Adaptive Changes in the Psyche of Homo sapiens during the Period of the Singularity (Part 2)

Abstract

Creativity, the integrative function of the psyche of Homo sapiens (HS), which arose about 50,000 years ago, allowed HS to project the image of the goal (IG), transformed into a “symbol,” into the external environment. The projection constructs of the psyche have become autonomous fragments of the environment in the HS perception, not being its derivatives. Objective reality, perceived by HS, has acquired non-inherent properties: a mental product of the psyche that integrates the virtual and real components of the environment. In other words, the role of HS has evolved over the last 10,000 years, since the beginning of the agrarian revolution: from (1) a dependent subject controlled by external forces in an animated world to (2) “the crown of God's creation” in “theism” and, (3) to the status "Higher power" during the period, in which "God is Dead." Initially, HS exists in an incompletely real environment, with an increasing component of virtuality. With symbolic virtual content, HS supplemented or duplicated the entire surrounding world, creating a two-component habitat (virtual and real). The emergence and development of conceptual thinking (ConceptT) led to a partial "devirtualization" of the environment, the removal of restrictions on scientific knowledge, the rapid growth of technology and social dynamics. The result of technological development was, in the recent past, a temporary resolution of the primary frustration: the establishment of the current equilibrium in the relationships with the regulatory "dissociated symbol"—the virtual "information universe” (IU). The IU, defining as the interference of "media" with the "information body" of the Internet, we consider as a unified information space, integrated with reality and in total constituting the HS habitat. Clip thinking (ClipT), qualitatively different from ConceptT, is a new operating system of the psyche, a moderator of adaptation to a new, virtualized environment. A technological derivative of mental activity HS—the IU—without the participation of conscious forms of mental activity, transforms the algorithms of thinking, i.e. formats the psyche as a whole with adaptation to qualitative and quantitative changes in the virtual component of the environment, and to the perspectives on the development of technologies during the singularity.