Human Condition and the Sacred in the Digital Era

Abstract

We have entered the digital era without a clear understanding of the metamorphoses of spiritual experiences lived by those who inhabit the digital world. To understand what exactly is happening in the registry of these expectations, I have used a few of Mircea Eliade’s ideas. To reveal the way in which the digital era human keeps a series of behavioral and thinking mode patterns of homo religiosus, I wished to posit beyond religious representations and practices typical of a certain cultural space or of a single religious option. It is the reason for which I called on an ontology of the sacred like the one present in Mircea Eliade’s analyses. Such a philosophy of the sacred can help us understand the way in which the sacred functions like an organizing element of the entire existence, beyond its particulars depending on stage division of cultural development or on content evolution brought about by the human imaginary. Such an option enabled noticing the need for meaning, significance and authenticity of the digital era human, seeing the way the symbolism of the centre functions as an essential symbolic structure in the understanding of contemporary man’s situating in the network. It also permitted revealing the archetypal premises based on which is the tendency to give an axiological significance to virtual space and technologies determining a rapid dynamic of digital world development, as well as deciphering the significance of the ever growing importance of storytelling in today’s communication and motivational discourse.