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Jung vs Borg: Finding the Deeply Human in a Posthuman Age
“Posthumanism already permeates our lives and has begun directing the way of the world. . . . we are ill-prepared for the implications . . .”
In Jung vs. Borg Glen Slater argues the industrial disruption of the outer world is being followed by a post-industrial disruption of the inner world, resulting in a different order of existential crisis, making the collapse of global ecosystems look like a warm-up act. The main event, beginning with the psycho-social fragmentation of the digital age, appears to be the collapse of our ecology of mind. As he explores critical precursors of this phenomenon and shows how this crisis will accelerate through the attempt to merge human and machine, Slater demonstrates how the psychology of the unconscious, born in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, can be deployed as a counter-measure.
Facing this technologically-induced fragmentation of the human psyche presents a profound challenge. The way of the world is now mostly fused with the way of technology. A global technocracy supporting a mass migration into cyberspace transcends the power of any individual government or corporation. The technoscience at the core of this technocracy eyes a posthuman future, with the figure of the cyborg already visible on the horizon. A conspicuous image of our becoming, the cyborg essentializes the extrapolation of technocratic trends, making it a primary target for depth psychological analysis.
Although the bedrock of being is about to be deeply shaken, there is terrain to traverse before we hardwire our minds to computers and become fully biomechanical. Much depends on our capacity to remain conscious of the effect each stage of innovation has on the psyche and on the social and cultural changes that will follow. It is right here we may juxtapose the exploitation of the inner world and the preservation of its integrity, which is set out in the psychology of C. G. Jung. It is in Jung’s psychology we find the crux of a countercultural turn to the holistic character of the deeply human.
***
"Many years ago C. G. Jung warned us that without an “imagination for evil” we modern human beings were in danger of becoming instruments of the very evil we abhor. Glen Slater’s brilliant and passionate analysis of online culture and its insidious seductions of hyperreality, virtual companions, and cyber presences—all run by artificial intelligence—opens up that imagination in ways that are both terrifying and illuminating. To become conscious of these dehumanizing forces in our midst and how to combat their dissociative effects on the inner life of the soul should be a major focus of all depth psychological training in the 21st century. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of this book."
Donald Kalsched, Ph.D., author of The Inner World of Trauma (Routledge, 1996) and Trauma and the Soul (Routledge, 2013).
"Slater brilliantly argues that the future posthumanists are promoting will sever our ties with the deeply human basis of being. To head in this direction is to become psychically “numbed,” a state of minimal being that is already pervasive to the point of being normative. Numbing makes us incapable of being satisfied with the actuality of events. We take residence in left-hemisphere cortical processes, becoming half-brained and cyborg-like. To resist these cyborg prospects, Slater extracts from the psychology of C. G. Jung the most useful bits. An exploration of the natural richness of the psyche and its fabulous imaginative power comprise the natural antidote to a bleak future defined by posthumanism."
Ginette Paris, Ph.D.
In Jung vs. Borg Glen Slater argues the industrial disruption of the outer world is being followed by a post-industrial disruption of the inner world, resulting in a different order of existential crisis, making the collapse of global ecosystems look like a warm-up act. The main event, beginning with the psycho-social fragmentation of the digital age, appears to be the collapse of our ecology of mind. As he explores critical precursors of this phenomenon and shows how this crisis will accelerate through the attempt to merge human and machine, Slater demonstrates how the psychology of the unconscious, born in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, can be deployed as a counter-measure.
Facing this technologically-induced fragmentation of the human psyche presents a profound challenge. The way of the world is now mostly fused with the way of technology. A global technocracy supporting a mass migration into cyberspace transcends the power of any individual government or corporation. The technoscience at the core of this technocracy eyes a posthuman future, with the figure of the cyborg already visible on the horizon. A conspicuous image of our becoming, the cyborg essentializes the extrapolation of technocratic trends, making it a primary target for depth psychological analysis.
Although the bedrock of being is about to be deeply shaken, there is terrain to traverse before we hardwire our minds to computers and become fully biomechanical. Much depends on our capacity to remain conscious of the effect each stage of innovation has on the psyche and on the social and cultural changes that will follow. It is right here we may juxtapose the exploitation of the inner world and the preservation of its integrity, which is set out in the psychology of C. G. Jung. It is in Jung’s psychology we find the crux of a countercultural turn to the holistic character of the deeply human.
***
"Many years ago C. G. Jung warned us that without an “imagination for evil” we modern human beings were in danger of becoming instruments of the very evil we abhor. Glen Slater’s brilliant and passionate analysis of online culture and its insidious seductions of hyperreality, virtual companions, and cyber presences—all run by artificial intelligence—opens up that imagination in ways that are both terrifying and illuminating. To become conscious of these dehumanizing forces in our midst and how to combat their dissociative effects on the inner life of the soul should be a major focus of all depth psychological training in the 21st century. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of this book."
Donald Kalsched, Ph.D., author of The Inner World of Trauma (Routledge, 1996) and Trauma and the Soul (Routledge, 2013).
"Slater brilliantly argues that the future posthumanists are promoting will sever our ties with the deeply human basis of being. To head in this direction is to become psychically “numbed,” a state of minimal being that is already pervasive to the point of being normative. Numbing makes us incapable of being satisfied with the actuality of events. We take residence in left-hemisphere cortical processes, becoming half-brained and cyborg-like. To resist these cyborg prospects, Slater extracts from the psychology of C. G. Jung the most useful bits. An exploration of the natural richness of the psyche and its fabulous imaginative power comprise the natural antidote to a bleak future defined by posthumanism."
Ginette Paris, Ph.D.
538 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 20, 2023
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278 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 2, 2025
Jung vs. Borg: How to Maintain the Deeply Human in the Age of AI
Glen Slater’s new book, “Jung vs. Borg”, is a must read for anyone interested in a comprehensive look at the full horizon the current rush to AI is beginning to initiate.
Slater’s overriding thesis is a stark one: that the devastation inflicted on the natural world by the (ongoing) industrial revolution is now, in the 21st century, being directed on our inner environment -- our selves, our souls, our psyches. Take your pick. Slater describes the current state of “attention capitalism” -- the curating our desires and preferences on behalf of corporate entities – as only the beginning of a much larger project, viz., the transformation of the human being from a biologically embodied organism to some kind of cyborg hybrid (“borg” being the shortened form of cyborg in the book’s title). AI, of course, is seen providing the quantum leap from the present to this messianic and utopian fusion of technology and the human substrate. See Musk, Zuckerberg, Theil – and Trump the enabler -- et al for details.
Slater is no luddite regarding AI and related technologies. AI is going to play a huge role in humanity’s future. But Slater sees our society as moving towards the techno-future in a state of psychological dissociation (numbness, fragmentation). Slater, however, offers a potential antidote to this state of dissociation. Drawing heavily on the insights of Archetypal (Jungian) psychology, he shows how depth psychology, the history of myth, and even popular culture, provide both cautions and guidance – guardrails, if you will – for how to proceed down this complex “borgian” path.
“Jung vs. Borg” is not a quick or easy read. But Slater writes in a style that is not only clear and engaging but also fueled by his passionate conviction that we must maintain and deepen our contact with the mythic imagination, which is the source of the deeply human. With this comment in mind, I’d like to close this review by sharing a very short dream that I had while reading Slater’s book. The dream is very simple: I dream I’m reading a “Tarzan” comic book.
“Tarzan”? Really.
But when I looked at the dream the symbolism quickly became clear: "Tarzan" is a highly civilized man, Lord Greystoke, who moves back down (sic) into such a primal level of embodiedness that his full title is, as everyone knows, “Tarzan of the apes”. “Tarzan”, in other words, symbolizes the movement in exactly the opposite direction of the idealized AI cyborg composites envisioned by the messianic trans-humanists described in “Jung vs. Borg”. Tarzan’s movement towards a more primal embodiment, however, would seem to symbolize exactly what is needed if we are to welcome our AI future creatively, that is, with a truly human balance between our embodied selves and our soon-to-be acquired AI selves.
Bottom line: read Slater’s book. It’s a guide to embracing a fully human future, a future that refuses to abandon the human body.
Glen Slater’s new book, “Jung vs. Borg”, is a must read for anyone interested in a comprehensive look at the full horizon the current rush to AI is beginning to initiate.
Slater’s overriding thesis is a stark one: that the devastation inflicted on the natural world by the (ongoing) industrial revolution is now, in the 21st century, being directed on our inner environment -- our selves, our souls, our psyches. Take your pick. Slater describes the current state of “attention capitalism” -- the curating our desires and preferences on behalf of corporate entities – as only the beginning of a much larger project, viz., the transformation of the human being from a biologically embodied organism to some kind of cyborg hybrid (“borg” being the shortened form of cyborg in the book’s title). AI, of course, is seen providing the quantum leap from the present to this messianic and utopian fusion of technology and the human substrate. See Musk, Zuckerberg, Theil – and Trump the enabler -- et al for details.
Slater is no luddite regarding AI and related technologies. AI is going to play a huge role in humanity’s future. But Slater sees our society as moving towards the techno-future in a state of psychological dissociation (numbness, fragmentation). Slater, however, offers a potential antidote to this state of dissociation. Drawing heavily on the insights of Archetypal (Jungian) psychology, he shows how depth psychology, the history of myth, and even popular culture, provide both cautions and guidance – guardrails, if you will – for how to proceed down this complex “borgian” path.
“Jung vs. Borg” is not a quick or easy read. But Slater writes in a style that is not only clear and engaging but also fueled by his passionate conviction that we must maintain and deepen our contact with the mythic imagination, which is the source of the deeply human. With this comment in mind, I’d like to close this review by sharing a very short dream that I had while reading Slater’s book. The dream is very simple: I dream I’m reading a “Tarzan” comic book.
“Tarzan”? Really.
But when I looked at the dream the symbolism quickly became clear: "Tarzan" is a highly civilized man, Lord Greystoke, who moves back down (sic) into such a primal level of embodiedness that his full title is, as everyone knows, “Tarzan of the apes”. “Tarzan”, in other words, symbolizes the movement in exactly the opposite direction of the idealized AI cyborg composites envisioned by the messianic trans-humanists described in “Jung vs. Borg”. Tarzan’s movement towards a more primal embodiment, however, would seem to symbolize exactly what is needed if we are to welcome our AI future creatively, that is, with a truly human balance between our embodied selves and our soon-to-be acquired AI selves.
Bottom line: read Slater’s book. It’s a guide to embracing a fully human future, a future that refuses to abandon the human body.
February 5, 2025
Brilliant dive into the meaning of AI to the human psyche and humanity as a whole. Although not named here, humility looms large as the path forward to humanity’s adulthood, and AI can either be made a tool to help us get there or a weapon that cripples us forever.
May 22, 2025
interesting topic but the author is very fond of the sound of his own voice and could have used a heavier edit. I'll finish it though because I find it interesting.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews