As the real potential for civil war and the collapse of global civilization lurches ever closer, few are raising the alarm about the larger danger of online technology products that are entirely swallowing our collective human consciousness. Because while humans across the world tear themselves (and each other) apart chasing answers to legitimate questions of unbearable inequity, a fast-rising machine intelligence is rapidly colonizing the human psyche on a global scale and directing its movements like a sinister puppet-master.

As with other technological advancements of modern times, artificial intelligence is weaponized and placed in the service of profit-making, single-mindedly attuned to an “economic orientation,” as Max Weber calls it, which disregards the psychological well-being of the population it relies upon for its success. Shoshana Zuboff, in her new book The Rise of Surveillance Capitalism (2019), explains how this modern process of digital colonization unfolds. Funded by royal coffers, ships filled with white men believing in their God-given superiority sail across the world, landing on virgin territories they would then cruelly exploit regardless of what the local inhabitants had to say about it. In fact, the astonished indigenous folk was usually slaughtered. Today, Zuboff explains, it is we humans and our futures that represent virgin territory being harvested and exploited against our will and without our knowledge. Social media and online tech giants (ships filled with white men funded by royal coffers) such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, and Twitter, to name only a few, employ a business model which aims to keep us online and religiously focused on their digital products for as long as possible. Nonstop rings, bells, emails, and tags, together with a variety of ego-enticements such as likes, hearts, and redundant vacuous smiley-face emojis are rained down upon us all day long, pushed on us by the many algorithms whose job it is to keep us engaged in a never-ending mutually infectious cycle like rats in a maze. This is why we are called “users,” because we are addicts in need of this fix, i.e., the instant gratification of our every infantile whim which is gleefully supplied by the “free” digital products in whose destructive clutches we are ensnared.

While psychologically enshrouded in this zombie-like love affair with digital death, our attention—what Zuboff calls the “raw material” of psychic life that we freely surrender to these neo-colonialists—is collected, stored, analyzed, and molded into predictive models that can determine precisely what we will think, feel, say, or do from moment to moment on any given day, week, or month. Everything we do online is gathered and stored in a personal profile which is measured by a system called the O.C.E.A.N. Model: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticisms. For each of these categories, a percentage is calculated and a precise model of our personality is generated that can predict how we will behave in the future. This predictability of behavior based upon unfathomable oceans of data allows advertisers to pinpoint and target their ads for maximum effectiveness. This data about us, our future behaviors, and the market value of our engaged attention measured in impressions per second is sold at auction, to the highest advertising bidder, twenty-four hours a day.

Thus, by gently nudging us with notifications and prompts, the algorithms slowly and imperceptibly alter the natural course of our decision-making processes so that we are moving in specifically targeted directions of consumption without ever becoming aware that we are doing so. Indeed, Zuboff heavily emphasizes this fact—that we are completely clueless about the degree to which we are being influenced to behave in certain specific ways. We can therefore begin to see how precise behavioral prediction models can start to function in our lives as a fait accompli so that machines already know what we will do tomorrow, next week, or next month. Consider that this information about us is sold to advertisers who use it to manipulate our behavior even further. The devastating implications for personal autonomy and free will seem clear—we have none.

As it happens, the fragile human psyche already has enough on its plate without being viciously exploited and manipulated by powerful digital machines. As C. G. Jung (1989) has explained, the immature psyche is teeming with clusters of feeling-toned images that dominate and control the ego with impunity. For growth and a sense of fulfillment to dawn upon us, these unruly complexes must be identified, recognized, and eventually reintegrated into the total psychic economy. In this individuation process, the ego needs to grow strong over time by repeatedly enduring the tension produced when conscious and unconscious imperatives inevitably clash. These tests of endurance lead to real wisdom which helps the ego find its true home orbiting the numinous sphere of the archetype of the Self. Until this deeper organization of consciousness is achieved, an individual is besieged by a barrage of attacks and demands from the as-yet uncivilized shadow complexes. And this is precisely the unstable psychological territory that social media and other digital systems colonize and exploit.

The online world offers an alternative to the complex reality of the psyche, functioning as a digital psychic pacifier that effectively kills the individuation process by helping us escape our shadow emotions. Indeed, this digital landscape appears to behave as a second collective unconscious, but one that is devoid of any benefits and quite insidious, infectious, predatory, and more directly involved in generating immediate action in its host consciousness than anyone is aware. I have often observed people staring at their cell phones captured by the dark spell of the “infinite scroll” and imagined a sort of immaterial predator effectively violating the individual’s consciousness through their third eye. It is almost as if the ever-expanding human shadow has undergone a metamorphosis into computer code which then seeps back into us while we stare at our screens.

Just as regular corporations abuse and pillage the planet, digital corporations abuse and pillage the human psyche. Corporate advertisements have been brutally exploiting our insecurities for decades but with the advent of surveillance capitalism, they now have the power to shape behavior on a mass scale, globally. Their algorithms are eating us alive which is why, for me, any genuine resistance movement must begin with a psychic rescue mission—an addiction intervention—on an individual level. It does not seem viable to believe that we can be truly free, out there, in the world, while inwardly we are unconsciously infected with these “flesh-eating” machine viruses, no matter how many protests or rallies we attend. I would therefore argue that against this economically motivated digital assault on psychic freedom, an economy-based technology of liberation must be mobilized. This is probably why activists say that the deletion of our social media accounts is a good place to start the rebellion. But to do that one must be strong enough to overcome an addiction. For that is what social media usage is—an addiction, and calling it what it actually is is another good place to begin a revolt against this insidious and unjust war on human freedom.

Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York, NY: Vintage Books.

Zuboff, S. (2019). The rise of surveillance capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group.

It seems clear that, as humans, we all feel the reality of the psyche every day of our lives. We feel it in our inexplicable protean moods, we feel it in our frightening moments of uncontrollable rage, we feel it when we start to get tense in the solar plexus and begin trying to control or dominate the situation with our words and actions, we feel it at times of numinous ecstasy when we encounter real love, real beauty, or real kindness. We face the reality of the psyche every night in our dreams whether we “believe” in dreams or not. We are surrounded on all sides by products of the psyche in writing, poetry, dance, art, films, science, astrology, sports, music. All of us, regardless of race, class, or gender experience the vicissitudes of oceanic emotions, sparks of genius, flashes of insight, and sudden intuitive knowledge. In his deep explorations into these universally experienced phenomena, C. G. Jung explained that the psyche is composed of a multitude of separate parts that are not necessarily connected to one another nor to the ego but which are entirely independent structures. He called these independent psychic entities “autonomous complexes.”

The complex is generally viewed as something negative (a bad father complex, for example, or an inferiority complex) but it would appear that all the wonderful and creative products of the psyche mentioned above actually emanate from the depths of these psychic entities known as complexes. One need only look at the immense creativity of one’s dreams to see the level of activity and power contained in the complex. Like the archetypes who ultimately parent them, complexes have multiple faces and cannot be considered only negative. In fact, Jung believed that complexes are holders and carriers of psychic energy in the same way that red blood cells are the carriers of oxygen. With regard to personal complexes, he wrote that “the personal unconscious . . . contains complexes that belong to the individual and form an intrinsic part of his psychic life” (Jung, 1948/1969, p. 231, [CW8] para. 590). Intrinsic means to belong naturally or be essential to something so the complex is crucially important to psychic life and not something to be got rid of which is usually the ego’s first response to anything discomfiting.

This is not to say that complexes are never problematic because they are, particularly when personal complexes grow, evolve, and are passed down from generation to generation in the form of familial, and even cultural complexes. The trouble with the complex is that it exists independently from the ego and is therefore totally unconscious. Its status as an unconscious content does not strip it of any of its power, however. The complex continues to wield enormous power over the ego and when it is passed down into a family and further on, into a community, it can operate as an intractable belief system (all Muslims are terrorists), a tradition (Christians are infidels), or a firmly held bias (whites are superior to non-whites). Once again, the complex possesses a high degree of autonomy for it is “the image of a certain psychic situation which is strongly accentuated emotionally,” it has “a powerful inner coherence” and “its own wholeness” (Jung, 1948/1969, p.79, [CW8] para. 201). In other words, it has its own psychic power and operates independently of our will. Because of its emotional charge and its ability to completely usurp the awareness and control of the conscious ego, the complex, especially when constellated on a broader cultural level, can be a very dangerous impetus for collective ignorance and mass violence, a reality that is painfully clear in the many atrocities humanity has wreaked upon itself in the name of some higher cause.

My vocation is to one day become a learned depth psychologist and sometimes mystic who ultimately seeks to know the truth of reality. The study of complexes is therefore highly significant for my professional and personal development since first, it is what Jung intended to call his entire psychology which means it is very important to the entire Jungian project, and second, since I and the entire species struggle with the reality and autonomous power of complexes every day. Depth psychology is ultimately the study of the soul and how it works. To my mind, this knowledge is what brings one closer to being on the road to genuine self-discovery and to dutifully and humbly following the very serious edict of the oracle of Delphi which encourages us all to “know thyself.” Only this level of self-knowledge can alter the power of unconscious complexes and channel it toward the greater good.

Jung, C. G. (1969). A review of the complex theory (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1948)

Jung, C. G. (1969). The psychological foundations of belief in spirits (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung (Vol. 8, 2nd ed.). Retrieved from http://www.proquest.com (Original work published 1948)