Panic: Yes/No

The world is witnessing a convergence of intensifying wars, growing isolationist policies, and an AI‑driven technology race that magnifies power imbalances and spreads misinformation at unprecedented speed. At the same time, global capital is pouring into AI research at a staggering ≈ $200 billion per year; a level of investment that dwarfs the Manhattan Project’s inflation‑adjusted cost of roughly $30 billion, the wartime effort that produced the first nuclear weapon. This massive financial commitment accelerates the development of capabilities that can reshape geopolitics as dramatically as the atomic bomb once did, turning AI into a new strategic lever. Together, these dynamics raise the specter of a major, possibly global, conflict—one that could eclipse anything seen since the mid‑20th century. The emerging “perfect‑storm” scenario underscores the urgent need to reassess our political institutions and the dominant narratives that shape public discourse, if we hope to steer toward a durable peace. Every institution at civil and national level has failed at peace-building.

Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and a common participation in a common benefit  — Woodrow Wilson

If this trajectory follows the pattern of past arms races; where a zero‑sum mentality of control and dominance drives actors to justify any means, shrouding their actions in secrecy – the specter of mutually assured destruction grows ever larger. History reminds us that we have already teetered on that brink; the Cuban‑Missile crisis showed how quickly the world can slip from deterrence into catastrophe. Today, the stakes feel even higher because the weapons of the future autonomous AI systems, algorithmic influence operations, and hyper‑accelerated cyber arsenals can be deployed at a speed and scale far beyond any previous era. In that context, the danger of an uncontrolled escalation is no longer a distant hypothetical it is a looming reality we must confront head‑on.

We find ourselves at a transformational point where our collective decisions today impact the future of human civilization. The legitimate fear surrounding our future is bound to bring forth panic amidst us.

At first glance, panic appears destructive, paralyzing, irrational, and even absurd enabling self-sabotage. It pushes us into reactionary behavior, prompting decisions driven by fear of imagined outcomes or by hasty conclusions from our haunting pasts, rather than by a holistic understanding of the situation or of how our choices will affect us individually and the broader networks in which we are enmeshed.

Carl Jung once wrote that what we refuse to face in ourselves will one day appear before us as fate. This year’s Ars Electronica Festival takes that provocation seriously with its theme “Panic: Yes/No.

What can we do to resist panic? How can we cultivate more conscious, well‑informed decisions rooted in genuine understanding? And how might we foster authentic conversations that address the challenges we confront today?

Jung coined the concept of the shadow; the repressed, ignored or denied parts of both our individual psyche and the collective unconsciousness. Jung argued that what is left unexamined in the psyche does not vanish ; it returns, magnified. He saw this most vividly in the rise of Nazism, where the German “Shadow” ; resentment, humiliation, and mythic rage repressed after World War I, erupted into collective possession. Hitler, Jung suggested, acted less as an individual leader than as a “medium” for an unconscious archetype, giving voice to forces that ordinary Germans had never dared confront in themselves. The result was catastrophe on a scale the modern world had never seen. Nor is this phenomenon confined to Germany. The Stalinist purges in the Soviet Union, the Rwandan genocide, the wars in the Balkans; each reveals how the refusal to acknowledge collective fears, hatreds, and vulnerabilities creates a vacuum that the most destructive energies rush to fill. When a society suppresses its Shadow, it does not dissolve; it gathers force until it bursts forth in atrocity.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung

Art can serve as a societal mediator. By placing us in uncomfortable situations, it challenges our beliefs and, by its very nature, brings the hidden shadows of our individual and collective psyche into consciousness. In this way, art holds up a mirror that forces us to confront everything we repress, neglect, or refuse to acknowledge; especially the mechanisms that sustain existing power structures across the spectrum. Only when we integrate those shadows can we enact conscious change, fostering conversations that recognize our collective blind spots and steering society toward greater empathy, authenticity, accountability, and justice.

And this year’s festival did just that. The festival insists that art must not soothe us into complacency. Instead, it must provoke unease, make visible the fractures we prefer to avoid, talk about what’s always neglected and create a space where we confront our own vulnerabilities. Panic, in this sense, is not the end of dialogue but its beginning, a crack that lets the light in, a rupture that forces us to ask the most pressing questions of our time. Would mindless competition in market economies drive systems to be unchecked and unregulated, valuing growth and profit above human well-being, sustainability, and justice? Would we continue on our trajectories for power, dominance and control, abandoning morality and ethics, allowing every technological innovation to be corrupted for these ends or will we pause, hold conversations on all levels, decentralize our systems and return agency, sovereignty, privacy and control to the individuals these tools are meant to serve.

Can AI be the first positive-sum game that transforms us towards an equitable future for all?

Small chance? 🤏 But, with these conversation we open a door to the possibility.

Looking for the wicked, found not a single one. Looking for myself found the wicked one — Kabir Das

I hope we all (me included) deeply reflect on the decisions we take today as they shape the future of those to come. Only with true accountability of our pasts and present can we heal.

Are you ready to face your own shadow?

Selected Works