Can Spirituality and Technology live together?

in ecoTrain3 years ago

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"His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, a portrait, He was nicknamed 'Mr. Universe' by the other lamas of Tibet for his high spiritual realization" by Wonderlane is CC-licensed.

First of all, I want to greet the English speaking community of Hive as this will be my first post in this language. I'm not only interested in this amazing community I found about spirituality but also want to improve my English level, so go ahead if you got any remarks on muy use of English 😀

Now getting into the topic of this post, we need a definition of spirituality before any answer to this question. The spiritual world exists well before the human being made any (substantial) technological advance. This takes us to a point where we can wonder if there exists any techonology capable of interferring in that ancestral connexion between humans and the source. Not necessarily but either impossible. When talking about this, an example comes to my mind. In the Spanish region of Galicia, during centuries, villagers could watch religious parades during the night. Those parades used to take place for announcing the inminent death of someone in the village or near. Those parades were actually ghost parades. The people parading could be seen marching without feet nor anything touching the soil. However, even though these parades have been watched over the centuries, now it's different. The people's habits have changed and not many people is out at night. Moreover, the arrival of electricity made if much more difficult to witness this phenomenon.

Incredible, isn't it? Spirituality might have some unavoidable barriers in face of the technologically developped world. This makes me ask myself another question: have we had the correct and proper technological developement? But explining this could last another whole post. I used to think that the spiritual world had no barriers, no limits to manifest itself. But the example above changed my mind.

Now there are two factors, variables, which can alterate our permanent connexion with the spiritual world. One is the fact that we don't perceive it ourselves and the other one is that our environement impides us to perceive it. Any of them is an absolute and unique variable or reason to choose. It's the mix of those two that makes the unique and personal result for each one of us. I could have some knowledge about the spiritual world but live in a big city, or not having it at all and live in the campaign (two absurd or too simple examples, but I think they'll make their role).

Besides all this, we must take into account that there are technological ways to get connected with the spiritual and technological ways of getting totally disconnected from it. However, I think the old times were more of a chance to live a better spiritual world than today. I explain why: the arrival of the fourth industrial revolution has created extremely powerful tools to catch the human being's attention. This is to the point of creating a real addiction to them. You know perfectly what I'm talking about, and that's just the beginning.

I dream of a modern world merged with the spiritual world. That already exists in some way. Firstly, because we got today the best medical care than ever before. We know more about science but also about the properties of plants and many other natural things that could help us out if needed. That medical advances will never let us down. I mean, they won't dissappear. Also, we know very useful techniques to build places that will make us confortable. Architecture, engineering... Those disciplines permit us to live better than ever before. Those are strong advantages of technology. But there is one thing we missed here.

We got really confortable places and medical care in big cities where spiritual and tachnological world are not definitely merging. I think what lacks here is living in small communities. Villages got advantages and disadvantages as cities. However, small communities are the best way to create narrow, natural and healthy relationships with other people; few people that you know, with who you collaborate as you are part of the same small community in the campaign. Nonetheless, it's usual to find differences between the different citizens who live in villages. I mean to say that this is not a love or pink story. Life in the campaign is not just easy. It's also challenging. But I always dreamed with restoring some little village where people interested in this way of life could come and help to create a new paradigm of living. It could be a community where we cultivate our own food but we remotely work for different businesses or our own businesses. In this case, technology gives us the opportunity to be working for yourself or for a big business from a lost place in the campaign. That is a big difference with whatthe opportunities were there not much ago.

To conclude, I would definitely say that there are alternatives to the not much spiritually connected world of today thanks, ironically, to the technological advances of today, which can either help or perjudicate us.