The American philosopher Gilbert Riley wrote the book “Conzept of Mind” in 1949. In this he argues that mind and matter consist of one and the same substance. He is thus a monist and posits the thesis that mind as a disposition of behavior is already present in matter. As an example he brings the wine glass. Such an object has many obvious properties that are already present in matter – such as, Smooth, glossy, transparent, etc. There are also attributes you are not directly recognizable. A glass can also splinter when it falls down. The precisely designated RILEY as a behavioral disposition or popularly spoken then as “mind in the machine”.

In March 2017 the remake of “The Ghost in the Shell” comes to the cinema. The original content comes from a Japanese comic series (Manga) which was processed as anime in 1995. In terms of content, it is one of the first science fiction films dealing with artificial intelligence. In 2029 life cyborgs as we imagine them today on Earth. What is special about these creatures is that they still have a small part of the human brain. This fragment is embedded in a shell in the cyborg. Hence the name of the story. The main character “Major Motoko Kusanagi” fights not only against the hacker “Puppetmaster” but also with himself. She is tormented by the question of whether she is still a bit human or already completely a cyborg.

This Ghost in the “somewhere” topic I would like to extend in the second season of my blog series to “Spirit in the Cloud”. To this I will analyze twenty films from the fields of science fiction, transcendence, and cyberworld. Because it coincides very well in time, I start with the already announced “Ghost in the Shell. Further analyzes are planned for Matrix, Transcendence, Inception, Ex Machina, Who am I, and many more.

Kinofilms are very suitable for future analyzes. In this context, the ancient TV series Spacecraft Enterprise is very often mentioned. Those who still remember can know that the crew used smartphone-like devices at that time. These were known under the term “phaser”. Compared to today’s smartphones, these look old. Nevertheless, it was at that time a glance into the future. Of course, at least, so far, not everything that was shown in technology could be implemented. Another example of the newer Kinogeschichte is the social fiction film “Ideocracy” from the year 2006. The content is about a completely degenerate American society in the year 2502. Among other things, the American president is shown again and again. Unfortunately, in some phases this is already reminiscent of the behavior of today’s American president. Even if it is very overprinted. However, it is not at all clear from the hand.

The question arises which of the techniques, social systems, and behaviors shown in these are those with which we can count in the future. A two-hour science fiction film is full of such scenes. I would like to take up the phenomenon of synchronicity, which Carl Gustav Jung already recognized. This means that two events – which are not causally related – occur simultaneously. For example, I watch a movie where someone is ringing at the apartment door and the same happens in my real world where at the same time someone rings. Jung has seen the events in two different worlds. One event occurs in the real world and the other in the spiritual world. Dreams played a very important role.

Today, through virtual reality, we have discovered an additional possibility of synchronicity. The more meaningful the worlds are, the more of such contingencies will be. The amount of Kinofilmen / series or even existing videos is gigantic. If you then break it down to individual small scenes you already have your own universe. Very recent issues have very short settings. The real world has also been massively enriched by industrialization. An Asian city in the night has a lot of information. The cineastic world can still be easily distinguished from the natural / technical world. Although you can forget the reality of an exciting film. The Cinea Reality will also resolve this differentiation. With 3D glasses, sensors and actuators, we will be in the middle of the film and perhaps even play along.

So I’m looking for synchronicities that occur between my real and the cinema world. The emphasis is on “my world” because I know no other. The films and series I take from the genre described above. Repeated synchronicities could be indications of future developments. I invite you to practice with me a “different” watching movies – could be exciting.

Now the connection between Spirit and Cloud has to be established. Regardless of the religions, many relevant authors agree that mindfulness, transcendence, fear / power, the divine, and enlightenment are the essential descriptions of a contemporary spirituality. The cloud is stretched by the attributes of mixed reality, super-AI, CyberWorld and transhumanism. Now, if these two vectors are represented in a two-dimensional matrix, twenty fields are formed. Each of these fields can then be assigned to a class and this in turn corresponds to a film / series.