The way that humans receive one another today has grown in complexity beyond anything our ancestors might have once been able to conceive. And still, even within this framework of modern conceptual understanding, and all of the intelligence it requires, we are left with a version of one another that misses something essential. We have not yet learned to see deeply through the new medium of technology. That we will one day learn to do this should never be in doubt. It is only a matter of first learning to notice what we are now missing.
Part of the challenge to seeing deeply through our media is noticing the absence that already afflicts the naked human eye. For over the past few centuries, Humanity has come to forget its most precious ability to see deeply into the Being of Other. We have instead come to rely on our intellect and our ability to discriminate rather than discern. This ability to witness the Soul of One Another is what most makes life worth living on this planet, and we have come to lose our grip on this more grounded, more sacred, understanding of what it means to be alive.
What we have learned in its place is a kind of reflexive projection of our own needs and desires upon each other. We have each become means to each other’s ends; objects to be manipulated as extensions of an ever expanding self. We live, in short, in an existential house of mirrors, and we are now enhancing those reflections with the technological edge that creates blemish-free vision without inducing clarity.
There is no doubt that Humanity will one day see with great clarity even through our newest technological veils. When we first donned clothing, we did not lose our ability to recognize one another, just as spectacles did not prevent us from gazing into one another’s eyes, even if there are times we may take them off in moments of deeper intimacy.
The challenge now before us is the speed with which our technological veiling now evolves. We become distracted by the glittering, reflective surface, forgetting to see through the medium to the message nestled deep within. Instead, the medium has become the message and we dance distractedly on its glassy reflection.
To find our way home, to find our way back to deeper seeing, we only need reflect upon what it is that we have lost along the way. With this in hand, with the remembering of what it is to truly be with One Another in person, we will find the way to see One Another deeply — even through the thickest veils of innovation.