Virtualization of Culture and Mythologization of Consciousness

The research discusses issues of virtualization and mythologization of consciousness. The author adheres to the point of view that the virtualization of culture acts as a catalyst for mythological consciousness, encouraging it to manifest itself. However, the mythologization of consciousness is not an inevitable consequence of virtualization. Describing the virtualization of consciousness in an exclusively negative way creates the false impression that it can and should be abolished. Whereas the philosophical task is to understand the transformations occurring with modern man. The notion «virtualization» is now controversial and is often used as a metaphor. The author makes clear the conceptual meanings with which the concept of virtualization is associated in various philosophical, sociological and cultural models: computerization, informatization, game, and simulation. Only when virtualization is understood as a simulation, a clear semantic connection does arise between virtualization and the mythologization of consciousness. The essential features of Homo virtualis – variability of identification, “loss” of the real body, transformation of the experience of time, determine the characteristics of virtualized consciousness and create prerequisites, but do not predetermine the mythologization of consciousness. This occurs when consciousness ceases to grasp the difference between a sign and its referent, an image and a thing. This transition, without being predetermined, still occurs quite easily due to the similarity between mythological and network space/time/logic. Thus, mythological and network spaces are built from the center; these are inhomogeneous spaces. Mythological time and network time are cyclical and reversible. The logic of myth and network (virtual) reality is the logic of the miracle, the logic of wish fulfillment. © 2024, RUDN University. All rights reserved.