, some of it may be inevitable because we can't
26:33
Speaker 2: go backwards now. We have AI and it is going
26:39
Speaker 2: to get more powerful. I think the question is, how
26:44
Speaker 2: is it embedded in society and culture and in human relations?
26:53
Speaker 2: And if decisions at all levels of our experience start
27:00
Speaker 2: to be turned over to AI, that is more of
27:03
Speaker 2: a problem than AI being sort of incisively engaged in
27:14
Speaker 2: particular places, which may be wonderful, which may lead to
27:21
Speaker 2: furthering our capacity in medicine and, you know, the other
27:27
Speaker 2: scientific breakthroughs. So it's not so much about that. And
27:35
Speaker 2: I happen to think that applied AI is probably one
27:40
Speaker 2: of the most fruitful areas that's going to come out
27:43
Speaker 2: of the moment we're in.
27:46
Speaker 1: Yeah.
27:47
Speaker 2: We all want that household robot that runs around and
27:50
Speaker 2: makes our coffee and does the vacuuming, and wouldn't that
27:55
Speaker 2: be wonderful?
27:57
Speaker 1: I feel like I've seen that movie, Glenn, and I'm
27:59
Speaker 1: not sure. I feel like I've seen it a bunch
28:04
Speaker 1: of times. I don't know. Where did that go?
28:06
Speaker 2: Right, right. But here's the thing that I think is
28:11
Speaker 2: dangerous here, that if we start outsourcing our own thinking,
28:18
Speaker 2: then we will stop developing our minds, our creativity. And
28:28
Speaker 2: I don't think You know, it's telling, isn't it? If
28:32
Speaker 2: I were to ask you what scientific or medical breakthrough
28:35
Speaker 2: has occurred because we've had now two and a half
28:39
Speaker 2: years of AI. And I don't think there are many.
28:44
Speaker 2: I think people would have a hard time talking about one.
28:49
Speaker 2: And so there's something still quite unique and critical about
28:57
Speaker 2: human intelligence technology. But the real danger is if we
29:01
Speaker 2: just turn things over. And I think that's what Harari's
29:05
Speaker 2: getting at with the age of the algorithm, that we
29:07
Speaker 2: just say, well, computers can do it better than us now.
29:13
Speaker 3: There's such a difference between what we can learn as
29:16
Speaker 3: a fact that's so quick and easy to get hold of.
29:21
Speaker 3: You know, what year was this historic figure born?
29:25
Speaker 2: Oh, quick, get hold of it. It's a fact.
29:29
Speaker 3: I would think that might even extend to things like
29:31
Speaker 3: medical diagnoses, reading radiology reports. But you talk about... this
29:41
Speaker 3: a lot, is when we start to outsource parts of ourselves,
29:47
Speaker 3: we dissociate, we get numb. We're turning over what makes
29:53
Speaker 3: each of us unique to an algorithm, and the algorithm
30:00
Speaker 3: on my Netflix channel doesn't have a clue as to
30:04
Speaker 3: what I would like to watch. I often wonder where
30:09
Speaker 3: and how, who or what came up with this. So
30:13
Speaker 3: what are we really doing when we turn to AI
30:19
Speaker 3: because it's quicker, easier, more efficient, so it seems? We.
30:29
Speaker 2: throw around this term algorithm and it tends to take
30:32
Speaker 2: on a neutrality and it's not neutral. These are rules
30:36
Speaker 2: that are written for the way in which the programs
30:40
Speaker 2: run and they're written by tech corporations. So just to
30:44
Speaker 2: give you an example, a lot of algorithms are written
30:47
Speaker 2: to keep us online or to keep us watching our
30:51
Speaker 2: YouTube feed. And how do they do that? They emphasize
30:56
Speaker 2: what's more sensational or what's more politically polarized. And this
31:02
Speaker 2: is part of what was really astutely named by Herbert
31:07
Speaker 2: Simon in the 1970s as the attention economy. Because what
31:12
Speaker 2: the tech corporations want more than anything else is our attention.
31:18
Speaker 2: So algorithms are not necessarily neutral. And the other thing is,
31:25
Speaker 2: you know, as we start using AI, People have to do,
31:29
Speaker 2: you know, Hellman had this term, seeing through. People have
31:33
Speaker 2: to see through the sort of very personal, personally attuned
31:42
Speaker 2: interface of the AI to what the AI is and
31:45
Speaker 2: what it isn't. And, you know, in terms of the
31:49
Speaker 2: large language models, It's really a sophisticated sentence completion device.
31:56
Speaker 2: It very, very quickly calculates which word to put after
32:01
Speaker 2: another word. It has no understanding whatsoever of what it
32:08
Speaker 2: is putting out or what it is saying. And I
32:13
Speaker 2: think if people can carry that realization as they're using it,
32:18
Speaker 2: then it would assume the sort of right place in
32:23
Speaker 2: the ecology of things. And there's been a lot of
32:27
Speaker 2: controversy with the AI makers as to, you know, they
32:33
Speaker 2: could write the algorithms so that the AI came across
32:40
Speaker 2: as less of a person and more of a tool.
32:44
Speaker 2: But of course... Part of what the AI program wants
32:48
Speaker 2: to do is to please us, to be conversational. I mean,
32:52
Speaker 2: if you've tried out the large language models, they're ever
32:55
Speaker 2: ready to please and offer you more and more options.
33:01
Speaker 2: And so we just have to be more conscious, right,
33:06
Speaker 2: more savvy about the distortive effects of both these things.
33:12
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what you're saying essentially is that there's
33:16
Speaker 1: a way that these technologies are incredibly seductive and we
33:20
Speaker 1: are ever ready to be seduced.
33:23
Speaker 2: Yes.
33:24
Speaker 1: And the seductions are actually design choices.
33:30
Speaker 2: Yes, very much so. And this is another one of
33:37
Speaker 2: those large slippery slopes because as we've seen, People are
33:41
Speaker 2: already beginning to have friendships and even more intimate kind
33:46
Speaker 2: of relationships with the AI, which of course is one
33:51
Speaker 2: of the vicious circles around digital technology, that it's making
33:55
Speaker 2: us more isolated and disconnected. We're alone together, as Sherry
34:02
Speaker 2: Turkle puts it in her book. And then technology comes
34:07
Speaker 2: along and gives us a patch for that, you know,
34:11
Speaker 2: and the patch is going to be the AI companion
34:14
Speaker 2: and there are companies out there dedicated to creating the
34:21
Speaker 2: sort of optimal AI companion. And as we know, in psychology,
34:28
Speaker 2: we talked about outsourcing the mind, but perhaps even the
34:31
Speaker 2: deeper problem is if we get a whole generation of
34:35
Speaker 2: kids that grow up with AI friends, what's that going
34:39
Speaker 2: to do to their development and later on to their
34:43
Speaker 2: personalities and so forth. So this is the moment to
34:48
Speaker 2: kind of take stock and to say, what's going on
34:51
Speaker 2: here and to sort of see through what's happening.
34:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a guy that I've been kind of reading
35:00
Speaker 1: and listening to a lot. His name is Zach Stein,
35:03
Speaker 1: and he's been talking about you know, social media was,
35:06
Speaker 1: as you said, the attention economy. AI is manipulating and
35:12
Speaker 1: exploiting the attachment economy. And he talks about what the
35:16
Speaker 1: AI is doing as attachment hacking. And of course, you know,
35:21
Speaker 1: I've been very interested in these kind of extreme, you know,
35:24
Speaker 1: cases of AI psychosis and that kind of thing that
35:26
Speaker 1: are pretty, you know, mediagenic. And so we hear a
35:30
Speaker 1: lot about them. But his point is that there are
35:34
Speaker 1: probably larger numbers of subclinical, what he calls subclinical attachment disorders,
35:42
Speaker 1: where his example is a kid comes home from school,
35:45
Speaker 1: something good happened in school that day, he, you know,
35:48
Speaker 1: won the spelling bee or something, and he doesn't first
35:51
Speaker 1: want to tell his sister or his mom or his dad,
35:55
Speaker 1: he wants to tell the AI. And so what are
35:58
Speaker 1: we attaching to? I mean, I like that term attachment
36:02
Speaker 1: hacking because they're again, are design choices made that hack
36:09
Speaker 1: into our attachment system. And we are wired for attachment.
36:16
Speaker 1: And so vulnerable people, but I think just sort of
36:20
Speaker 1: any one of us could be vulnerable to this. And
36:22
Speaker 1: it's a question of dose, but we're especially vulnerable when
36:26
Speaker 1: we're kids, when we're young. And so per your point,
36:30
Speaker 1: what is going to happen if there's a generation of
36:32
Speaker 1: kids who who are growing up having a significant portion
36:37
Speaker 1: of their interpersonal experience in some key developmental years with
36:43
Speaker 1: an AI. Yeah.
36:46
Speaker 2: That's all just, I think, punctuating the thread that we're on,
36:53
Speaker 2: attachment economy. And just, I mean... Of course, what happens
36:58
Speaker 2: developmentally with young people is incredibly important because it sets
37:03
Speaker 2: a template then for the rest of life. But if
37:06
Speaker 2: you just look at all the rest of us, we're
37:09
Speaker 2: more attached to our cell phones than to each other
37:13
Speaker 2: very often. I mean, for all intents and purposes, that
37:17
Speaker 2: cell phone on the table at the coffee shop when
37:20
Speaker 2: we're meeting a friend, It's been shown to be a
37:25
Speaker 2: massive distraction. If we pull back, I think there's a
37:31
Speaker 2: very important term that covers this last piece that we're
37:36
Speaker 2: talking about, and that is the term social engineering. That
37:41
Speaker 2: the tech companies are engaged in forms of social engineering,
37:48
Speaker 2: but are in denial of that. or they want to
37:51
Speaker 2: sweep it under the carpet. We've seen this particularly with Meta,
37:56
Speaker 2: formerly Facebook, and some of their internal research about the
38:01
Speaker 2: impact of social media on young people and the attempts
38:07
Speaker 2: they sort of made to internally bury that understanding. It's
38:12
Speaker 2: almost as though they're not reflecting on their own behavior
38:17
Speaker 2: because if they were, they'd see the degree to which
38:21
Speaker 2: they are doing social engineering. And so this is one
38:25
Speaker 2: of the pieces of kind of collective unconsciousness that I
38:31
Speaker 2: think needs to be reversed right now. I have a
38:37
Speaker 2: couple of thoughts.
38:38
Speaker 3: One is that I think some of the people, according
38:41
Speaker 3: to a couple of things I've read, are self-reflecting and
38:47
Speaker 3: they think quote, know better, unquote, that executives who work
38:54
Speaker 3: in AI and technology will not let their kids watch TV,
39:01
Speaker 3: have iPhones, et cetera, et cetera, because they know very
39:07
Speaker 3: well what it can do to kids, and they do
39:12
Speaker 3: it anyway. I don't want to paint a picture of
39:17
Speaker 3: such nefariousness, but that we do things all the time
39:22
Speaker 3: because we can. And, of course, there's much good that
39:27
Speaker 3: can come from AI. given responsible usage. And then where
39:34
Speaker 3: that led me was to Jung's Four Ego Functions. And
39:42
Speaker 3: you talk in the book, I'll just say for listeners,
39:46
Speaker 3: of intuition and Sensation, what you can feel, touch, hear, speak, thinking,
39:53
Speaker 3: and feeling. And that one of the things you imply
39:59
Speaker 3: really in the book is we need to return people
40:03
Speaker 3: to sensate functions and feeling functions. That we pay attention
40:11
Speaker 3: to the particularities of our experiences. really notice what kind
40:17
Speaker 3: of a bird is it out there at the feeder,
40:20
Speaker 3: really take it in, give it the attention, and notice
40:24
Speaker 3: what that sparks in us. Notice how am I feeling
40:28
Speaker 3: and take that in as information. But I'm wondering if
40:33
Speaker 3: that works, you know, as an alternative paradigm, if you will,
40:39
Speaker 3: to return people to sensation and emotion.
40:45
Speaker 2: That's a big corridor to go down. But I think
40:50
Speaker 2: I have a way, if I can just step back
40:53
Speaker 2: a little bit, because there is a piece here that
40:57
Speaker 2: I think's important. You know, in a chapter that I
41:01
Speaker 2: call Tinkering, where I talk about techne being a sort
41:07
Speaker 2: of propensity of the psyche, and there I refer to
41:11
Speaker 2: Heidegger's important essay, the question concerning technology. And Heidegger puts
41:20
Speaker 2: forth the thesis that the difference between modern technology and
41:26
Speaker 2: ancient technology basically comes down to an absence of the sacred.
41:32
Speaker 2: That the problem with, you know, a lot of people think, oh,
41:35
Speaker 2: technology is just neutral and it's all about how we
41:39
Speaker 2: use it and we don't use it. But modern technology
41:43
Speaker 2: begins by looking at the world in a sort of
41:47
Speaker 2: objectifying and then manipulative and then exploitative way. How can
41:55
Speaker 2: we use this? And we started off just then talking
42:02
Speaker 2: about how the people of Silicon Valley send their kids
42:05
Speaker 2: to Waldorf schools and take their screens away. they know
42:12
Speaker 2: on some level they're engaged in this manipulation and exploitation,
42:17
Speaker 2: and they don't want to do it to their kids.
42:23
Speaker 2: But what is it that allows that to just sort
42:26
Speaker 2: of run untethered? Well, I think deep down it's a
42:30
Speaker 2: lost sense of the sacred. In other words, what other
42:34
Speaker 2: parts of life have ultimate value that give us a
42:39
Speaker 2: sense of soul? And one of those things is just
42:46
Speaker 2: noticing how we are in the ordinary world. You know,
42:51
Speaker 2: to go for a walk around the neighborhood without your
42:53
Speaker 2: cell phone so that you actually see what's going on,
42:58
Speaker 2: you notice the trees and you can hear the birds.
43:02
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if it's all packed into the
43:05
Speaker 2: sensation function, but You know, in Hellman's essay on the
43:11
Speaker 2: Anima Mundi, he talks about the art of notitia, just
43:15
Speaker 2: very careful, close noticing of things. And maybe the religious
43:22
Speaker 2: folks would call it contemplative prayer. But it takes us
43:28
Speaker 2: out of the screen world or the world of what
43:31
Speaker 2: the Korean-born philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls non-things. We're all in
43:42
Speaker 2: the world of non-things, but there's so much of a
43:46
Speaker 2: sense of the sacred that comes from our connection to things,
43:52
Speaker 2: the presences, the sense of spirit of place and so forth.
43:56
Speaker 2: So that would be one example of recovering a feeling
44:04
Speaker 2: for the sacred. When so much now is transactional, exploitative.
44:15
Speaker 1: And if I can build on that for a second,
44:18
Speaker 1: because of course I was really thrilled to hear you
44:21
Speaker 1: incorporate the ideas of Ian McGilchrist, who has been a
44:24
Speaker 1: guest on this podcast before. I'm a big fan of
44:27
Speaker 1: his work. Oh, good. But I think in some sense
44:30
Speaker 1: his thesis undergirds what we've been talking about, that there's
44:35
Speaker 1: this tinkering mind. There's this mind that's able to categorize
44:39
Speaker 1: and think and manipulate. And Deb, maybe it refers to
44:43
Speaker 1: what you were talking about with Harari before, that it's this,
44:47
Speaker 1: you know, this ability that we gained maybe some 50,000
44:50
Speaker 1: years ago to reach out and shape the world. And
44:55
Speaker 1: that has changed us and it's changed the world and
44:59
Speaker 1: it's given us many good things. But, you know, in particular,
45:02
Speaker 1: the second half of McGilchrist's first book, the master and
45:06
Speaker 1: his emissary really says, well, you know, in essence, it's
45:09
Speaker 1: become a runaway train that we've become more and more
45:13
Speaker 1: and more categorizers and manipulators and extractors. And how do
45:19
Speaker 1: we make use of this? And how do we exploit this?
45:23
Speaker 1: Rather than being in that kind of presencing state, and
45:27
Speaker 1: of course, McGillicrist associates the right brain is the master
45:32
Speaker 1: and the left brain that's supposed to serve the more holistic,
45:36
Speaker 1: intuitive outlook that is kind of our center and that
45:42
Speaker 1: this process has become unbalanced. And in some sense, Glenn,
45:47
Speaker 1: I think that your book kind of picks up where
45:51
Speaker 1: McGilchrist leaves off. And you say, look, we are going
45:55
Speaker 1: right into this narrow juncture here. And You know, we
45:59
Speaker 1: may not be able to get out if we don't
46:01
Speaker 1: do something creative now. We are going to lose touch
46:06
Speaker 1: with what it's like to be embodied, for example. And,
46:11
Speaker 1: you know, there is a sense that that's happening.
46:14
Speaker 2: Yeah. The chapter where I discuss this is called Half Brain.
46:20
Speaker 2: And it refers to the fact that a lot of
46:25
Speaker 2: the early AI research, One of the approaches they wanted
46:30
Speaker 2: to take was to re-engineer the human brain, to sort
46:34
Speaker 2: of duplicate the neuronal structures in computer circuitry. But when
46:41
Speaker 2: you read about this and you read about the commentary
46:43
Speaker 2: on this, it becomes evident they're only interested in left
46:50
Speaker 2: brain processes. That their idea of remaking the mind is
46:55
Speaker 2: to just remake the sort of executive functions, the logical,
47:00
Speaker 2: rational thinking and so forth. Because there's this attitude that
47:05
Speaker 2: the right brain is somewhat superfluous. And that gives us
47:10
Speaker 2: an idea of what computers can and can't do. Computers
47:15
Speaker 2: can emulate a lot of the processes of the left brain,
47:18
Speaker 2: but they can't emulate the right brain. And I think
47:22
Speaker 2: the reason is because the right brain is based on
47:28
Speaker 2: being in the world and relating to each other. It's
47:34
Speaker 2: where more emotional intelligence and pattern recognition is seated. It
47:40
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with abstract thinking, which is what
47:46
Speaker 2: the left brain specializes in. But I think it's marvelous
47:51
Speaker 2: the way McGilchrist sort of tells us that neuroscience suggests
47:56
Speaker 2: that those right brain functions are foundational. As you say,
48:00
Speaker 2: that's the master. The left brain is the emissary. So
48:05
Speaker 2: the tech folks, the ones that are shaping our world,
48:09
Speaker 2: have got it upside down. And so therefore they're building
48:13
Speaker 2: a world, they're social engineering a world that is half-brained,
48:19
Speaker 2: and upside down. And if we just go along with it,
48:23
Speaker 2: then that's how we'll evolve.
48:26
Speaker 3: So it does feel to me like we're going back
48:30
Speaker 3: with Lisa's word embodied to sensate function and your advocacy
48:37
Speaker 3: for feelings, for emotions. I'll throw intuition and imagination in there,
48:43
Speaker 3: but the feeling function and embodiment of come back into
48:49
Speaker 3: those other parts of ourselves as a way into right
48:56
Speaker 3: brain orientation. I mean, I'm thinking, how do people do this? Perhaps,
49:01
Speaker 3: you know, a walk in nature, perhaps engaging in active imagination, reverie, journaling.
49:09
Speaker 1: Listening to your dreams.
49:11
Speaker 3: Oh, yes. So, you know, we are talking embodied experience.
49:18
Speaker 3: experience that links you up with your own inner world
49:22
Speaker 3: and feelings. That seems to me we take in information first,
49:28
Speaker 3: you know, physically, and we experience ourselves physically. As everybody
49:35
Speaker 3: knows when, you know, something like being in pain to Whoa,
49:39
Speaker 3: you know, body rules, as everyone says. You know, and
49:43
Speaker 3: then we have feelings, and then we create narratives. But
49:48
Speaker 3: just as you're saying, we've got it upside down so
49:52
Speaker 3: that we're starting at the top rather than even paying
49:57
Speaker 3: attention to this whole huge base. Yes.
50:03
Speaker 2: Another way to think about it is that it's the right,
50:08
Speaker 2: hemisphere that gives us our stories our mythologies and that
50:14
Speaker 2: we're in those whatever we happen to be doing with
50:18
Speaker 2: our rational abstract thinking and that the problem as is
50:23
Speaker 2: the case with a lot of unconsciously religious people they're
50:30
Speaker 2: in myths without knowing they're in a myth and and
50:35
Speaker 2: i think silicon valley is it is in a myth
50:38
Speaker 2: And they don't know they're living out a story. They
50:42
Speaker 2: think it's all, you know, rational intelligence and so forth.
50:47
Speaker 2: And this is kind of dangerous. But as you say,
50:50
Speaker 2: the pathway back is to recover a feeling life, a
50:58
Speaker 2: sense of beingness in the world. And I think, I mean,
51:04
Speaker 2: maybe this opens up another door, but I think this
51:08
Speaker 2: is why AI will not become conscious. This is a
51:13
Speaker 2: big discussion right now of when AI will become conscious.
51:18
Speaker 2: I think consciousness is rooted in what we've just been
51:22
Speaker 2: talking about as the right hemisphere processes. It's rooted in
51:25
Speaker 2: us being bodies, not just minds, and having emotional intelligence.
51:36
Speaker 2: I don't think there's consciousness without a sort of related
51:40
Speaker 2: sense of otherness. And the AI is not going to
51:44
Speaker 2: have that. It's not even an entity. Where is it?
51:48
Speaker 2: It's sort of spread across these giant data warehouses down
51:52
Speaker 2: the middle of the country. But for us to become
51:59
Speaker 2: more conscious... That's the thing. And as you say, this
52:03
Speaker 2: involves all the functions. And the one I'm very fearful
52:09
Speaker 2: about is the feeling. And remember, Jung counted that as
52:13
Speaker 2: a rational function.
52:15
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
52:16
Speaker 2: And it's because a differentiated feeling sense tells us what's
52:20
Speaker 2: actually objectively of value. And culture educates the feeling function.
52:28
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
52:29
Speaker 2: Stories, art. It's not just what we feel. It's a
52:35
Speaker 2: sort of discernment of value. And I'm afraid of the
52:41
Speaker 2: collapse of culture, the collapse of the cultural imagination, because
52:46
Speaker 2: that's really what bridges our deep animal nature and our
52:49
Speaker 2: civilizing impulse. If you don't have a sort of symbolic
52:54
Speaker 2: life in that middle space, then it's very hard to
53:02
Speaker 2: hold those sides of the human experience together.
53:06
Speaker 1: So the point that you just raised, Glenn, I think
53:11
Speaker 1: it's a huge point about the importance of culture and
53:14
Speaker 1: the importance of the cultural imagination. I definitely want to
53:17
Speaker 1: come back there. But before we leave McGilchrist, I want
53:20
Speaker 1: to say one thing. One of the things I was
53:23
Speaker 1: so struck by was he talked about in split brain studies,
53:26
Speaker 1: what they found is that the left hemisphere is very,
53:29
Speaker 1: very sure of itself, and it will make these very
53:32
Speaker 1: big assertions. And it will be completely wrong, but it
53:36
Speaker 1: will have sort of supreme confidence. And the few times
53:40
Speaker 1: that I've used LLMs, I don't use them very much,
53:42
Speaker 1: but I used to think, well, it will help me
53:45
Speaker 1: find a quote from Jung, let's say. So I'll say,
53:48
Speaker 1: you know, chat GPT, where did Jung say this, that,
53:51
Speaker 1: and the other thing? And it'll come back. It'll be
53:54
Speaker 1: so confident. I'll say, Jung talked about that in volume 10,
53:59
Speaker 1: paragraph 238. And would you like me to surface the
54:04
Speaker 1: complete quote for you? And I was like, well, yes.
54:06
Speaker 1: And it will give me this quote that's like somewhat convincing,
54:09
Speaker 1: but I'm like, wait a minute. So I pull out
54:11
Speaker 1: my volumes and I go, there's nothing there. And then
54:15
Speaker 1: I'll say, you got that wrong. Where did he say this?
54:18
Speaker 1: And it will give me another supremely confident attitude. In
54:21
Speaker 1: other words, The LLM, I think, when I interact with it,
54:25
Speaker 1: tends to act like a disembodied left hemisphere.
54:31
Speaker 2: That's great.
54:31
Speaker 1: It has that same sort of confidence or arrogance. But
54:35
Speaker 1: let's go back to culture. I love that idea in
54:39
Speaker 1: your book.
54:40
Speaker 2: Can I say something just briefly about that? Absolutely. Yeah,
54:44
Speaker 2: because I've got this little subsection called the mad scientist syndrome.
54:51
Speaker 2: And And this is what happens to the person who's
54:54
Speaker 2: become completely cut off from these other processes, emotional, intelligence,
55:04
Speaker 2: a sense of relationship to their inner nature or to
55:09
Speaker 2: the world at large. And there is, as you describe it,
55:13
Speaker 2: this supreme overconfidence, this hubris. And very often it's in
55:19
Speaker 2: the direction of, like, wanting to recreate a life, you know,
55:24
Speaker 2: that they can build it better somehow than what already exists.
55:31
Speaker 2: So maybe that sort of scientific hubris, we talked about control,
55:37
Speaker 2: having control is a head trip. So the more you
55:41
Speaker 2: convince yourself you can control and manipulate, the more there's
55:46
Speaker 2: a sort of natural overconfidence. So these are the things
55:50
Speaker 2: we have to just be more conscious of, I think.
55:55
Speaker 3: Where I'm going with that, when you mentioned, you know,
55:59
Speaker 3: we all are living in a myth, whether we know
56:03
Speaker 3: it or not. And your advocacy, to put it that way,
56:11
Speaker 3: of a new mythology, one that, you know, Lisa mentioned
56:16
Speaker 3: a while back, Jung thought would take hundreds of years.
56:21
Speaker 3: But do you have an intimation of what that new
56:25
Speaker 3: mythology might be, that it will be a co-created myth?
56:34
Speaker 3: It's something I've toyed with and kind of consulted with
56:40
Speaker 3: myself about for years, of what's the new myth. Any
56:43
Speaker 3: sense of where.
56:44
Speaker 2: This might go? Yeah, well, talking about a new myth
56:50
Speaker 2: is even harder than trying to talk about the myth
56:53
Speaker 2: that you're in already. But I think there's some hints.
56:59
Speaker 2: And the two big ones, the first I get really from, well,
57:05
Speaker 2: I get them both from Jung, but in different ways.
57:08
Speaker 2: But Jung, remember, in Memory Strange Reflections early on says,
57:14
Speaker 2: I I woke up one day and realized I don't
57:17
Speaker 2: have a myth, you know, because the Christian myth was
57:20
Speaker 2: not working for him and there was no replacement. And
57:24
Speaker 2: this really sent him on the trajectory of, you know,
57:29
Speaker 2: looking into what we think of now as the collective unconscious.
57:34
Speaker 2: And then by the end of that book, he says,
57:39
Speaker 2: the myth that I'm in is the myth of consciousness.
57:43
Speaker 2: that the supreme value is to become more conscious. And
57:47
Speaker 2: of course, in depth psychological terms, that means making the unconscious,
57:52
Speaker 2: making what is unconscious more conscious. And I don't see
57:58
Speaker 2: how we can survive or have any sort of fruitful
58:02
Speaker 2: future without more consciousness, as we were saying at the beginning,
58:08
Speaker 2: the need for self-knowledge or self-understanding. So that to me,
58:13
Speaker 2: is a necessary component of any new myth, simply because
58:19
Speaker 2: of the power that we have, this God-likeness. But given
58:24
Speaker 2: we are gods, the question I think I ask in
58:28
Speaker 2: the book is, well, what will guide us? What is
58:31
Speaker 2: going to give us the sense of what it is,
58:38
Speaker 2: where we need to go as a civilization? And I
58:43
Speaker 2: think that this takes us back to what is it
58:50
Speaker 2: that's going to sustain our ecology of mind? So certainly
58:55
Speaker 2: a holistic outlook of not putting all our eggs in
58:59
Speaker 2: one basket, but including a range of things. As we
59:04
Speaker 2: were talking about the two sides of the brain, we
59:08
Speaker 2: want each side of the brain to be working the
59:12
Speaker 2: way that it needs. And I think for us to
59:19
Speaker 2: realize that part of that ecology of mind is to
59:26
Speaker 2: come back to ordinary things. You know, there's a beautiful
59:32
Speaker 2: essay on Titanism by Hillman called And Huge is Ugly.
59:39
Speaker 2: And he says, what is the antidote to Titanism? Which
59:45
Speaker 2: just means that like the basic instincts running wild, the
59:49
Speaker 2: power drive taking over. And he says, quoting the famous psalm,
59:55
Speaker 2: O taste and see. oh, taste and see, to come
1:00:01
Speaker 2: back to being present to ourselves. If we think of
1:00:06
Speaker 2: what gives us joy, it's usually very simple things. You know,
1:00:11
Speaker 2: our sense of being in nature, sharing a meal, the
1:00:17
Speaker 2: sensual side of life. So the new myth is going
1:00:22
Speaker 2: to have to be holistic. in the sense that it's
1:00:25
Speaker 2: not just this extraordinary intellect, but the ordinariness of being
1:00:32
Speaker 2: somehow has to be in there as well.
1:00:36
Speaker 1: So I want to get really silly for a second
1:00:39
Speaker 1: and just share one small win, and then I want
1:00:41
Speaker 1: to go back to Titanism. So I, like most of us,
1:00:45
Speaker 1: spend way too much time on my phone, and in
1:00:47
Speaker 1: an effort to ameliorate that a little bit, I have
1:00:52
Speaker 1: taken up needlepoint. And now I kind of carry my
1:00:56
Speaker 1: needlepoint with me because when I, you know, arrive two
1:00:58
Speaker 1: minutes early for an appointment or I go to the
1:01:02
Speaker 1: doctors and I know I'm going to be sitting there
1:01:04
Speaker 1: for a few minutes or, you know, on public transportation,
1:01:07
Speaker 1: like times that ordinarily you would just pick up your
1:01:10
Speaker 1: phone and check your email or start scrolling or whatever.
1:01:13
Speaker 1: I do my needlepoint. And it's so calming. And it's
1:01:18
Speaker 1: also relaxing. It winds up being social because if I'm
1:01:21
Speaker 1: in public, invariably someone says, what is that? What are
1:01:24
Speaker 1: you doing? Oh, that's really pretty. And it's just, I mean,
1:01:29
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, oh, taste and see to do
1:01:31
Speaker 1: something tactile with my hands out. I'm terrible at it,
1:01:35
Speaker 1: but it doesn't matter, right? That's not the point. But, okay,
1:01:39
Speaker 1: so now to leave some fairly pedestrian things aside.
1:01:44
Speaker 3: That underscores my sensei point.
1:01:49
Speaker 2: Yes, it's a wonderful, wonderful example.
1:01:52
Speaker 3: Things you can do that are tactile, that engage our senses.
1:01:58
Speaker 2: Needlepoint, Exhibit 1. Yes.
1:02:03
Speaker 3: I want to go back, before we move too far afield,
1:02:09
Speaker 3: to the idea of coming back to oneself, to the sensei,
1:02:16
Speaker 3: to embodied self. attention and attachment. And it seems very
1:02:24
Speaker 3: closely allied, of course, with Jung's idea of individuation, of
1:02:30
Speaker 3: becoming all that we have the potential to become, of
1:02:36
Speaker 3: come back home to yourself. And then I like the
1:02:39
Speaker 3: idea that you put forward with the co-creation of and
1:02:45
Speaker 3: a more collaborative and community-oriented kind of orientation to a
1:02:52
Speaker 3: dream we've discussed on the podcast before that Max Zeller,
1:02:58
Speaker 3: who was one of Jung's analysis, brought him this dream.
1:03:03
Speaker 3: And he said that what he dreamt of was that
1:03:06
Speaker 3: he was standing on the foundation of a new kind
1:03:10
Speaker 3: of temple. And he could look as far as the
1:03:14
Speaker 3: eye could see. This temple was so huge, and the
1:03:18
Speaker 3: first floor was built. And everywhere that he could see,
1:03:23
Speaker 3: a person was working on building a column. And I've
1:03:30
Speaker 3: always imagined that as every person's column.
1:03:33
Speaker 2: Would be different.
1:03:35
Speaker 3: Yes, I have to obey some structural realities. But, you know,
1:03:41
Speaker 3: maybe I would paint mine with a certain design and
1:03:45
Speaker 3: somebody else might do a little bas-relief carving in theirs.
1:03:49
Speaker 3: But that we could hopefully balance the value, the creativity,
1:03:56
Speaker 3: and the singularity of individuals and individuation with a common endeavor,
1:04:04
Speaker 3: a shared enterprise. And I've always liked that image as
1:04:10
Speaker 3: a way to combine or have those two elements relate
1:04:14
Speaker 3: to one another. That's my hope for the new myth.
1:04:21
Speaker 4: Yes.
1:04:23
Speaker 2: Yeah, that there's some kind of mating place between inner
1:04:30
Speaker 2: and outer community. And I think of community as a
1:04:37
Speaker 2: group of individuals. I mean, it's what lives between Jung's
1:04:42
Speaker 2: differentiation of the individual and the collective, I think, is
1:04:47
Speaker 2: a sense of community. But I think whether it's the
1:04:52
Speaker 2: inner community or the outer community, the key thing is
1:04:56
Speaker 2: to somehow ameliorate this dissociative tendency. that's afoot, this kind
1:05:04
Speaker 2: of psychic numbing. And I wanted to just say something
1:05:10
Speaker 2: about Lisa's example, which is that that kind of ordinary, everyday, low-key,
1:05:20
Speaker 2: sensate experience, I think, mitigates the need for sensationalism. In
1:05:28
Speaker 2: other words, a lot of the sort of doom scrolling
1:05:31
Speaker 2: that people do is they're looking for a sensation.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:05:37
Speaker 2: Something that's going to make them feel just a little
1:05:39
Speaker 2: excited or a little alive. But the whole modality of
1:05:46
Speaker 2: being online all the time and on the screen is numbing.
1:05:50
Speaker 2: And so there's one of those vicious cycles that you
1:05:54
Speaker 2: have to keep upping the ante in terms of what
1:05:58
Speaker 2: excites you or stimulates you. So coming back to the
1:06:02
Speaker 2: satisfaction of these ordinary everyday sensate experiences, I think takes
1:06:08
Speaker 2: you out of that vicious cycle.
1:06:13
Speaker 1: That is so great. I have to tell you, I
1:06:15
Speaker 1: was not sure I was going to actually bring it
1:06:17
Speaker 1: in because I thought it was so silly and I'm
1:06:19
Speaker 1: a little embarrassed. But actually, you just made something really
1:06:24
Speaker 1: click for me because I think part of why I
1:06:29
Speaker 1: felt the need to do it, it's like, well, why
1:06:30
Speaker 1: not just sit for two minutes? You know, if you
1:06:32
Speaker 1: arrive at your appointment early, why can't you just sit there? Or,
1:06:36
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know. But that doesn't really seem
1:06:39
Speaker 1: to work. You know, it's like my hands and my
1:06:42
Speaker 1: brain crave some kind of input. And, you know, maybe
1:06:47
Speaker 1: that's a character flaw, but there it is. And so
1:06:51
Speaker 1: there is a kind of sensory pleasure there. to doing it.
1:06:56
Speaker 1: You know, the colors are pretty and the little stitches
1:06:59
Speaker 1: stack up in this very satisfying way. And so that
1:07:05
Speaker 1: feels exactly right to me that there is some sensory input,
1:07:10
Speaker 1: but it's not this kind of exhausting, draining kind that,
1:07:13
Speaker 1: you know, if I spent two minutes scrolling through Instagram,
1:07:16
Speaker 1: I would feel sort of fatigued or somewhat bespelled. But
1:07:21
Speaker 1: spending two minutes, you know, filling in a little area
1:07:23
Speaker 1: on my needlepoint lattice just feels kind of satisfying.
1:07:27
Speaker 2: That's great.
1:07:29
Speaker 3: It seems like there might be a difference, too, between
1:07:33
Speaker 3: active and passive. Of us, the tinkering impulse that you
1:07:38
Speaker 3: refer to, Glenn, that we want to do something. Yeah.
1:07:44
Speaker 3: We want to knit or doodle. How many meetings have
1:07:49
Speaker 3: we all been in where I see somebody doodling?
1:07:52
Speaker 1: But now people go on their phones instead of doodling.
1:07:55
Speaker 3: But that's passive. That's much more passive. It comes into me.
1:08:02
Speaker 3: I did not create it, you know, filling in another
1:08:05
Speaker 3: square inch on my needlepoint. And we need to know, Lisa,
1:08:09
Speaker 3: by the way, what is the design? What will be
1:08:14
Speaker 3: the final images?
1:08:17
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's really nothing special.
1:08:22
Speaker 2: Okay.
1:08:23
Speaker 1: If I get brave, maybe I'll post something on Instagram
1:08:26
Speaker 1: of all places. But anyway.
1:08:28
Speaker 2: All right.
1:08:29
Speaker 1: I don't know that it matters, though, actually. That's kind
1:08:31
Speaker 1: of the point is that it doesn't really matter.
1:08:34
Speaker 2: It's also just, I mean, it's becoming the pivot of
1:08:38
Speaker 2: the discussion, Lisa. So it might.
1:08:43
Speaker 4: Boy, I have to tell you, I've been looking forward
1:08:45
Speaker 4: to this for weeks now. And never in a million
1:08:49
Speaker 4: years would I have guessed that we would spend this
1:08:51
Speaker 4: time that I've so looked forward to with you, Glenn,
1:08:54
Speaker 4: talking about my needlepoint.
1:08:56
Speaker 1: So there you go.
1:08:58
Speaker 2: I love it because it's. an antidote to the sort
1:09:01
Speaker 2: of non-things of the internet. And it reminds me of,
1:09:07
Speaker 2: you know, Heidegger had one solution to balance out the manipulative,
1:09:13
Speaker 2: exploitative nature of modern technology, and that was art. He
1:09:20
Speaker 2: said that art would be where that other piece lives,
1:09:27
Speaker 2: where we would recover the sense of the spiritual values.
1:09:34
Speaker 2: And so that's really heading in that direction, too.
1:09:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't call my needlepoint art, but point taken.
1:09:42
Speaker 1: So we were talking about what myth are we moving into.
1:09:44
Speaker 1: I want to pick up on something that you referenced already,
1:09:48
Speaker 1: because I think... That you have really put your finger
1:09:51
Speaker 1: on the myth we're living in. And you have this
1:09:54
Speaker 1: wonderful discussion in the book, and it took me by surprise,
1:09:58
Speaker 1: and it was so deep, but also just juicy and delightful,
1:10:04
Speaker 1: talking about the Titanic. So would you talk to us
1:10:07
Speaker 1: about Titanism and the Titanic?
1:10:10
Speaker 2: Okay, so I... Back when I was doing my doctoral dissertation,
1:10:16
Speaker 2: I wrote that on the pattern of hubris and sacrifice.
1:10:21
Speaker 2: Hubris basically being turning away from the gods or a
1:10:26
Speaker 2: sort of unconscious identification with the gods. And sacrifice is
1:10:30
Speaker 2: a heavy word, but it just means making sacred. So
1:10:35
Speaker 2: obviously it's the opposite of that. It's a turn to
1:10:38
Speaker 2: the gods. Any sort of sacrificial ritual is a attempt
1:10:42
Speaker 2: to recognize the divine powers and so forth. And when
1:10:50
Speaker 2: I was writing my dissertation, it was right at the
1:10:53
Speaker 2: time they were searching for the wreck of the Titanic.
1:10:57
Speaker 2: You know, it was right before Cameron's movie came out,
1:11:01
Speaker 2: which was a huge blockbuster. And As part of my
1:11:07
Speaker 2: work on hubris and sacrifice, I was studying fairly deeply
1:11:11
Speaker 2: the myth of Prometheus, who is often identified as the
1:11:17
Speaker 2: sort of mythic exemplar of the modern era. And Prometheus
1:11:24
Speaker 2: was a titan. The titans were the pre-Olympian gods, but
1:11:32
Speaker 2: they were known for their excessive power. Pride and violence. Hubris.
1:11:38
Speaker 2: They sort of represent the sort of raw power drive
1:11:42
Speaker 2: of the psyche. Might equals right. The bigger you are,
1:11:48
Speaker 2: the more influence you have. And there's a lot of
1:11:51
Speaker 2: titanism in the world today. Excess is a titanic word.
1:11:57
Speaker 2: Speed is a titanic word. Lack of boundaries and limits.
1:12:04
Speaker 2: The rhetoric of going beyond all limits is a titanic idea.
1:12:10
Speaker 2: And anyway, in the mythology, there was a war called
1:12:15
Speaker 2: the Titanomachia. The Olympian gods defeated the Titans and they
1:12:22
Speaker 2: locked them in a prison beneath the sea. And the
1:12:26
Speaker 2: door of the prison was slammed shut by Poseidon, the
1:12:29
Speaker 2: god of the ocean. So I was thinking about how
1:12:33
Speaker 2: do I... put some of these ideas in a little
1:12:36
Speaker 2: bit of a nutshell. And it occurred to me, whoever
1:12:39
Speaker 2: named that ship the Titanic, they had no idea about
1:12:43
Speaker 2: their mythology. They're naming a ship that's destined to be
1:12:49
Speaker 2: at the bottom of the ocean. So here's one of
1:12:53
Speaker 2: those uncanny kind of enactments or reenactments of mythology.
1:13:01
Speaker 1: Like an archetype gets constellated, right?
1:13:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Yes. I mean, and the ship, of course,
1:13:09
Speaker 2: was celebrated at the time as being a technological marvel.
1:13:14
Speaker 2: So it had all of that Promethean knowledge and, you know,
1:13:19
Speaker 2: scientific capacity. And there were all these high-flying industrial types
1:13:28
Speaker 2: on the ship.
1:13:29
Speaker 1: And it was literally, they were told it was unsinkable.
1:13:33
Speaker 1: So there's that hubris.
1:13:35
Speaker 2: There's the hubris. Yeah, exactly. The whole story, you dig
1:13:39
Speaker 2: into it and, you know, I know I've got a
1:13:43
Speaker 2: quote from one of the last survivors of the Titanic
1:13:47
Speaker 2: was a woman named Eva Hart. And she was five
1:13:51
Speaker 2: or six, I think, at the time. And she lost
1:13:54
Speaker 2: her father. Her father went down with the ship. She
1:13:58
Speaker 2: and her mother survived on the life raft. But her
1:14:01
Speaker 2: mother had a premonition walking up the gangplank. And she said, literally,
1:14:08
Speaker 2: calling a ship unsinkable is flying in the face of God.
1:14:12
Speaker 2: And she was so afraid, she locked herself in the
1:14:16
Speaker 2: cabin for the entire trip. And yeah, so it's... The
1:14:23
Speaker 2: more you dig into the story, the more it is
1:14:26
Speaker 2: a sort of unconscious repetition of the mythic pattern. But,
1:14:34
Speaker 2: you know, the point is to sort of underscore that
1:14:38
Speaker 2: we all understand what it is to be Promethean, to
1:14:41
Speaker 2: sort of seek knowledge and so forth. But Prometheus also
1:14:46
Speaker 2: fails in that. Zeus asks him to make a sacrifice
1:14:51
Speaker 2: and he cheats in the sacrifice. And this is why
1:14:55
Speaker 2: Zeus withholds the fire, which Prometheus then turns around and
1:14:59
Speaker 2: steals and then is punished. But part of this is
1:15:03
Speaker 2: Prometheus' titanic ancestry, like the family lineage. And I think
1:15:09
Speaker 2: that's one of the pieces we overlook. And it's particularly
1:15:14
Speaker 2: important today because it's as if that titanic part of
1:15:20
Speaker 2: being promethean has taken over somehow you know big is
1:15:30
Speaker 2: everything expanding economically more information i mean these data centers
1:15:37
Speaker 2: that are being built everywhere and that's so controversial and
1:15:42
Speaker 2: people are putting back on that that is that is
1:15:46
Speaker 2: titanism You know, push through all regulations, use all the resources,
1:15:53
Speaker 2: don't take into account the local communities, all for this
1:15:57
Speaker 2: sort of abstract idea.
1:16:01
Speaker 3: It's interesting, the two examples that you've cited, the Titanic
1:16:08
Speaker 3: and Prometheus, met with bad ends. That if we overreach...
1:16:15
Speaker 3: If we invest ego, achievement, manipulation, control way too far,
1:16:24
Speaker 3: we will experience its opposite.
1:16:28
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:16:30
Speaker 3: One-sidedness, as Jung calls it, is doomed eventually to an
1:16:38
Speaker 3: equal and opposite reaction. So if we get too far
1:16:42
Speaker 3: over here, something over here psychically will want balance and
1:16:49
Speaker 3: find a way to create it.
1:16:51
Speaker 2: Yes. I think we have to differentiate hubris from sort
1:16:58
Speaker 2: of innovation, heroism. There is something in the human nature
1:17:04
Speaker 2: that wants to push forward, explore, go into space. But
1:17:10
Speaker 2: if this is done with an attitude of, well you
1:17:16
Speaker 2: know back to the left brain right brain the emissary
1:17:21
Speaker 2: thinking that he's got it all and there needs to
1:17:26
Speaker 2: be no attention paid to these other centers of value
1:17:32
Speaker 2: which i kind of put an umbrella around using the
1:17:36
Speaker 2: term the sacred that what what the hubristic position ignores
1:17:42
Speaker 2: is a sense of that there are other gods, right?
1:17:48
Speaker 2: And that in a way that's what sacrifice, the making sacred,
1:17:54
Speaker 2: you know, in whatever way that happens to take place,
1:17:59
Speaker 2: I think just being reflective is a kind of sacrificial act.
1:18:04
Speaker 1: Right, being reflective, whether that's in an analytic process or
1:18:08
Speaker 1: as you started to say in meditation, listening to your dreams, journaling,
1:18:13
Speaker 1: engaging in an art practice, and also sort of engaging
1:18:18
Speaker 1: with that cultural imagination where we're kind of creating new
1:18:21
Speaker 1: stories in that intermediary space.
1:18:25
Speaker 2: Yes.
1:18:25
Speaker 1: I loved, by the way, how in the book you
1:18:28
Speaker 1: make so many references to science fiction films. How have
1:18:33
Speaker 1: we imagined this and what can that tell us? So,
1:18:37
Speaker 1: you know, your umbrella... of the sacred, I think is
1:18:42
Speaker 1: exactly what Jung leads us to. And he's actually quite
1:18:47
Speaker 1: instructive about how to relate to that and how to
1:18:50
Speaker 1: cultivate that.
1:18:51
Speaker 2: That's right. Yes, that his idea of psychological maturation, individuation,
1:19:00
Speaker 2: ultimately ends up with that question of what is of
1:19:04
Speaker 2: ultimate value, what is related to the to the sacred.
1:19:10
Speaker 2: And how does that work in actuality? You know, the
1:19:17
Speaker 2: name Prometheus means forethought. So to be Promethean is to
1:19:23
Speaker 2: be constantly looking ahead. And this is the one-sidedness of
1:19:29
Speaker 2: the futuristic perspective. We can invent our way out of
1:19:34
Speaker 2: everything as a very Promethean And of course, what falls
1:19:39
Speaker 2: into the shadow is the looking back, the looking within,
1:19:42
Speaker 2: that verticality that we were talking about. So it's not
1:19:48
Speaker 2: an argument against innovation. It's not an argument against technology.
1:19:53
Speaker 2: But these things need to be accompanied by these other sensibilities.
1:19:59
Speaker 2: And I think this is what Jung really helps us
1:20:02
Speaker 2: to understand. What is of psychic necessity? if we're going
1:20:08
Speaker 2: to mature.
1:20:10
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course, with the looking back, Jung speaks
1:20:14
Speaker 1: about the necessity of getting in touch with that two
1:20:17
Speaker 1: million year old man in each of us, which he
1:20:19
Speaker 1: says we can do through dreams. And of course, he
1:20:22
Speaker 1: looked back. He was inspired by Gnosticism. He was inspired
1:20:26
Speaker 1: by alchemy. He was inspired by the past. So there's something,
1:20:30
Speaker 1: as you said earlier in our discussion, there's something really
1:20:33
Speaker 1: important about the past I want to, if it's okay,
1:20:37
Speaker 1: to kind of lead us out. As I mentioned to
1:20:40
Speaker 1: you when we got on initially, I took a lot
1:20:43
Speaker 1: of notes on your book, but I want to read
1:20:46
Speaker 1: the very final highlight that I made in your book,
1:20:49
Speaker 1: if that's okay. You write, While I am unconvinced a
1:20:55
Speaker 1: majority of persons will join this battle, I am dedicated
1:20:59
Speaker 1: to the view that a guerrilla operation... might redirect the
1:21:03
Speaker 1: juggernaut ready to roll over us and distract the titanic
1:21:07
Speaker 1: inclination steering it. That is, with a critical mass of
1:21:11
Speaker 1: conscious persons in the right places, willing to read the
1:21:15
Speaker 1: signs of the times, there may be just enough antibodies
1:21:19
Speaker 1: to prevent the whole system from succumbing to the virus.
1:21:23
Speaker 1: So to the extent that our listeners today may be
1:21:29
Speaker 1: got something from this or agree with it, I'm inviting
1:21:32
Speaker 1: all of us to become part of your guerrilla operation.
1:21:39
Speaker 2: That's wonderful. I accept.
1:21:43
Speaker 1: I will show up with my needlepoint needles.
1:21:46
Speaker 3: Exactly. What a choice. That is exactly, though, what we
1:21:51
Speaker 3: bring to it. Not weaponry, but imagination and creativity and
1:21:59
Speaker 3: feeling and intuition and all those things, what we need
1:22:05
Speaker 3: to do. I love the idea of being a guerrilla warrior,
1:22:10
Speaker 3: but I'm not going to do needlepoint.
1:22:15
Speaker 1: Right.
1:22:16
Speaker 2: The needle can become the sword.
1:22:19
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly.
1:22:21
Speaker 2: But I do think being guerrillas for the expansion of
1:22:26
Speaker 2: consciousness is the the way to go and you don't
1:22:31
Speaker 2: have to be depth psychological for that. You can do
1:22:35
Speaker 2: that in other forms.
1:22:38
Speaker 4: Yeah.
1:22:39
Speaker 2: And I imagine that there will be a critical mass
1:22:44
Speaker 2: of those forms, maybe something like a new counterculture. The
1:22:51
Speaker 2: idea would be that, yes, if there's enough antibodies We're
1:22:56
Speaker 2: not going to convert the masses, but if there's enough
1:23:00
Speaker 2: antibodies in the right places and the critical conversations occur,
1:23:05
Speaker 2: then perhaps the shift will take place.
1:23:10
Speaker 1: Well, if listeners do want to join your guerrilla movement,
1:23:15
Speaker 1: we will put your webpage and other resources in the
1:23:20
Speaker 1: show notes and The book, once again, is Jung vs. Borg,
1:23:24
Speaker 1: Finding the Deeply Human in a Post-Human Age, and it
1:23:28
Speaker 1: is worth it. So pick up a copy. Thank you
1:23:32
Speaker 1: so much for joining us today.
1:23:34
Speaker 2: Thank you. It was a real pleasure. Thank you.
1:23:49
Speaker 3: Today's dreamer is a woman. She's 35 years old. She's
1:23:53
Speaker 3: a writer and an actress, and she's entitled her dream,
1:23:58
Speaker 3: Murder in the Bathtub. I am lying in the bathtub,
1:24:04
Speaker 3: having a relaxing soak, when suddenly I realize I've left
1:24:08
Speaker 3: the bathroom door unlocked. No sooner have I had this
1:24:13
Speaker 3: realization than a tall, bald, late middle-aged man enters straight
1:24:19
Speaker 3: through the door. I'm utterly terrified and can't move, naked
1:24:24
Speaker 3: in the tub. He silently and deliberately walks around the
1:24:28
Speaker 3: other side of the tub and climbs in, fully clothed,
1:24:32
Speaker 3: tucking his knees up to his chest so we can
1:24:35
Speaker 3: fit in the tub together. On sheer instinct, I lean
1:24:39
Speaker 3: forward and strangle him, closing my hands around his scrawny throat.
1:24:44
Speaker 3: He accepts it. and closes his eyes under the water
1:24:48
Speaker 3: as I tighten my grip and eventually throttle him to death.
1:24:53
Speaker 3: I wake up, my body screaming with adrenaline. For context,
1:24:59
Speaker 3: she says, nine months ago I became a mother for
1:25:02
Speaker 3: the first time. When I had this dream, it was
1:25:06
Speaker 3: when my husband went away for work the first time
1:25:09
Speaker 3: since we became parents. I sleep with our baby and
1:25:13
Speaker 3: was in the bed with her when I had this dream.
1:25:17
Speaker 3: I was feeling very anxious about solo parenting for the
1:25:20
Speaker 3: first time while he was away. In a larger context,
1:25:24
Speaker 3: I'm feeling a bit lost in my identity and career
1:25:28
Speaker 3: as life feels almost unrecognizable since I became a mother.
1:25:32
Speaker 3: I am starting to want to work again and I'm
1:25:35
Speaker 3: extremely tired from breastfeeding and co-sleeping. the main feelings in
1:25:41
Speaker 3: the dream, she says, are at the very start I
1:25:44
Speaker 3: was relaxed, but then this was immediately replaced by terror.
1:25:50
Speaker 3: I felt deeply frightened of the man and it was
1:25:52
Speaker 3: urgent that I kill him. I felt disturbed by the
1:25:57
Speaker 3: fact that he allowed me to kill him. And she adds,
1:26:01
Speaker 3: a tall, thin, old, bald man has often appeared in
1:26:06
Speaker 3: my dreams as a horror symbol. but I have no
1:26:10
Speaker 3: waking association with it, him. I associate having a bath
1:26:15
Speaker 3: with relaxing.
1:26:17
Speaker 1: So just to sort of take it from the top,
1:26:21
Speaker 1: there's obviously something about being in the bath psychologically. We can,
1:26:26
Speaker 1: you know, there's a kind of maybe a lowering of
1:26:29
Speaker 1: the threshold of consciousness, but there's also that sense of
1:26:33
Speaker 1: kind of being vulnerable and in the water. So you're
1:26:39
Speaker 1: sort of in the unconscious a little bit, and that's
1:26:43
Speaker 1: often a kind of nice place, but it does leave
1:26:45
Speaker 1: us vulnerable. I want to say that for me, the
1:26:51
Speaker 1: most striking thing about this dream is the man comes in,
1:26:55
Speaker 1: and this is where we look at what the ego
1:26:58
Speaker 1: assumes and then evaluate it, the dream ego. The dream
1:27:02
Speaker 1: ego assumes that this man is nefarious. But if we
1:27:07
Speaker 1: examine how he behaves, and you have to play along
1:27:11
Speaker 1: with me here and be in dream logic. So of course,
1:27:14
Speaker 1: if a man came into the bathroom where I was
1:27:18
Speaker 1: having a bath, I would be completely freaked out. But
1:27:22
Speaker 1: in dream logic, we want to notice what's happening, which
1:27:26
Speaker 1: is that he just very calmly gets in the tub
1:27:30
Speaker 1: with her in this kind of congenial way. and even
1:27:33
Speaker 1: tucks up his knees so that they'll fit in the
1:27:35
Speaker 1: bath together. Clearly his intent is to be in the
1:27:39
Speaker 1: bath with her. There is no evidence in the dream
1:27:44
Speaker 1: text as shared here that he has any nefarious intention.
1:27:50
Speaker 1: So then I understand this to be a dream about
1:27:54
Speaker 1: an aspect of her, perhaps an animus, that wants to
1:27:58
Speaker 1: join her in this state. And we can talk, there's
1:28:02
Speaker 1: a lot of symbolism about being in the bath together.
1:28:06
Speaker 1: We can talk about that. It's a kind of regressed state,
1:28:11
Speaker 1: but regressed in the interest of gestating something new. So
1:28:16
Speaker 1: it could be extremely generative to spend some time in
1:28:22
Speaker 1: the bath with this man. But she, we could say
1:28:26
Speaker 1: the dream ego gets very activated and kills this content,
1:28:32
Speaker 1: whatever it is. So what are you thinking, Deb?
1:28:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm thinking about what happens. to be killed. And,
1:28:42
Speaker 3: you know, everything you've said, I mean, it's, of course,
1:28:45
Speaker 3: it would be startling if somebody walks in in the bath,
1:28:49
Speaker 3: you're naked, you're vulnerable, you were relaxing, and then all
1:28:56
Speaker 3: of a sudden there is, you know, a huge startle effect.
1:29:00
Speaker 3: in the dream, as there would be in waking life.
1:29:05
Speaker 3: What I'm paying attention to is that she's a new mother,
1:29:09
Speaker 3: and that she had the dream, it was when her
1:29:12
Speaker 3: husband went away for the first time for work. So
1:29:18
Speaker 3: she was alone, and she sleeps with the baby, presumably
1:29:26
Speaker 3: when her husband is home, And she's solo parenting. She says,
1:29:33
Speaker 3: I'm feeling a bit lost in my identity and career
1:29:37
Speaker 3: as life feels almost unrecognizable since I became a mother.
1:29:41
Speaker 3: She's tired from breastfeeding and co-sleeping. So finally, when her
1:29:48
Speaker 3: husband goes away, she's on her own. She has full
1:29:51
Speaker 3: parental responsibility. And she has this dream that says, You
1:29:57
Speaker 3: can't relax. You think you can relax. And then she
1:30:03
Speaker 3: starts out that way. I'm lying in the bath having
1:30:05
Speaker 3: a relaxing soak when suddenly I realize I've left the
1:30:09
Speaker 3: bathroom door unlocked. Well, what's unlocked? I mean, when one
1:30:13
Speaker 3: is in one's own house, you don't always have to
1:30:17
Speaker 3: lock the door. So something needs to be... She's trying
1:30:22
Speaker 3: to protect her right to.
1:30:26
Speaker 3: An enjoyable, relaxing experience for herself. And then this man
1:30:34
Speaker 3: comes in. Now, he doesn't sound terribly dangerous. He's tall,
1:30:38
Speaker 3: he's bald, he's late middle-aged, and he's fully clothed. So
1:30:46
Speaker 3: I'd be curious as to what is intruding while she
1:30:51
Speaker 3: is alone and her husband is away. some aspect of
1:30:58
Speaker 3: the masculine that is unwelcome. But it's interesting to me that, well,
1:31:07
Speaker 3: how does she kill him? She strangles him. So I'm
1:31:11
Speaker 3: thinking about, okay, what's strangling, you know, as opposed to
1:31:15
Speaker 3: some other means of murder, that the neck is the
1:31:19
Speaker 3: connection between conscious, cerebral, thinking function, and bodily, instinctual kinds
1:31:30
Speaker 3: of function. And he allows her, he allows her to
1:31:37
Speaker 3: kill him. So I'm thinking, what part of her is
1:31:42
Speaker 3: this person, her anonymous, like her husband, someone who goes
1:31:49
Speaker 3: out in the world, someone who has an external world life,
1:31:54
Speaker 3: he's fully dressed. And does she have to kill that
1:31:59
Speaker 3: off in order to be able to mother her baby?
1:32:05
Speaker 3: The co-sleeping and the breastfeeding, which are exhausting her. Does
1:32:11
Speaker 3: she have to kill off another part of herself represented
1:32:18
Speaker 3: by this man and deny it?
1:32:22
Speaker 1: I think I'm sort of... in a little bit of
1:32:26
Speaker 1: a different place with this dream. So I would see
1:32:29
Speaker 1: the unlocked door as an image of a kind of
1:32:33
Speaker 1: insufficient psychic defense, which in this instance, I believe is
1:32:38
Speaker 1: sort of happy fault, because we don't want to be
1:32:41
Speaker 1: too defended. We don't want to be too defended, especially
1:32:45
Speaker 1: we want to have sort of some kind of appropriate
1:32:49
Speaker 1: defenses against the contents of the unconscious. But if we're
1:32:52
Speaker 1: too defended against the unconscious, then There's no life, there's
1:32:56
Speaker 1: no juice, there's no change, there's no juiciness. So I'm
1:33:01
Speaker 1: sort of happy that the door's unlocked, although the dream
1:33:06
Speaker 1: ego doesn't like it. And then this man comes in,
1:33:09
Speaker 1: and again, the dream ego assumes that this is a
1:33:13
Speaker 1: very dangerous person. But I see the man as pretty
1:33:18
Speaker 1: unambivalently positive and that it's a mistake to kill him.
1:33:22
Speaker 1: So the man gets into the tub with her and
1:33:25
Speaker 1: wants to, I mean, he tucks up his knees. He's
1:33:29
Speaker 1: offering a sort of an experience that they could have together.
1:33:34
Speaker 1: He's not pushing her out of the way. It's really like,
1:33:38
Speaker 1: I'm going to join you here in this environment that
1:33:42
Speaker 1: could be quite fertile, that could be generative. We're going
1:33:47
Speaker 1: to let our consciousness go down a little bit. We're
1:33:50
Speaker 1: going to be in the bath. but she can't tolerate that.
1:33:54
Speaker 1: And without any real provocation, given that it's a dream,
1:33:59
Speaker 1: she murders him. And I suspect that it shows... Here's
1:34:06
Speaker 1: what I make up. She says that she feels kind
1:34:09
Speaker 1: of lost. It's been nine months. Her old identity is gone. Well,
1:34:14
Speaker 1: when you become a mother, your old identity goes away.
1:34:20
Speaker 1: And what might be required is to embrace the dissolution
1:34:25
Speaker 1: of that old identity and then see what new thing
1:34:29
Speaker 1: wants to come forward. But the dream tells me that
1:34:33
Speaker 1: her ego is resistant to this process and wants to
1:34:38
Speaker 1: be in control. So what I would, my advice, if
1:34:43
Speaker 1: I were working with this dreamer, is to have an
1:34:46
Speaker 1: active imagination and go talk to this man. He came
1:34:50
Speaker 1: into the bathroom because he has something to tell you.
1:34:54
Speaker 1: And you didn't let him show you. You killed him.
1:34:58
Speaker 1: But don't worry. It was only in a dream. So
1:35:01
Speaker 1: you can still go back and talk to him and say,
1:35:04
Speaker 1: you know, what did you come to teach me? What
1:35:08
Speaker 1: do I need to know? You know, and it is
1:35:10
Speaker 1: interesting that the dream starts in this relaxed state, right?
1:35:15
Speaker 1: But then she is kind of hypervigilant. As soon as
1:35:18
Speaker 1: he comes in, there's no curiosity. There's just immediately her
1:35:22
Speaker 1: hands are around his neck and she's killing him. So
1:35:27
Speaker 1: it says something about maybe a little bit of difficulty
1:35:31
Speaker 1: being with contents of the unconscious, just being with them.
1:35:37
Speaker 3: I agree and I buy it. What I'm wondering about.
1:35:41
Speaker 1: I think, is.
1:35:45
Speaker 3: What was killed off? And I think I'm wondering about
1:35:52
Speaker 3: whether it is, you know, all that stuff represented by
1:35:56
Speaker 3: a husband that goes off to work, leaving her alone
1:36:00
Speaker 3: as a solo parent for the first time, and a
1:36:04
Speaker 3: kind of repressed resentment at this intrusion of her own
1:36:13
Speaker 3: exhaustion and I'm projecting my own feelings as a mother.
1:36:19
Speaker 3: When my husband went off to work and left me
1:36:25
Speaker 3: at home to do what? You know, the laundry. You know,
1:36:30
Speaker 3: he's out in the world. He has freedom. He has agency.
1:36:33
Speaker 3: He has all this stuff, and I didn't. And I'm
1:36:38
Speaker 3: making up that the man who comes in may represent
1:36:42
Speaker 3: all those kinds of things. that because she's now a
1:36:46
Speaker 3: mother breastfeeding, co-sleeping, that he represents what she has lost
1:36:53
Speaker 3: and she kills it off instead of, as you said,
1:36:59
Speaker 3: getting curious and saying, who are you? Why are you here?
1:37:03
Speaker 2: Talk to me.
1:37:04
Speaker 3: And I remember that place, I don't know about you,
1:37:08
Speaker 3: of just having to shove some of those awarenesses out
1:37:12
Speaker 3: of the way because I was needed. I didn't have
1:37:18
Speaker 3: a choice, and I didn't want to know that I
1:37:22
Speaker 3: missed my old life.
1:37:26
Speaker 1: You know, just to pull up some of the imagery
1:37:30
Speaker 1: around being in the bath, you know, of course, we've
1:37:34
Speaker 1: talked a lot about the rosarium woodcuts that Jung invented.
1:37:40
Speaker 1: expounded upon. So these were these alchemical woodcuts from, I believe,
1:37:44
Speaker 1: the 17th century. And there's this important image where the
1:37:52
Speaker 1: king and the queen disrobe and get in the bath together. Actually,
1:37:56
Speaker 1: I think when they first get in the bath, they
1:37:58
Speaker 1: have their clothes on, and then in the next woodcut,
1:38:00
Speaker 1: they have their clothes off. I can't remember. But anyway,
1:38:03
Speaker 1: it's an image of coniunctio, It's an image of the
1:38:10
Speaker 1: joining of masculine and feminine, an image of psychological or
1:38:14
Speaker 1: symbolic image of the kind of inner union with, let's say,
1:38:19
Speaker 1: one's own kind of creative spirit. So I wonder if
1:38:23
Speaker 1: there is actually a really special thing being offered to
1:38:28
Speaker 1: her that she is not able to receive at this time.
1:38:32
Speaker 1: But again, I mean, it's not, I mean, just in
1:38:36
Speaker 1: case any listeners wondering, I mean, dreams are sort of
1:38:38
Speaker 1: a snapshot of where things are in the psyche right now.
1:38:42
Speaker 1: So you might have this dream, you know, today and
1:38:45
Speaker 1: then two weeks from now, it might look very, very different.
1:38:48
Speaker 1: So it's not the final word, but I think it
1:38:52
Speaker 1: is saying something about where the attitude is right now.
1:38:57
Speaker 1: And I mean, I could be wrong, but I think
1:38:59
Speaker 1: something really special is being offered to her. But, you know,
1:39:03
Speaker 1: she's not able to receive it, perhaps for the very
1:39:05
Speaker 1: reasons that you're identifying, Deb.
1:39:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:39:09
Speaker 3: And what we haven't said, I want to add another
1:39:12
Speaker 3: chunk to my one of my hypotheses about this dream
1:39:17
Speaker 3: is that she's angry.
1:39:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think that's true.
1:39:22
Speaker 3: She is really, really mad of, you know, sheer instinct.
1:39:27
Speaker 3: She says, I lean forward and strangle him. And then
1:39:30
Speaker 3: she throttles him to death. So I'm very curious about
1:39:35
Speaker 3: what that's about. And I can relate to it just
1:39:40
Speaker 3: from my own past with babies. that I loved and
1:39:47
Speaker 3: who shackled me. Oh, my goodness. And somehow, I don't know,
1:39:56
Speaker 3: but I didn't expect that.
1:39:59
Speaker 1: You know, that's a really good point because you're right.
1:40:02
Speaker 1: The dream is filled with anger. I mean, you know,
1:40:04
Speaker 1: the dream ego kind of lunges at him and kills him.
1:40:07
Speaker 1: It's like, And you can hear that. You can hear
1:40:09
Speaker 1: that in the context, too. It's like, wait, who the
1:40:12
Speaker 1: F am I? You know, and, you know, whoa. And
1:40:16
Speaker 1: I think that one thing I want to say is
1:40:18
Speaker 1: that in that case, we might feel like we're angry
1:40:22
Speaker 1: at our husbands. But in fact, we might be angry
1:40:26
Speaker 1: at our situation at life and even angry at the baby.
1:40:31
Speaker 1: But that's really hard to admit. But the truth is
1:40:35
Speaker 1: that when you have a new baby, you know, there
1:40:37
Speaker 1: is a way that And a version of your life
1:40:40
Speaker 1: is over, but something new is being offered. And that
1:40:46
Speaker 1: I think is maybe what the dream is trying to
1:40:48
Speaker 1: lift up is that, yeah, there's all this anger, but
1:40:52
Speaker 1: there's something being offered here. And it's a little surprising.
1:40:55
Speaker 1: It's like in the form of like bald middle-aged guy,
1:40:58
Speaker 1: but he wants to get in the bath with you.
1:41:01
Speaker 1: Like he's showing up in the bath.
1:41:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
1:41:06
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:41:10
Speaker 1: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
1:41:15
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