Cliff Bostock – Writings
Hillman Speaks: The topic is depression and the man is confounding
by Cliff Bostock
“This curious habit of exempting certain areas of inquiry from his own method of reversal permeated the weekend. While valorizing shattering, the suffering of depression, he seemed unwilling to look at what mania itself might be asking of value. To my own mind, mania, as a social descriptor, may be telling us we really do need to speed up our attention, that if we live on a dying planet, we need to begin merging our bodies with new forms of technology. It is in media – the internet, the cell phone, the television – that we see the most visible expressions of consciousness speeded to “manic” rates. There was just no opening in Hillman’s (anti-technological, anti-speed) cosmology to discuss this in a serious way.”
“Indeed, the entire room seemed unwilling to go that way. One man spoke negatively of the way the “window to the world” has been replaced by “Windows ’95.” It is a great mystery to me how people in archetypal psychology offhandedly dismiss the idea that technology itself might be ensouled, that in a world on the apparent verge of environmental disaster, our survival might well depend on our capacity to take on new forms of embodiment. There has been a lot of (optimistic) writing in recent years about the internet as a group mind that may be the planet’s salvation.”
A nice essay on depression from yr 2000. This is also a link which in turn links to a lot of writing by Cliff Bostock. Look for his article on Archetypes for example…
The whole essay follows:
Continue reading “Danger to the planet in dismissing the soul in tech”