THE RESURGENCE OF THE SACRED IN POSTMODERNITY

The sacred, as an essential dimension of the human experience, has been abandoned by modernity and the ideals of the Enlightenment that served as its foundation, such as those of progress, reason, and history. By adopting these ideals, one side of sociology has bet on either the disappearance of the sacred or on its repatriation to individualism, thus being incapable of thinking about transcendence in accordance with immanence, and of understanding the emotional and religious charge that is present in several manifestations of postmodernity. Another side of sociology has focused on showing the obsolescence of modern ideals and on understanding the specificity of postmodernity. This, in other words, implies recognizing the immaterial as the foundation of all reality and the sacred as a permanent form of all social structuring. From this point of view, digital technologies contribute to the resurgence of the sacred in postmodernity and strengthen the mystery and mystique that we find in the formation and consolidation of community and collective existence.