Attention is a finite resource, and every algorithm optimizing for engagement is, functionally, making theological claims — deciding what is sacred enough to warrant your gaze. The 14th-century Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec wrote about 'onledige' — roughly, fruitful emptiness — the interior stillness that makes genuine encounter possible. His argument wasn't about piety; it was about structure. A mind that never rests from stimulus cannot actually receive anything. It can only react. What's striking is how precisely this maps onto what sociologist Hartmut Rosa calls 'resonance' — the experience of genuinely being moved by something outside yourself, as opposed to merely consuming it. Rosa's research distinguishes resonance from availability: you can expose yourself to more music, more ideas, more God-talk than any previous generation, and still experience less resonance, because resonance requires a quality of attention that acceleration destroys. The current media environment isn't just distracting — it is systematically dismantling the inner architecture that made depth possible. Ruusbroec's remedy was ruthlessly specific: practice returning to stillness not as an end, but as preparation. Emptiness in service of encounter.

In the last 48 hours, what have you actually been moved by — not impressed by, not informed by, but genuinely moved — and what condition were you in when it happened?

Drawing from Flemish Mysticism / Critical Theory of Modernity — Jan van Ruusbroec (with Hartmut Rosa)