At spirit level

These times challenge us to reload the term connectedness.

Essays of time

We live in a time of secularization, of seeing first then believing. Structures are blurring and the cornerstones of society are no longer level.

Instead of devotedly following a god, young digital natives 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 but we are still barely in connection.

These times challenge us to reload the term connectedness. I foresee a future in which we connect at a deeper level, a connectedness ‘at spirit level’.

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, a stranger kind of religion, a deeper kind of balance.

Bas van Raay ’23