It is often said that having many connections is the secret to a successful life.

The present space is materialised by one hundred chairs and a quarter of tables. You are sitting at one of the tables. Some music is playing in the background, rather superfluous if not disturbing. This is a deserted part of a hotel. A closer inspection reveals that breakfast is probably served in this large mezzanine, but it is now the end of the afternoon and the space is a no man’s land.

You are sitting alone in front of a laptop. You are thinking, meditating about connections, connections between humans, among objects, humans, non-humans. Everything can more or less connect with everything else at a given moment of its biography, but connections are often superfluous like the music in the background or the cosmic radiations that pass through our body. It is not enough to be connected, to experience a vast number of epidermal inconstant connections. It is only effective socially to be hyperconnected if one is satisfied with a superficial state of constant inconstancy. If a human being relates meaningfulness with constant solicitation, then incessant connections, if they are not unpleasant, will colonize the subjective space of a calendar and confer an appearance of plenty. Such agitation will eventually produce platitude rather than plenitude.

I am interested in affixion rather than mere connection. A connection is more or less superficial, epidermal, volatile, while an affixion is more faithful. We are connected to everything more or less momentarily, but we are only affixed in duration to certain realities, beings or beliefs. We are connected to many, but only affixed to a few. A hyperconnected person can be poorly affixed even to herself.

A successful life cannot only be about commerce, coupling, mobilisation and reaction to stimuli. If we are too connected, we cannot create an Umwelt. An entity that would be too connected would not form a limit between its interior and its exterior. It would not individuate. We need strange attractors to affix our oscillations.

We need disconnections as much as connections. Systematic avoidance of affixion via metamorphic connectivity may lead to affliction in the long term.