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- Convenors:
-
Arnold Groh
(Technical University of Berlin)
Louise Sundararajan
Send message to Convenors
- Chairs:
-
Arnold Groh
(Technical University of Berlin)
Louise Sundararajan
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This interdisciplinary panel investigates the degradation of human values under the joint forces of market and technology. The presentations are going to be discussed against the backdrop of transhumanism, in which machine intelligence has become the defining measure of humanity and its future.
Long Abstract:
The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu saw it coming: "whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. (...) It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them." Gone are the days when the use of the machine was a matter of personal choice. As machines, ranging from smart phones to personal computers, become a necessity in our daily lives, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, predicted that our relationship to the machine "concerns some of the most important moral traps into which the present generation of human beings is likely to fall." One of the consequences of this trapped relationship with the machine is value degradation.
This international and interdisciplinary panel will investigate the degradation of human values under the joint forces of market and technology. The first paper examines how in its defense against mortality, AI-assisted technology degrades the carbon-based humanity; the second paper examines the commodification of religion and spirituality in psychology as the latter falls prey to neoliberalism; the third and fourth papers investigate the disruptive impact of technology on Indigenous peoples in general, and on a hunter-gatherer tribe (Temiars) in Malaysia, respectively. The fifth paper examines alienation and value degradation among social workers in China. The discussant will review the presentations against the backdrop of transhumanism, which is a glaring example of how machine intelligence has become the defining measure of humanity and its future.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Treating recent films -- and the depictions of technology therein -- as an access point to particular cultural myths and ideologies, the presenters will consider how our contemporary culture is working at existential questions related to subjectivity and embodiment.
Paper long abstract:
Freud describes the modern person as a “kind of prosthetic God.” He goes on to note that even with all of the technological appendages we have built onto ourselves, we do not “feel happy in [our] God-like character.” In this presentation, a psychologist and a philosopher explore the cultural phenomena associated with technology’s deployment as a type of existential prosthesis. Treating recent films -- and the depictions of technology therein -- as an access point to particular cultural myths and ideologies, the presenters will consider how our contemporary culture is working at existential questions related to subjectivity and embodiment. Over the past 25 years, for instance, moviegoers have witnessed a significant shift in how technology and the human condition are related to one another on screen. In movies such as the Terminator Series and The Matrix, humans create machines which become self-aware, exceeding or transcending their programming and protocol and then wreaking havoc on terrestrial life. More recently, however, in films such as iRobot, Transcendence, Lucy, Her, Interstellar, and Ex Machina, technology is depicted as the very means of achieving corporeal and perspectival transcendence. By augmenting one’s flesh, uploading one’s mind, achieving disembodiment and digitization, or fully linking to the ever growing network of information, humans are depicted as being able to achieve a form of transcendence. Using this cinematic exegesis as a jumping off point, the presenters will discuss the fantasy of immortality and how it affects the ways we interpret and understand ourselves.
Paper short abstract:
It is proposed that cultural psychology of religion has been colonized by the values and ontology of Western neoliberalism. A neoliberal psychology is often blind to the way it constructs the subject and unwittingly views the neoliberal subject as generally human rather than religious.
Paper long abstract:
Al Dueck, Neoliberal Culture, Psychology, and Religion: Monetizing Existence
Abstract:
This chapter addresses the role of neoliberalism in cultural psychology of religion. The argument is as follows.
a) Neoliberalism is an aggressive movement that has impacted most every aspect of human existence and has spread to most cultures of the world.
b) Psychologists have been so thoroughly colonized by neoliberal culture that they may mistake the products of their research as descriptions of human nature – oblivious to the presence and impact of neoliberal culture.
Moreover, c) unconsciously neoliberal psychotherapists may abet this culture by socializing their clients into its worldview.
d) Not only the fields of psychology and psychotherapy have been colonized by neoliberalism but religion as well: the instrumentalization of religion, the “health and wealth” gospel, the focus on individual conversion or spiritual formation, the marginalization of the religious community, freedom from dogma and religious injunctions, the importance of material success (megachurches).
And e) since neoliberalism has been exported internationally, in a cultural psychology of religion psychologists may be oblivious in their research or clinical practice to the way persons from other cultures may also be colonized by neoliberalism because of their rootedness in a culture saturated with neoliberal ideology. By default, the psychology of religion will treat the subject uncritically, as generically human abstracted from his or her cultural (that is, neoliberal) context and not “see” the presence of neoliberalism at all. However, not to be aware of the neoliberalism is to reinforce it.
Paper short abstract:
Globalisation destabilises indigenous cultures, from mining in rainforest to the deletion of indigenous identities due to globalising IT impact, although extinguishing these cultures means deleting strategies needed for the survival of humankind.
Paper long abstract:
Globalisation destabilises indigenous cultures. Already the production of electronic devices causes suffering among local populations. The main deposit of coltan, a mineral that is essential for microelectronics, is situated in the Congo basin. To exploit it, vast areas of rainforest, which are home to indigenous peoples, are being destroyed and the locals are recruited as miners under inhumane conditions, although they hardly have any benefit from technology themselves. The principal gadgets used by indigenous peoples are mobile phones, the effects of which on their cultures are quite diverse. On the one hand, technical devices attach the users to the globalised industrial culture; on the other hand, mobile phones enable the users to communicate in their mother tongues, thus sustaining indigenous identities. Other IT branches also have severe impacts on indigenous persons, even if they do not own the appliances themselves: TV, radio, advertisements, and other image-based media provide cognitive input with shaping and globalizing effects, modifying and deleting indigenous identities. Extinguishing indigenous cultures means deleting strategies needed for the survival of humanity. Yet, the industrial culture tries to counteract destabilisations by exerting control and applying even more technology. In indigenous worldviews, nature, including the natural human being, is accepted as it is, while in the industrial culture, nature and the human being are subject to control and sophisticated IT systems.