The need to feel connected is something that runs deep in our nature. A society that seeks to define itself—and is redefined daily—is currently in a state of constant evolution. Every day we face challenges as social beings. Something that sets us apart from other beings—and that might be more visible, though perhaps it isn’t—is our capacity to constantly seek meaning, connection, and something that gives us purpose and significance.
With the development of Artificial Intelligence, many of these characteristics are, as it were, dormant. We end up seeking out others who should be just like us, or have a biological makeup similar to our own, and we take refuge in images that are projected or created. This leaves us less anxious, yet more numb.
The search for a model of connection other than the social one leaves us with a sense of connection, but without it actually existing. In other words, we may even have some of the elements that a true connection creates, but it eventually becomes clear that this is truly insufficient.
We seek genuine feelings and genuine emotions, when in fact we do not create the true and unique ways to generate them.
A sterile model, in which a specific suggestion is outlined, where the variables are mathematical or calculated according to a previously established algorithm—or developed to meet basic needs—is never fundamentally complete.
We all know what a sweetener tastes like, or even decaf coffee. They may even have the same color or the same flavor, but something is missing; from all its characteristics, we remove one or a few that we consider less desirable, and suddenly the substitute is no longer so similar that it could be mistaken for the real thing.
The reality we live in today can be understood, to a certain extent, in this way. It can even be viewed from the outside as something resembling a social group, where interactions exist and there is an exchange of ideas, but this exchange of ideas is nothing more than that—it doesn’t go much further than that… Just information.
We receive. We transmit. Nothing changes in us, nor in the “other.” Each person clings to their preconceived idea, the one they already had, and doesn’t even try to hear the other’s voice or idea. They hear, but they don’t listen. We look, but we don’t observe. We feel, but we don’t truly experience.
A path that leads only to superficial satisfaction, one that does not seek the true meaning of connection. Something that will remain and leave us far short of what a genuine connection would allow us to achieve.
At a certain point, individual gains and our own well-being take precedence over others; we seek to establish connections through artificial bonds, as if we were all in an eternal theater. We spend our entire lives playing a role. Not a role that gives us a sense of life, a purpose, but rather something we want to be. An image we project outward, and that we desperately “stick” to our skin… even if it has nothing to do with who we really are. And so we live, an artificial life.
An artificial interaction in an era marked by an intelligence that is increasingly less emotional and more artificial.
Image by Thang Ha from Pixabay
Original text written by me in Portuguese and translated with DeepL.com (free version)
