A Civilizational Diagnosis of Modern Consciousness
Essays (Articles)
Introductory reflections that develop the project’s central claims in conceptual, philosophical, and historical form.
Problem and Method: Consciousness After the Broken Center
Depth Psychology and Consciousness studies Pt. II by Brenton L. Delp The problem of consciousness today is not only that consciousness is difficult to define. That difficulty is real, but it is not the deepest problem. The deeper problem is that modern consciousness has become fragmented without understanding the history of its fragmentation. Popular discourse…
Se7en and the Negative Return of Soul
Depth Psychology and Consciousness Studies by Brenton L. Delp Se7en touches the soul, but it does so negatively. It does not present soul as harmony, wisdom, beauty, redemption, or spiritual depth fulfilled. It presents soul as what returns when a culture has lost the forms through which soul could be consciously understood. The film is…
AI and the Laziness of the Consciousness Debate
by Brenton L. Delp The question “Is AI conscious?” is not an age-old question. It may belong to an age-old family of questions, but the distinction matters. Human beings have long imagined statues that come to life, golems animated by sacred letters, mechanical dolls, talking heads, artificial servants, puppets who become real, and creatures made…
Jung, Psychedelic Therapy, and the Desire for Transcendence
by Brenton L. Delp The renewed interest in psychedelic and ketamine therapy should not be dismissed as mere fashion, nor should it be welcomed as a new miracle. It belongs to something much deeper in the modern soul. It arises at the point where ordinary therapeutic language often fails, where insight no longer moves the…
The Problem with “Evidence-Based”
by Brenton L. Delp Few phrases carry more authority in modern medicine, psychology, addiction treatment, education, and public policy than the phrase “evidence-based.” It sounds sober, scientific, objective, and responsible. It appears to separate disciplined knowledge from mere opinion, superstition, ideology, tradition, charisma, and personal anecdote. In principle, this is exactly what it should do.…
Beyond the Twelve Steps: Recovery, Community, and the Future of Peer Support
by Brenton L. Delp Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most successful voluntary organizations in modern history. Since its founding in 1935, it has helped millions of people achieve and maintain sobriety. Countless lives have been saved through its meetings, its fellowship, and its insistence that one alcoholic can help another where professionals, institutions, and…
Artificial Intelligence vs. Soul
What Machines Can Simulate, Human Beings Must Suffer by Brenton L. Delp The arrival of artificial intelligence does not merely confront us with a new technology. It confronts us with a new mirror. In that mirror, many of the activities once taken as signs of mind now appear in externalized, machinic form: language, memory, association,…
Mediation and Reflexivity: How Consciousness Becomes Known to Itself (Condensed Essay)
By Brenton L. Delp Many of the central problems of modern life—identity, meaning, addiction, anxiety, alienation, and the search for purpose—cannot be understood without understanding two philosophical ideas that are often overlooked: mediation and reflexivity. Though these terms sound abstract, they describe some of the most fundamental structures of human existence. Together they help explain…
Mediation and Reflexivity: The Between and the Return of Consciousness
By Brenton L. Delp Two of the most important words for understanding philosophy, religion, psychology, and the modern condition are also two of the easiest to pass over too quickly: mediation and reflexivity. Both words name movements of consciousness. Both describe the way human beings come into relation with reality, with meaning, with themselves, and…
AI, Truth, and the Forest of Mirrors
by Brenton L. Delp What Remains When Sense and Authority Deceive Us The modern crisis of truth did not begin with artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence has only made the crisis visible to everyone. What was once a philosophical problem has become a daily condition. Images can be fabricated. Voices can be imitated. Institutions contradict themselves.…
AI, Truth, and the Forest of Mirrors (Extended Essay)
by Brenton L. Delp What Remains When Sense and Authority Deceive Us The crisis of truth did not begin with artificial intelligence. AI has only made the crisis visible to everyone. What philosophy had already discovered, technology has now placed into daily life: images can lie, voices can be imitated, authorities can contradict one another,…
The Absolute After Transcendence and the History of Negativity
by Brenton L. Delp Modern people often experience themselves as free, but also strangely unsupported. Older worlds gave human life a place within a larger order. The cosmos, God, church, law, ritual, family, community, and inherited moral language all helped tell the individual who he was, why he suffered, what he owed, what he could…