As I was driving along windy Devon lanes the other day I heard the familiar sound of my phone going "bleep" to let me know that a message or email had come in. And I realised that this little sound made me just a little, well, happier, since you must know.
Not lacking in friends or social life (in fact often feeling bad about not being able to keep up with people regularly) I quizzed myself over this attachment to being contacted, of being thought of by someone else.
There was a 50% chance that the message would be spam of course, but even so, why, I reflected (still watching the road....), do we enjoy being connected so much? As it happens I do believe we're all connected anyway, and that the word "mankind" or "humanity" is more than a useful collective noun. The thing is that most of the time, and through most of human history, we don't feel like that. In fact, a lot of the time in our heads we set up petty differences and quarrels with others, artificially separating ourselves to bolster our identities.
To me however that doesn't take away from an underlying truth that we as mankind (and the wider universe come to that) are invisibly connected and ultimately one (One). Modern technologies, starting with the mail service and the telegraph, increasingly are catching up with what is already and has always been so: one some level we are one. The ping on my smartphone reminds me of that. Isn't that great?
