THE STRUGGLE FOR A HUMAN FUTURE

This short book extends the argument of Jeremy's magisterial 2018 study In the Shadow of the Machine reviewed and No. 127 (p. 37), and an adaptation of the introduction is printed in this issue. The subtitle of this earlier book is 'the prehistory of the computer and the evolution of consciousness' tracing the gradual mechanisation of the mind and the dominance of the mechanistic metaphor, especially now in relation to computers, which I referred to in my review as a reimagining of the human being in the image of the machine. This process is now so advanced that we scarcely realise it and have confused quantitative computation with thinking itself and machine learning for actual understanding. As I write, 5G satellites are being launched in huge numbers at a time when the media is entirely taken up with Covid-19, and any potential connection in this respect is smartly removed from the Internet as we become further enmeshed in this global so-called electronic ecosystem.

For anyone who wants to think through the deeper implications of these developments in relation to our spiritual life and identity, this book is essential reading. As I wrote in a recent editorial, the very conception of the human is at stake with alternative visions being offered in terms of 'enhancement' and transhumanism on the one hand and transformation and transcendence on the other. For Jeremy, the first assumes that the human being is essentially a biological machine and that the goal of humanity is to become 'more and more clever' with enhanced computational power totally unrelated to wisdom and ethical values. The view is entirely instrumental and underpinned by 'the technological attitude that seeks to gain greater power, mastery and control of the world.' (p. 26) We are in danger of forgetting and indeed severing ourselves 'from the very essence of what it means to be human' and thus from our capacities of understanding, empathy and love for each other.' The much-touted Great Reset scheduled to be launched this month by Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum is a technocratic vision of the future merging the human with the machine by means of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, where 5G and the Internet of things are essential infrastructure components. We also need to remember that technological developments are taking place 'within a highly materialistic philosophical matrix' with its background in mechanistic philosophy whereby technologies are 'not philosophically neutral' but are themselves 'an embodiment of reductionist thinking.' (p. 64) All of this is called into question by our Galileo Commission project.

In itself, as Jeremy points out, technology is soulless, impersonal and inhuman, divorced from presence and being, orienting us towards itself and the outside, claiming our attention and taking up our inner space while invasively monetising our activity by means of clever algorithms. Jung's life at his retreat in Bollingen is the antithesis of this orientation where 'natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul' and we are in intimate and uninterrupted relationship with the rhythms of nature. Loss of connection to our true spiritual centre has resulted in dispersion, distraction and fragmentation of consciousness, with resulting mental health implications. The trend is towards abandoning the real for the virtual as we spend more and more time online at the expense of being outside – Jeremy illustrates this with a device that analyses the composition of a corncob and diverts the attention away from the real to the image. Use of the phone is gradually being overtaken by the smart watch, smart glasses, VR headsets and eventually with neuro-technological implants linked to the Cloud and uploading our brain processes in real time. This capacity for surveillance capitalism can all to readily become the surveillance state in the name of security and safety.

The result of all this is that 'our relationship to nature is thrust into the background by the increasing dominance of the virtual, while our relationship to our own inner world is subverted by the constant intrusion of extraneous virtual content that draws us away from the experience of our own soul space' (p. 54). The overall agenda is 'a replacement of nature with a fully technologised planet' (p. 76). The chapter on 5G discusses the emerging electromagnetic mesh driven by economic and political priorities – money and power - that wilfully ignore the vast existing literature on the harmful effects of radiofrequency radiation. The satellites being launched into the ionosphere potentially represent a serious interference with our natural interface with the Schumann resonance. The relevant agencies in Europe and the US have been captured by industry interests, as is also the case with health and pharmaceuticals. As the work of Arthur Firstenberg and others has already demonstrated, there is an electromagnetic assault on life, with documented impact on insects, plants, trees and birds, not to mention electrosensitive humans. This is nothing less than a slow form of ecocide.

In this respect, Jeremy argues that protest is not enough – we also need a spiritually informed understanding and an ability to respond at this level. The second chapter recounts the story of the quest for the pearl, a gnostic tale of forgetting and remembering, separation from the divine and identification with matter. In scientific thinking, this has also represented 'the drive to explain everything without recourse to God' and to abolish the soul in favour of the machine. Jeremy puts this in a cosmic context of Blake's Urizen and Steiner's Ahriman as the ascendancy of the inhuman. He returns to this in his important final chapter about bringing light to the world as our deepest human vocation. For him, 'we also need to find ways of strengthening ourselves inwardly, so that we can hold our ground and meet with full humanity the very powerful forces that threaten to undermine essential human values.' (p. 89) He reminds us that the omnipresence of spiritual light in the pre-radio-frequency world meant that we were immersed within the divine, whereas we are now immersed in electromagnetic radiation.

Jeremy proposes that we should recover the relationship between light and thought, for which he sees an interesting parallel between electricity and artificial intelligence. Although this insight originates in Steiner, Walter Russell said something very similar when he stated on the basis of his own experience that 'all knowledge exists in the Mind universe of Light – which is God' and that all knowledge can be obtained from this universal source by becoming One with that Source. Both Steiner and Russell propose that matter is in essence light and that there are corresponding radial and gravitational processes moving out from and back towards the centre. Steiner adds that electricity is a force inimical to life that can only animate machines, while light 'is the medium through which the formative forces of life pour into the world.' (p. 99) In relation to cosmic consciousness and light, as Russell also realised, 'we are functioning within a greater mind' which we are capable of tuning into and expressing, and this light and life is also love – hence we can bring 'life-giving light to the world' in a spirit of intrinsic selflessness. This is surely an urgent and important message for our time.