Voicecraft Dispatch | Dreams & Psyche in the Age of Technology
Forthcoming events, Psychedelic Philosophy, and a window into Voicecraft Network expeditions
With gratitude for your time, here are a few words on the upcoming Voicecraft Live, and links to public and private creations and opportunities.
On dreams & psyche in the age of technology
In speaking of dreams we are relating with a profoundly intimate experience. Private, powerful, and exemplary of the mystery of unconscious process. I say mystery in at least the minimal sense that dreams seem to pass us by… pass through us, even, without our full understanding. Inexhaustible in potential interpretation, but nonetheless close on our heels and often indicative of the most critical desires, tensions, questions and recognitions in our lives and the broader contextual field.
In dreaming we encounter a profound tension between the known and unknown, as well as a relation between the individual and collective psyche. Although dreams can be challenging, terrifying at times, they remain a private refuge.
But this refuge is becoming vulnerable in the age of technology. And it is most vulnerable the more we resist cultivating deeper relationships with ourselves.
Technology is increasingly finding ways to quantitively aggregate and assail the dreaming psyche, opening us to yet deeper means of suggestibility and manipulation for every step gained in scientific knowledge. Hacking synchronicity is a notion I have used to point at something like this phenomenon from another angle. It is that growing capacity our technological power has to tamper, tweak, incept and otherwise effect our deepest propensity for pattern-recognition-as-identity-formation, known by affect as a kind of fate. Where the unlikeliest of contingency is met in flow as the most natural, organically arising necessity.
And so, in the context of recent themes we have here a profoundly accessible means to meet and participate. For we each are psyche, and we can each endeavour to cultivate our relationship with ourselves and the patterns woven by We as the collective. It is a relation not least expressed and strengthened in the mode of quality. And the quality of our relation with psyche remains a distinct context for orientation that the quantitative cannot know directly.
To be sure, as constrained, conditioned and contingent beings in a world of embodied signal, measurement and aggregation as instruments of quantification have profound capacity to effect the patterns which comprise our context for Discernment on the Way (which at heart is a mode of qualitative orientation.) It is just we are more than machine in that narrow sense of programmatically determined. We are (at least) that which meets the program with a question. And we can help each other in the process.
And so, if you can excuse my inspiration to share some thoughts on this topic (which are just one ingredient in the cauldron), our first guest joining us on the evening will be Fiona Henrich, a clinical psychologist and PhD student investigating dreams and their relation to healing and trauma. Her approach is influence by Jung amongst others. And you can read more about her at the same place you can go to get a ticket for the event.
There are two other bits to share. One is:
The full recording from a recent talk I gave at Esoteric festival in March: Psychedelic Philosophy.
It was a uniquely challenging experience, but worthwhile.
This one is only available on YouTube, so you won’t find it in your podcast app.
And a quick update on the Voicecraft Network and ongoing activity and opportunities
Among other sessions this year, members have had the opportunity to participate in a multi part dialogic exploration into the meaning of Telos, in such sessions as Telos and Trauma, Telos and Archetype, and Telos and Building, each of which was recorded and shared privately.
Currently ongoing is an expedition on the topic of AI which kicked off earlier this week. It felt deeply worthwhile. The expedition is open for all members of the network to participate in.
If you would like to join the network, you can learn how to do so here. There’s a short typeform to fill out, and regular and concession membership plans available.
If you are interested in the conversations that take place, then I can share here an unlisted recording of the second in our Telos expedition, “Telos & Archetype”, which participants agreed to make public in this way. It was a beautiful journey, and would make for a valuable podcast in its own right.
In fact, given the forthcoming event on Dreams, this dialogue makes for perfect preparation and introduction into many of the notions that will be present on the evening. Archetypes in particular.
Wishing you all very well.
Discernment on the Way,
Tim