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The more connected we are, the more unconnected and fragmented we become

The great paradox of our time is that the more connected we are through all the technologies now available to us, the more fragmented we are within ourselves and, in fact, the more separated we are from others, from nature, from the universe, and even from ourselves.

It has been rightly said that the question is no longer "Who am I?", But "How many am I?", Because our "I" (which in reality does not even exist) is no longer one, but many. And those “many”, in a kind of enhanced neurosis, are so many that we no longer even get to know them all. And nothing unites them, except that “we” meet each of “them” every day.

Am I who I am at work? Or the one with the family? Or am I the one who is alone, and no one sees what I do? Am I the one who goes to church services every week or am I the one who passionately watches sports? I certainly am not the one who posts messages on social media.

The tragedy is that now that I can see live what is happening in remote countries and I can participate in unexpected and profound educational experiences on the other side of the world (recently, for example, I participated in an online seminar with a German teacher teaching from Egypt), I can't communicate with myself.

This "connection with everyone" is thus deceptive because it is a connection that disconnects, that fragments, that divides and that, ultimately, separates. It is a connection that, by forcing me to put on a mask (that of an employee, a religious person, a friend, or whatever) prevents me from maintaining a genuine and authentic contact and leads me to forget myself.

Obviously, I am not against technology (although I dislike what is seen and published on social networks), nor do I dislike the possibility of "connecting" with the world.

But that connection is so fictitious that the person on the other side of the screen during a video conference wants me to believe that they are in the mountains or in space, when in reality they are simply in their office. In other words, in order to communicate, we must even hide where we really are.

And where we are is separated from nature (we consider it “natural resources”), separated from others (there are no “others” in a hyper-individualistic and narcissistic society), and from ourselves (we are the product of a culture and a history in which we never think and act according to how the market manipulates us to which, voluntarily or not, we contribute).

Although we have more access to information and faster than at any other time in history, we are not wiser for that. And although we can directly or indirectly access the most brilliant minds in history, we no longer think, but merely calculate. In this way, the future closes and we fall into the worst addiction of all: we become addicted to ourselves.

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