Governing the World Psyche in the Age of Social Media

Kenneth R. Lakritz, Ph.D.

9-26-21

Never would we imagine that the effects of social media would infiltrate the world

psyche in such a way as to globally encourage and reinforce and the most destructive

of human impulses: social/ political fragmentation and division. This crisis of chaos

and division is made even more dire given that social unity is clearly a necessary

condition for a sustainable planetary future. To understand the macroscopic level of

the debacle, we have to examine the micro level of emotional development to

appreciate the “splitting” that is at the core of what we are creating in the individual

and collective psyche. According to Tristan Harris of the Center of Humane

Technology, social media companies like Facebook have hijacked the primal, limbic

brain by elevating and sustaining the lowest common denominator of human behavior

and thinking to the forefront of social attention. It also silos us into separate and often

competing reality structures based upon ecosystem bubbles arising from individualized

vs shared media content. It’s business model thrives by reinforcing the darkest of our

angels and augmenting the most extreme, attention grabbing content. The broad

dissemination of these platforms has impacted the world psyche in ways that not only

reveal our susceptibility to the disturbing effects of tech addiction and social media

ecosystem bubbles, but have also shown us the vulnerability of the collective psyche

to tech enabled and deliberate manipulation of information for political and financial

gain. We are now living in a world in which a business model governing the working

structure of a social media company has more influence over societal and political

views and behavior than any moral or ethical structure that has ever existed.

Social media, as it is currently structured, is like a Skinnerian (the father of operant

behavioral conditioning) behavioral experiment scaled to monstrous, epic proportions.

Who could have know that a thumbs up or down would carry the day as currency for

the most powerful reinforcement in the world, combined with algorithms that are

designed to hijack the brains dopamine system and supercharge the old-brainsubstrates of fear and rage that are extremely difficult to over-ride by reason or fact.

Governance of the world psyche has defaulted to poorly regulated social media

companies whose models thrive on the lowest common denominator. While we were

enjoying their products they have been engaging in a collective psychological coup

with broad unchecked authoritarian powers over how their products are delivered.

Governance of the social media ecosystems and their internal behavioral reinforcement

models (clearly based on monetary gain) is tantamount at this time to governance of

the collective psyche.

It has taken some of our brightest tech minds (the film the Social Dilemma) to

articulate the problem in which we now find ourselves socially, psychologically, and

politically immersed. The first challenge is always to identify roots causes. Gabor

Mate, in his bestseller, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, outlines the roots of addiction in

graphic medical and psychological detail. Similarly, in order to treat the patient, which

is now our global network of cultures and societies, we must first diagnose the

situation -as was done artfully in the film The Social Dilemma. Second, we must begin

to develop a precise treatment plan that would implement structures and policies of

wise governance of technological systems that were created by young and brilliant, yet

unwise individuals in pursuit of building wealth and new ways of utilizing technology for

social connection.

We live in a time where existential crises are mounting on many fronts socially,

psychologically and environmentally. This has a wide spread destabilizing effect of the

collective psyche, which, when confronted with fear and anxiety at every turn, is prone

to regression and reliance on more primitive coping. The current state of the collective

psyche makes us more vulnerable to emotional “splitting” within the personal psyche,

and more susceptible to tribal and social divisions within the collective sphere. Without

an adequate “Holding Space” or container, as psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott indicated,

emotional trauma or overwhelm will exceed one’s internal capacity, causing

dissociation (splitting) and regression to occur. Wise parenting, mentoring, leadership,

statesmanship, and eldering are the “holding spaces” in society that enable us to think

and act in ways that foster positive development during moments that often lead to

personal and collective fragmentation when overwhelming circumstances are present.

No matter how brilliant, young tech entrepreneurs are not developmentally able to hold

these corporate containers in ways that bring the wisdom of healthy stewardship and

governance to match the genius of their technological creations.

Diagnosis:

1. Technology is moving faster than the development of wise stewardship and

governance systems

2. Technology companies rely on the low hanging fruit of hijacking old-brain structures

to ensure continued business and revenue growth. This is what neuroscience

might refer to as hot arousal: default brain systems that operate on primitive reward

and fear/ rage (amygdala) circuits

3. Existential fears and collective trauma create vulnerability to regress and to fracture

social structures susceptible to social media siloing.

Possible Solutions:

4. We need to move toward supporting, through governance, policies, agreements

(tech constitution), think tanks, etc, utilizing cool arousal brain structures

(hippocampus) that enable higher-level reasoning, wise intentionality, and

executive-control brain systems (neocortex dominance vs limbic dominance in

business model development).

5. This will require stewardship models for providing collective “holding spaces” for

creating safety/ unity experiences so that limbic dominance (hot arousal) can be

reduced and neocortical dominance (cool arousal) can be increased in sense-

making processes and wise intention.

6. Business models and algorithms supporting financial growth over psychological

and social health will have to be redesigned to balance business growth with

collective well being.

As long as we continue to stoke fear and generate chaos (which is the

authoritarians playbook), we will be colluding with the root cause circumstances that

lead to limbic dominance. This, again, will leave us vulnerable to the hijacking of the

collective psyche we are experiencing currently. The wise structures that the US

constitution has framed have been an archetype for creating a framework that creates

a container within which the polis might evolve. It is the healthy dialogue (dialectic)

between the poles of right and left that enable evolution. The splitting and

fragmentation that has led to extreme polarization and disunity has undermined the

healthy institutional structures that the framers originally had in mind. This breakdown

that we are seeing is leading to continued devolution. We can and must steer the ship

back on course if we are to realign these evolutionary processes and to bring healthy

stewardship in the face of the decimation caused by unwise governance of the world

psyche.