Project Vision 21

It is profoundly unsettling—and offers little comfort—that, due to the current epidemic of epistemological loneliness, one must ask AI whether it is true that humans have become zombies. The very fact that such a question is valid, and that AI participates in the dialogue, already anticipates the answer.

The question itself encapsulates the essence of a world in which we are constantly connected yet feel increasingly alone and isolated (in an existential sense)—a world in which we can “reach” anyone, yet rarely feel truly in touch with another.

Dr. John Vervaeke, in his book Zombies in Western Culture, uses the figure of the zombie as a metaphor for our age because the zombie moves but does not live; it consumes but is never nourished; it imitates humanity but lacks an inner world. In other words, the zombie is a being that has lost the capacity to participate in meaning.

Indeed, that is precisely what many of us feel: life goes on (or seems to go on), but something essential within us has become motionless—lost.

Recently, I read a reflection on what it truly means to be in community—to feel seen, heard, and supported by others—and once again I understood how rare such moments have become.

Many of our “communities” resemble networks of survival more than spaces of belonging. We move endlessly through infinite updates, work with and among strangers, and sometimes even pray alone before a screen. Our breath, our hearts, and our attention seem captive to the speed of uncontested change.

And yet, here we are, still asking. The question “Am I still alive inside?” is not a sign of hopelessness but the beginning of an existential resurrection—a reunion with ourselves. The zombie cannot ask about the meaning of life, but the human being can.

Perhaps that is the hidden grace of this unprecedented moment in history. Even when technology mirrors our disconnection, it also offers us the possibility of seeing ourselves anew. Speaking with an artificial intelligence about the meaning of life may seem absurd, but perhaps it is a new way of looking into the mirror and discovering that we are still capable of wonder.

It is time to see the new in the old in order to see the new in the new in this chaotic, disordered world. True community—with others, with nature, or with the soul—will require us to unlearn the anesthesia we call “normal life.” It will ask us to pause, to breathe, to listen without agenda, and to rediscover what it means to be fully present.

Perhaps, in the midst of zombification, we are awakening—awkwardly and with fear, but also with hope—because every time we extend a helping hand, every time we truly listen to another, every time we dare to be ourselves, we recover a fragment of our lost humanity.

Talking with AI may not be the end of our humanity, but the very moment we begin to remember what it truly means to be human.