We start with demystification

How should we give a definition of the belief in the modern age? When all the magic, sense of awe, and mysticism has been overtaken by streams of data in the air? When we have started to believe in what we see at face value because of how much science and technology has demystified long-distance communication, Wi-Fi, microwaves, and text-to-image data models? Nowadays, imagination is slowly becoming a precursor to belief. Images, in the age of internet, has become indefinitely permanent. Music can be played instantaneously, replayed countless of times, until the brain has memorized every second of it, it's become its own ghost of sound in a person's head. We have the means to record everything. Every object becomes its own thing, telling you what it is. We then accept it trustingly, because we haven't imagine it to have existed in another way or in a different form. There is no need to imagine the world anymore. The world has become its own image of itself.

To an extent, it has become rare to imagine the presence of a person's absence. Technology has its own answer: instant messaging, internet calls, and video calls all satisfy this need for connection. Now, we have Large Language Models, capable of mimicking human interaction through text. There is no need to imagine someone to converse with. To share one's idea and exchange meaningful conversational pieces with an other. We have fully masked this absence for something wholly artificial. It makes solitary moments non-conducive to allow the mind to wander and think. Stimulation is omnipresent. The mind's attention is always being pulled by the overwhelming availability of presences we have made to surround us. This widespread availability of media and information, coupled with our bored minds, are becoming a potent mix that orchestrates our own demise.

Subconscious disillusionment

If the world has never been this connected, then why are we all spiraling into our own disillusionment? We were never oriented with the use of technology. There was no "testing phase" in implementing every breakthrough into our lives so we all adapt as it goes. Implications are discovered as we go. We become the testing grounds for the deployment of these technologies, which has led to confusion and moral panic. The survival of the fittest has taken itself to a new level where those who can adapt to the exponential growth of technological developments are those who are not driven by impulses that are being exploited by these technologies. The spike in slaving for dopamine hits and decreasing attention span are among the serious social engineering that are being conducted on our own hands and with our own consent. Taking the power back becomes a longer journey because this requires that we must also take the power back from our self that's running on autopilot.

This disillusionment to the world's realities is partly due to a kind of denial that nothing is being taken from our being-as-humans. We are social creatures by default but every interaction has been transformed into streams of data. Every person becomes digital and it is a type of absent presence that our brains are still grappling with. How come that I am interacting with you but you are not here? The immediacy of connection defuses any ounce of thought to ask why is this all possible. We are forced to adapt to the new patches and updates without even processing why I am feeling worse than before even when I just FaceTimed with my mother, who is 5 hours away. These "developments" are taken at face value because, it is technically "progress." They offer a way of life that removes inconveniences, saves time and money, and makes the experience seamless. How much would it cost me to drive 5 hours to talk to my mom? How much time would it take me to get a response if I mail a letter and wait for another month for a response? Time is stripped away in doing anything. On the other hand, we are becoming less invested in these human activities.

The cost of progress is psychologically invisible. Self-awareness takes a lot to achieve because we all have these barriers of screens in front of our faces, masking every conversation with a projection of who we are at any given moment. The cost often comes with being unable to cope with what we asked for. For the same reason that it is asked, and given without the deliberation of the soul. What we want is not what we "truly" want but it is often "what we think we want." And so when what we think we want is given, we are unaware of its consequences because no ounce of thought was given to it because it is an unexamined desire. What we truly want is hidden behind layers of self-interrogation, which makes it in a larger scale much more challenging because it is already difficult to do on the individual level. The progress is too quick and is already done before we are able to realize what just happened and how it is affecting us. Is it good or is it bad? Do we even get a net gain? Or should we really just need to learn to swim on this doomsday ocean and face all these waves that will always have the potential to drown us into madness?

The Simulacra

By this time, we should have all read Baudrillard. This is not a demand, but a necessity to adapt to the world's imaginative drought. If I say that I am talking to you while you are not here, what does it mean? Of course, we have an idea as to "how" it is possible but in terms of how we can interpret it is still based on a belief that does not require imagination. These experiences that are delivered to us in the name of progress has become our age's dogma: blind acceptance on the services that are sold to us to "improve" our lives, while it exploits the very sense of what makes us human. We are unable to react unless we have enough data in hindsight that we are going towards a path of regression and it is often too late when we realize it.

The same way religious dogma is delivered: via interpretation, where the text (the source code) has limited access to those who preach it, the tech evangelists who have been washing away our anxieties, guilt, and loneliness so we can deal with them some other day. We become believers of a future that we are not part of imagining. A belief that has not been formed without individual imagination denies us of our humanity. The world suddenly, "just works" because the language that makes itself work has been buried under business textbooks and career busy bodies.

Belief without imagination is the short-circuiting of the brain's worldview. It is unbecoming of our being human.