At spirit level (Short essay, 2023)

“We live in a time of secularization, of first seeing and then believing.

Instead of devotedly following a god, we randomly ‘follow’ many others on social media. The other does not necessarily have to be holy anymore but must be nice. The word ‘follow’ changes its meaning and so does the sense of belonging that came with it. And accompanied by that change, we have entered a time in which local communities are falling apart and digital communities have become commonplace.

Those digital communities entail that we have entered an immense digital factory, where we log on at any time and then produce unpaid data for the big data companies. We no longer stand at the assembly line but lie on it and have become the mass product ourselves. We are all connected, tamed, but barely in connection with our spiritual selves.

These times challenge us to reload the term connectedness. This new connectedness starts with a deeper connection with ourselves in order to connect with others from there on.

Reloading connectedness is in a different kind of holding and a new kind of religion. I foresee an untamed future in which we connect at a deeper level, or in other words; ‘at spirit level’.”