How to Start Your Day and Stay True To Yourself

This routine ensures that the thoughts running through my head are typically the ones I placed there, not the ones some politician, media or social media actor shoved into my skull. And it means the algorithms can’t get me till at least 1.00pm. My days and my life, therefore, have not become an instrument of Big Tech’s toxic profit models, nor have I become a useful idiot who can be herded like some bone-headed bovine into online advertising spaces, to chew on their noxious cud. I therefore remain focused upon the things that are of most value to me, not those that are of value to the CEO of some trillion dollar tech company. I use the tech. But it will not use me. I will no longer let it.

The Power is Now Present

It’s this historical and civilizational impasse that led me to write my latest book, Power and Presence, and I am delighted to announce that it is now available on Kindle and in hard copy format on Amazon. The book’s subtitle hints at my preferred approach to the sensemaking crisis: Reclaiming Your Authentic Self in a Digitized World. I believe that it is in developing a more conscious relationship with ourselves (including the body and mind), the world and technology itself that we can establish a genuine foundation for moving forward. Simply regulating everything and punishing people isn’t going to work, at least not by itself. We have to look deeper than that, right into the soul of humanity, and ask ourselves, “What does it mean to be human in the digital age?” So, as much as anything, this is a meaning crisis, one that long precedes the digital age, and which has been developing for centuries.

What to Do About AI Burnout?

So, here we are at the beginning of what I call the A.I. Explosion. We are at a moment in history where change is happening at a rate that may never have previously occurred. I can’t say that definitively, because it is difficult to fully quantify the extent and impact of what’s occurring. But I…

Finding the Threads That Bind Us

The date was September 16, 2017. The era: Trump’s America. That was the day that a group of Trump supporters assembled for “the Mother of All Rallies Patriot Unification Gathering” at the National Mall in Washington, DC. As was typical of the times, they were met by counterprotesters from Black Lives Matter, numbering 82 in total, who proceeded to shout at them. The Trump supporters shouted back. One individual onstage told the Trump supporters to ignore the hecklers, crying “They don’t exist!” Some might see something symbolic of the historical era in that statement.

How Your Need for Drama Creates Suffering: And How to Fix That

It is the human predisposition towards drama and projection that underpins much of our suffering – our need for drama. I define drama as the “irresponsible emotional manipulation of others with the aim of establishing a personal agenda.” Drama is rewarding to the ego because it grants an opportunity to get what one wants in situations where the ego feels that it either has no real power, or when it does not want to pay the price for embodying genuine strength. That cost may vary, but always involves taking personal responsibility.

The Good Faith Inventory

The good faith inventory I include below is a simple way of assessing the degree to which a person, group or movement is acting in good faith or bad faith. By their fruits, ye shall know them. You can use this simple inventory in deciding whether to allow yourself to be emotionally or mentally taken into the cognitive wake of a particular person, debate, social/political movement, media channel or organisation. You ask yourself these questions. The answers are subjective, of course. Just answer them in good faith, so to speak. Each question has two options. Circle the left-hand column number if it is a positive, the right-hand number if it is the negative. Circle the question mark if you are undecided or neither applies. Then add up the total score.

Awe: It’s no Wonder it Makes for Better Futures

We are not alone, but deeply connected with each other, an effect of nature that transcends our virtual connections on the net. Our future online systems – and societies in general – should attempt to help us retain this nature effect, and especially the experience of wonder and awe. If they do not, we may lose something priceless: our Authentic Selves.