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One of the essential properties of civilization is technology. In fact, some measurements may use the advancement of technology as a gauge to measure the advancement of civilization. From the Stone Age to the digital age, technology has marked our progress.
However, over the past several decades, it seems as though technology has shifted from making our lives easier to dominating them altogether. Nowadays, computers not only process data, but almost think for themselves. The advent of Artificial Intelligence has introduced machines that can even paint expressive artworks, write heartwarming birthday greetings, or draft touching love letters. We, on the other hand, seem to be moving in the opposite direction: We know less, think less, and understand less than we did. It appears as if we have been stupefied by our own creation.
However, there is good news in the ostensibly gloomy future of humanity. While our intellectual abilities are shrinking, new sensory spheres are opening up.
By sensory, I am not referring to our physical senses, but to something much deeper than that. Our sensory organs are purely physical, but I am speaking of the ability to sense one another at such depths that we will be able to sense each other’s feelings and thoughts as if we were one person.
Clearly, this process is not a conscious effort to merge our psyches. However, it is happening nonetheless. If you look at the world around you, you will see how uniform it has become. People wear the same clothes everywhere, the majority of the world speaks English, industry is very similar throughout the world, or buys its products from the same few manufacturers, and we have become so dependent on each other that if a single country has to temporarily halt its wheat shipments, it sends the world into a spiral of price hikes.
We are entering the next phase of our incorporation: incorporation of sensations. Humanity is becoming a system of sensations where billions of people will share the same ideas, thoughts, and feelings.
The more this system manifests itself, the more we will become convinced that if we want to steer our lives safely, we must study this shared system, understand its properties, requirements, and how we can become not only its hubs or pawns, but its very masters.
To achieve this, we will need to acquire the properties of the system, to implement them on ourselves. Since that system is a system of connections, we, too, will have to become connected individuals. We will have to feel others and be aware of their thoughts and feelings just as today we know our own. Since today we cannot sense each other as we sense ourselves because we are disconnected from each other, we will have to relinquish what separates us from each other: our egos.
The longer we hang on to our self-centeredness, the more acutely we will feel our separateness and disorientation in life. But as soon as we relinquish that one element within us, everything will become crystal clear. Just as today, we know when we are hungry because we feel hungry, we will know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it because we will simply sense it.
We will not need technology, and today’s most advanced innovations will become superfluous and subsequently obsolete. All we will need is to sense the network of sensations where we live, and they will guide us safely and smoothly through life, which will no longer be arduous and painful.
Posted on The Times of Israel, Facebook, KabNet, Medium, LinkedIn Newsletter