Religion is losing us because it invokes disagreement and violence, and encourages negative characteristics such as laziness, procrastination, and moral confusion. We have a more unified understanding of the world around us with both scientific and artistic ways of thinking and being. We understand Einstein’s theories, we live for music, we are bio-inspired… we are a very intelligent generation and we love life. And with this one life we’ve been blessed with, why not use it connecting with each other and making positive change? This is the essence of the millennial generation spirituality.

Having grown up on the Internet, running our lives through social networks, and using our PDAs as a ubiquitous connector to the cloud, we’re innocently cultivating a true sense of connectedness among each other. Technology is becoming much more than silicon chips and software algorithms… its transcending the boundary betwewen art and science and influencing a unified spirituality.

I find when millennials connect, no matter the color, nationality, ethnicity, culture, language, or any other label, we tend to feel much more in touch with each other. We know that we’re all experiencing a similar since of technological spirituality in our lives, and thus feel our similarities greatly outweigh our differences. We see ourselves as global citizens above anything else and are becoming in touch with the force that connects us all. Call it whatever you want, energy, divinity, technology… I call it love.

Some see love as a human emotion that you feel for family and friends. However, love is so much more. It is gravity, breath, chance… it’s that divine infinite energy beyond the quantifiable reality that we perceive on the surface. ‘For example, a house has a set square footage, a car has a specific make, model, year, and color… all physical objects are limited and can be measured. And yet the deeper layer of existence has no specifications. It is inherently infinite.’ This is what love is, that feeling we have inside that we can’t explain, we can’t define. This is a real force that technology is helping us cultivate in our hearts. It’s something greater than ourselves and as a generation, we feel it. Call it the millennial generation spirituality… the millennial zen.

We don’t look at this selfishly or arrogantly though. We feel it’s a gift given through the use of connected technologies throughout our lives, and we believe anyone has the ability to tap into it. You have to let go of your personal ego, national ego, cultural ego, religious ego, and incorporate technology into the spiritual growth of your life. Become motivated to connect with something greater than yourself and to benefit others and the world around you.

“When the power of love exceeds the love of power, the world will know peace.”

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Wine has always been business for me, so I try to avoid talking about it in social settings, because it’s what I spend a lot of my day talking about anyway. Whenever I can, I go out of my way to read and talk about anything but wine. Books like ‘The Best of All Possible Worlds: Mathematics and Destiny’, which trace a single thread to the multitudinous overlays within the palimpsest of technology, ethics, history, philosophy and science often leave me in awe, and even after having read passages three or four times, I still battle to relay the gist in any complimentary fashion to someone who asks ‘what you reading?’ One thing I did get loud and clear from Ekeland is the ‘principle of least action which is ultimately a rendition of Ockham’s Razor, where William of Ockam wrote that the simplest solution is the best. Many cultures have had similar revelations, such as in the Tao Te Ching, translated by Thomas Cleary, where the overwhelming message is that we should follow the path of least resistance if we wish to go the furthest.
And yet, no matter how many times it has been stated, it still seems counter-intuitive to many of us raised on notions of back-breaking Calvinism… but there is certainly something to it. The wine industry places so much value on free run juice, and yet, as soon as it comes to taking that juice to market, we put it through a complicated system which ultimately drives up the prices, decreases margins and chokes the industry. There is a compromise however, and like any system in its development, its working through its kinks. But what I am confident of is that what is driving the push against linear monopolised distribution models is a need for simplicity. We want to remove the old monolithic structures which pollute this industry and help prime the pumps for a faster, more efficient and diverse wine distribution network.However, as I say, most of us don’t have the time to research wine, and nor should we be spending valuable conversation time talking too much about it. Ultimately what the average person needs is a tool that helps them select a wine they like, find a cool recipe and perhaps find a way to have it delivered, without having to think too much about it. Tastevine believes that wine is stifled by all the unnecessary complexity, and ultimately the industry will truly flourish once someone makes way for the path of least resistance and shows that the simplest solution is the best.

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