Every technology amputates the function it extends. Marshall McLuhan

I never imagined I could lose. Alpha-Go made a winning move that no human would make. –Lee Sedol

In 1997, an IBM computer beat the world champion chess player, Gary Kasparov. The world of Go, the Asian game that far exceeds chess in complexity, was undaunted. Go masters did not believe it possible for a computer to beat a high level Go player. The number of combinations in Go is said to exceed the number of atoms in the universe. For this reason, Go tests the limits of human thought far beyond chess. But what is more crucial, is that Go masters have observed that it is the human intuition that extends the reach of Go far beyond chess. In the first of five matches (for a prize of one million dollars), the best Go player in the world for the past decade. Lee Sedol, lost to Google’s Deep Mind Alpha-Go computer program. Sedol was shocked, as was everyone else. Those working on artificial intelligence and trying to develop machines that exceed human capacities in every dimension were overjoyed. March 9, the date of the first match, has become an historic moment. Everyone is eager to see the outcome of the remaining four matches.

Humans are in a fast-paced race to seemingly replace themselves, whether this is understood as a positive development (as in artificial intelligence circles) or understood as a negative development (as in human activities that insure ecological disaster). I expect the term “artificial” to disappear soon from the phrase
“artificial intelligence” as exponential advances render the term artificial meaningless. For most humans, the Turing test results are already in.

If McLuhan’s conclusion is true, on many different levels we are “amputating” ourselves. I refer to this process as the “ascendency of the not-human.” I believe this is one factor in the emerging dominant. Jung emphasized the “organizational” character of dominants, that is, the organizing of the archetypal processes within the structure of the dominant. Given Jung’s conception of the “psychoid,” referring to the inherent relationship of psyche and matter, there is a basis for expecting the “not-human” to manifest. The emergence of new dominants is tied to the collapse of older dominants, and these dominant structures have different intensities, extensions, and time scales. Altogether, these complex considerations are difficult to grasp

As I mentioned in earlier posts, collapse tends to be empirically visible in various conditions of extremity. Look around you, in your own life, in groups, in countries, in the world order, in the global conditions. You will not have to look far to witness extremity and the increasing pace and spread of extremity. As collapse gathers steam in many directions, it may be possible to witness hints of the emerging dominant. As Jung determined, it will be in dreams, and visions, fantasies, delusions, and other manifestations of the raw psyche, as well as in non-commodified art and literature, that we can see these hints and prefigurations of the emerging dominant.

If it is correct to see the fractal nature of both archetypal processes, as well as the dominants that organize the archetypal matrix at any period of time, then it is also the case that our own individual experience will be a source of “seeing into” the nature of what is coming. Each of us is a laboratory.

Now, what has all this got to do with the “Trump phenomenon”?

There is no doubt that Mr. Trump has become a “carrier” of archetypal energy. It must be noted that this is quite different from what is usually discussed under such categories as fame, fortune, celebrity, charisma, reputation, etc. All these aspects tend to be “personalistic” characteristics that come and go fairly quickly in the nature of “fads,” that is, the “herd” phenomena of the moment.

It should also be noted that carrying archetypal energy is not something one “decides” to do consciously or unconsciously. It is an autonomous process. Nor is it something “others” decide to make happen in some sense. The proper sense of it is conveyed by Jung’s assertion that, “We would do well, therefore,

to think of the creative process as a living thing implanted in the human psyche.” We may not relish the idea of human replacement as “creative,” but the logic of what Jung says dictates that we take this seriously. Keep in mind that there are many “living things” that are “not-human,” no doubt far more than we know.

So, if Mr. Trump is infused with archetypal energy (which makes him impervious to the typical personalistic processes of politics), then he is likely carrying something of the “replacement” dynamic described above. The replacement of human with not-human is likely to occur in stages and at different rates in different places. We have seen the instance above in relation to chess and Go. It is now estimated that one-third to one-half of the US workforce could be replaced within two years as robotic automation takes hold at an exponential rate. Approval of machines that will replace surgeons will be available later this year. Cars are being developed that will replace drivers. These are fragments—tiny fragments— of a large-scale replacement process underway.

In the next post, I’ll describe more fully how this dominant will be at work in the coming election in the US.