- 0:00:00 Introduction
- 0:03:01 Question #1: What are the Inner Senses?
- 0:09:10 Question #2: Why does DIGITAL extend Memory, not Imagination?
- 0:17:54 Question #3: Is Memory Collective?
- 0:25:20 Question #4: What happens to the “Collective” under DIGITAL conditions?
- 0:32:15 Question #5: What happens to Democracy?
- 0:38:00 Question #6: What is Synodality?
- 0:44:39 Question #7: Can our current philosophy/science handle this?
- 0:50:01 Audience Questions
Session 6: Subsidiarity — Memory and Autonomy
Digital technology thrusts us all into a dramatically new cultural
paradigm. Whereas Electricity emphasized “imagination” (culminating in
the destabilizing effects of “social media”), Digital shifts the
emphasis towards “memory” — two of the faculties at the heart of our
subconscious “Inner Senses.” As this happens — to us all — our
sensibilities are re-shaped and the “conditioning” we have suffered is
now being undermined. As a result, we are experiencing a recovery of
“virtue” and a widespread re-evaluation of personal responsibilities.
“Mass society” is being replaced by one with new social forms and
based on increased human autonomy — aligning with the principles of
subsidiarity.
Question #1: What are the Inner Senses?
— The action is in the Gap
— Sensus Communis, Imagination, Memory and Cogitative Power
— Material and Immaterial
— Conversion to the Phantasm
— “I sense, therefore I am . . . “
Question #2: Why does DIGITAL extend Memory, not Imagination?
— How do computers actually work?
— Do Androids dream of electric sheep?
— Artificial “intelligence” or something else?
— No “rationality” without the subconscious
— Why modern psychology has failed
Question #3: Is Memory “collective”?
— Freud and Jung
— ELECTRIC lumped it all together
— DIGITAL pulls it all apart
— Oceanic Feeling and religion
— Plato vs. Aristotle
Question #4: What happens to the “collective” under DIGITAL conditions?
— We are all becoming much more “autonomous”
— Since the news is “fake,” we have to look elsewhere
— DIGITAL allows us to find and share knowledge
— Institutional trust collapsing
— SCRIBAL “invented” the individual
Question #5: What happens to “democracy”?
— Democratic Surround and Psychological War
— “Autocracy” is also on the way out
— You can fool some of the people . . .
— Aristotle’s “Politics”
— Responsibility and power
Question #6: What is Synodality?
— From the middle-out– not top-down or bottom-up
— Listening in both directions
— Experts and bureaucracy
— Monarchy and the people
— Dogma and Catechesis
Question #7: Can our current philosophy/science handle this?
— New Paradigm; New Sciences
— Free-will and liberty
— Recovery of Natural Law
— Out with the Enlightenment
— DIGITAL retrieves the Medieval