“The splitting of the atom has changed everything except our mode of thinking. Hence we drift toward unparalleled catastrophy. If humans are to survive we need a whole new mode of thinking.”
-Albert Einstein

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Our modern world is permeated with technology, with high-end tools that enable us to go far beyond our human capabilities. The possibilities could be marvelous if we were to use and implement them wisely.

But we are like children using a smartphone: We are easily addicted, and we have handed over control of our attention, often without realizing it. In short, we are not being in conscious control of it.

Yet, we are still trying to solve our problems through technological advancement.

It’s like replacing the smartphone in the hands of a child with a tablet. Well done, better content, bigger screen, more engagement. The outcome may be the same, or even worse. But often we can’t stop.

But I’m not attempting to criticise technology here, after all, it is a tool and we determine how we use it. Similarly as a child, we need to grow up to use it properly.

Taking Out The Garbage

Some estimates say that by 2026, more than 90% of all internet content and traffic will be created by bots.
Some of it may have a decent purpose, but much of it will be manipulation, advertisement, spam, or junk.
Most human content may be covered under a big pile of AI-generated garbage.

We have already made social media, which was one of the most incredible opportunities to connect and create online communities of likeminded people all around the world, into an addictive marketplace for narcissistic self-indulgent, misinformation, and memes.
Nothing wrong with memes, but we could cut down on the rest.

In that way, much of the technology we create is not bad, but often it’s governed by the wrong incentives and stays far behind what it could potentially be.

Maybe it’s time to reconsider where we went wrong, maybe it’s time we tried something else.

I do firmly believe that technology can do immense good, but only if we are able to clean out our own shit first.
Both individually and collectively we need to grow up and show up in a different way to make this happen

AI image generated by the author (on Freepik).

In this article, I want to present you with a complementary dimension of development:
The conscious use and implementation of what could be called psycho-technologies.
We could also call them tools of the mind and body; after all they are not sperate.

They may include mindfulness practices such as meditation and practises for self-exploration and trauma-work such as breathwork or psychedelics, embodied practices such as Yoga or Tai-Chi, but they may also include therapy.

They can help us heal, build a deeper connection to ourselves, the people around us, and the natural world, they can help us bring more meaning into our lives, and they can help us regulate our thoughts and emotions.

Is There Only One Dimension of Development?

In today’s sense technology could thus roughly be defined as:
The systematic use of a tool.

Most people assume that technological (and hence material) development is the cure for our current ills and predicaments. Often, they also assume that this is the only way in which humans and societies can evolve. As if language, numeracy, writing, democracy, the scientific method, psychotherapy, or meditation would have not enabled great changes in our societies, organization, and way of thinking.

As technology is an extension of our being, so is our societal organization, our justice system, our laws, and our economy.
But I don’t want to go into collective organization. Because no less important, and more intimate and individually controllable, are our own bodies and minds and everything that belongs to them: our emotions, our attention, our thoughts and feelings, our desires etc.

We can effectively build a healthy relationship with all of these and make them our friends instead of our enemies to direct or experience them in the best possible way.

This does not mean pushing negative thoughts or emotions aside, but not feeding them. This means learning to direct our attention consciously.
This means using our desire as motivation and drive towards higher goals and things that truly inspire us instead of being stuck chasing simple pleasures that can’t really fulfil us. And this may include healing from trauma and compulsive patterns of thought or behavior that are not serving us anymore.

We have acquired knowledge and technology to control the outside world, now it’s time to learn how to take care of the inside as well.

Technology as an indicator of “Progress”

Let’s zoom out for a moment.

Throughout history, societies were heavily determined by the way and the type of technology they had available.
Some of the early chapters in Human history are even named after the technology that was available to craft tools, hence we have the stone, bronze, and iron ages. Just consider the huge changes that took place since the Middle Ages.

Technology enabled unimaginable changes in society by altering nearly all aspects of our lives: Our means of production have changed, so did our social structure, our way of interacting, reading, communicating, spending leisure time, our medicine, how we store and share information.
Every new cycle brought massive innovation: From the printing press, to telegraphs, to phones, to smartphones and the internet.

And as its technology has become more advanced its presence in our lives has increased. Today nearly all aspects of our lives are permeated by it.

Technology has become an extension of our being through which we shape our environment and even ourselves. But we didn’t evolve alongside it.

As Edward O. Wilson put it:

The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology. It is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.

It seems we have reached a limit where we need to upgrade our collective organization (institutions and economic and political systems) as well as our individual being to the level of our technology.

We are still mostly running on the same mental and emotional programs our ancestors did and we seem not ready to deal with the responsibilities and challenges that our technological advancement has brought.

When we are willing to integrate non-material practices as tools, we recognize another dimension of innovation beyond the purely material use of tools.

Nurturing the Mind beyond Education

We (in the West) have recognized the importance of nurturing the mind as we generally value education highly. But beyond this, there wasn’t much attention paid to the inner dimension of the psyche or its mental well-being. It was assumed things would work out just fine… until it became apparent that it wouldn’t.

Thus, Psychotherapy was born which in turn has been a technique, or maybe better a set of techniques, that is specifically Western.

We seemingly only take care of our minds if it becomes undeniable that there is something wrong. But instead of trying to intervene when something becomes problematic, putting care and attention to it beforehand does seem like a good idea too.

The body is an incredibly complex organism that needs tending and training and so does the mind.

To paraphrase Sadhguru here:

Our brain is like a supercomputer, it is one of the most sophisticated pieces of bioengineering there ever was.
But did you read the manual?

Do you know how to properly take care of it? If you do know, are you applying this knowledge in your day-to-day life?

The notion that there are many ways to engage the mind has become more widespread in recent times but this hasn’t fully permeated our society, education, and culture yet.

Diving into the Depths. Our Psyche and Unconscious may be one the last uncharted territories except for outer space and the deep sea. Picture by NEOM on Unsplash

Benefits for the Group: Empathy and Togetherness instead of Fear

Psycho-technologies can offer ways to heal, to gain insight , and to free the mind from compulsive patterns.
But they can also serve as “reality medicine” enabling our minds to open up to our delusions and they can put our egos back into a cosmic perspective, thereby helping us to realize that we are part of a cosmic web.
In that way, they can ensure well-being and mental health for the individual as well as coherence for the collective or group.

(If you’re interested in more, have a look at my articles about Mystical experiences, or the Eleusinian Mysteries in Ancient Greece).

This sense of group cohesion and alignment of the individual with the collective is an essential element missing in many modern societies. We see this extremely in the high levels of polarisation and social injustice. Ensuring this group cohesion was the function of the religion and the nation-state, but both are crumbling as they seem weaker and more outdated than ever.

We need to create a new sense of meaning, one that is not dogmatic or tied to in-group-outgroup dynamics so that it can be truly universal.
This will require a new set of practices that enable us to see beyond our limited patterns of thought and emotion and go beyond our fear-based belief systems.
If we assume we live in scarcity and continuous competition we will assume we have to fight to survive, but when we can accept that cooperation benefits all, we may be able to go beyond the perpetuation of conflict and divide and conquer tactics.

What does it matter if people in society would come to see things like meditation, psychotherapy, breathwork, and psychedelics as psycho-technologies?

As pointed out before the history of humanity is written parallel to the history of technology.

But the West has only recognized material tools as technology disregarding the skills and techniques other cultures have developed and implemented successfully through the ages without coming into disharmony with themselves and the environment.

We measure other cultures according to their technological progress, but we don’t measure their fulfillment, the care they take each other, social cohesion, and their state of mind. We don’t consider levels of equality or social and emotional intelligence as essential to what we call development.

Because many modern societies have been able to attain material prosperity, establish new ways of life, and control the rest of the world through its technological advantage the naïve assumption spread that this was the only dimension in which societal development is possible.

Despite all our wealth we live in an insanely unjust world, that has rampant polarisation, a mental health and loneliness epidemic, and right now seems to be no means in sight to effectively solve these issues.

The Issue of Our Time

We learned how to build powerful tools and control the environment but we can’t properly manage ourselves.

What good is a tool for us if we are not able to use or implement it in the right way?

How well can 4-year-old use a smartphone? And what about a gun (think about how close we got to nuclear extinction)? How much better could a teenager or adult deal with the same situation?

What good is material wealth when our environment, mental health, and social cohesion are being destroyed in the process?

We are so divided that 1% owns more than the bottom half of humanity. We waste immense amounts of our resources or use them to fight among each other.

Emotional, spiritual, psychological, and moral development are not merely byproducts of material achievement; they don’t just happen by themselves.

Self-knowledge, which could also be termed Wisdom in the original sense of the word, is central to these. It necessitates knowing and understanding ourselves instead of attempting to control the world around us.

Healing our emotional trauma, raising awareness and being able to regulate one’s thoughts and emotions so that they are not enslaving us and lead to compulsory decisions could prevent becoming stuck in the same loops of reactivity and violence as well as other kinds of self-destructive behavior like addiction. And the tools are there, we just have to use and implement them.

We can have all the riches, but be miserable and we can be poor and uneducated and be happy and free. Maybe we could even have both.

Conclusion

Eventually, we need both, material technologies and psycho-technologies alike. But as we had a massive development and dissipation of material technologies, we need to balance this with the right psycho-technologies to properly deal with the challenges and responsibilities.

When everyone will not only have a smartphone, but also a practice to calm and center the mind, observe his or her emotions, and control his or her attention, addiction to the internet and social media would not be the same, and neither would the levels of depression and loneliness.

When we can truly connect with ourselves, we are also able to disconnect from the stress and craziness around us. We come closer to the person we want to be and to the person we can be. We can make better decisions, are less reactive and perform better.

This then, can be a better catalyst for creating meaning, fostering connection and enabling well-being than any new gadget we might othwerwise come up with.

Applying them collectively (in schools, at work, in our free time) and scientifically researching them more intensely could only benefit us.

Yoga, Meditation and mindfulness, shadow-work, as well as breathwork and psychedelics, are incredible practices to increase well-being and foster insight, creativity, and self-knowledge I found particularly helpful on my path. They may be different for you, but I’m certain that if you search you will find something that works for you. Good luck on your journey!

If you are interested in topics like meditation, breathwork and psychedelics, mysticism, or philosophical consideration about our human nature in the context of science and society follow me on Medium or social media for more articles.

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