We are Dorian Gray and the Internet is our Picture: Differentiation and Embeddedness in VUCA, Cyberpunk World
This essay is a thought experiment, gedanken experiement, about the omnipresence of cyberspace affecting levels of human development, possibly creating cognitive dissonance on a pandemic scale that may short circuit our meaning making processes through a technology induced, psychic fever.
The Internet or Cyberspace have challenged traditional physical or institutional boundaries by creating an “Open System”, accessible to all. Within this open system we are observing emergence of complex phenomenon such as political polarization driven by “fake news”; unpredictable social media mobilization or cyberactivism; and persistent online harassment or cyberbullying. These events evoke images of a dystopian world that until recently was only depicted in science fiction’s cyberpunk genre. The context of this environment fits what the US Army has coined as Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA).
Films such as Blade Runner, The Matrix, Ghost in a Shell or books such as Neuromancer describe VUCA worlds where humanity struggles with the very concept of reality — what is human? What is machine? How do we relate? While much of this is still the domain of science fiction, some are sounding off alarm bells. People are beginning to discuss effects of internet or social media technology on humans; however, the field is immature and there are more questions than answers. If the future holds what the cyberpunk genre paints, how will we continue the process of meaning making and evolve?
Cyber psychologist Mary Aiken makes a brief analogy to the story of Dorian Gray in a discussion regarding the filtered ideal self. The tale of Dorian Gray can be used to unpack quite a bit more regarding our collective unconscious — are the personas, whether the anonymous troll or manicured false self on facebook where we all continually objectify, displace, and project into cyberspace just a reflection of me, you, us — a modern day collective portrait of Dorian Gray? We are Dorian Gray and the internet is our picture.
If the internet is truly our differentiated picture holding our false self, or an avenue for persistence of defensive mechanisms, we are effectively outsourcing the necessary work needed to continue meaning making. Yet the integration of cyberspace into every facet of our lives creates conditions where it is literally embedded within our interactions; many people feel incomplete without their access to cyberspace. This dissonance, embeddedness of the technology concurrently with displacement of our differentiated self, is the stressor generating our psychic fever acting simultaneously across Robert Kegan’s Helix of Evolutionary Truces.
This collective picture continues to grow exponentially with every new platform, creating more vectors for our attention, resulting in emergent phenomenon disrupting the collective and human development.
The bleakness of cyber dystopia would speak to our fears; yet, humanity’s sense of survival also creates forward movement. As we collectively tilt at all levels of development, just maybe, it forces humanity to confront forces holding it back. Without struggle there isn’t any growth, but the magnitude of this collective psychic fever is unprecedented. Humanity has demonstrated adaptability through its history. Conversing about these subjects on a philosophical end, that hopefully translates into effective science, growth, and understanding may someday enable us to effectively embed lessons learned to create the space for much needed embeddedness propelling us into another phase of human growth.
How Kegan’s Helix is affected through time (Chronosystem) and possible interventions to keep growing through a lived cyberspace experience will be addressed in following essays.
Note: This essay was previously published on http://letter2humanity.org/. Minor modifications have been made in this version.
