Everyone’s jumping on the AI bandwagon, so I figured, why not?
But it’s really more than that.
Partially, of course, yes, it’s just to be cheeky. But I wanted a place to emphasize my human ability to do the opposite. What will AI never be? Authentic rather than Artificial, able to prioritize Instinct over Intelligence.
It’s also a pushback against another kind of intelligent blindness that clouds our culture.
One of my favorite books is Ian McGilchrest’s The Master and His Emissary. The extreme summary is that based on well-founded scientific observations, our mind really is divided into two hemispheres that operate differently; the right, which sees the forest, the gestalt, the big picture, and the left, which sees the trees. It grasps, it’s shaped my the mechanics of our hands, to go out into the world and change things. The right sits at home, thinking big thoughts and putting things together (The Master) and the left gets shit done (The Emissary). And in the course of western culture, the left has become strongly dominant. In many ways this has been great — it could be considered responsible for the scientific revolution, for the ‘golden age’ of enlightenment, for the primary of rationality over superstition, and more.
But there is much the left brain never sees, or devalues, which are crucial to being complete beings in the world. I see this every day in the tech industry as people increasingly forget that the numbers we see in our analytical engines, trackers, and digital funnels are not just numbers, but people.
This manifests as an over reliance on dashboards, numbers, projections, statistics, and ‘evidence’ — when the reality is that those things, while useful, can only go so far, as they only can tell you what happened, and inform you about the past — but not what could happen in the future.
(And the great changes that have swept our civilization and culture tend to come ‘out of nowhere’
In the world of Corporate Poetry, er, “Marketing,” in which I live, this means that is increasingly difficult to get people to take risks, to venture forth, to try something that is truly new or different — if you can’t prove that it’s going to be successful, it’s too risky to try in the first place. As a result, too much of my workdays consist of trying to find, find, formulate, or fabricate “evidence” that the new thing I want to try will absolutely work and be worth the investment.
This blog is a stake in the ground to try and change the conversation to start making more room for Instinct — the deep seated sense, from lived experience and the Right-brained sense of the forest, that better ways of communicating and decision-making are out there, if only we are open to trying truly new ways of doing things.
The topics I cover here and the thoughts that I share will always be an expression of what I think matters — which will come from my instinct.
So that’s Instinct — what about Authenticity?
I’ll be the first to agree that it is a painfully overused word lately, especially in the world of marketing and communication. But the reason that it is so overused is that it is deeply misunderstood. If the point of being “authentic” is to find a better way to sell one’s self to more customers and readers, how on Earth can it actually be considered authentic? Unless that authenticity comes from a deep desire for approval and validation from others. Which is really the opposite of what qualities it takes to act with true Authenticity.
Authenticity is a concept that grows out of Identity — the unique, immutable qualities that make you you (and your own ability to see it). And seeing that in oneself clearly is really the hardest part. The first part is natural, and can’t be helped, but the second part, seeing it and understanding it clearly, is becoming increasingly difficult in a world where we are constantly surrounded by noise, stimulus, distraction, and then simultaneously pulled towards the vapid, bottomless cacophony of news, social media, popular culture, and anything else that’s [shudders] “trending”.
So if the ability to be Authentic comes from your understanding of who you are, the distorted funhouse mirrors of our culture have made that increasingly difficult for all of us to do. How can you be true to yourself if you aren’t clear on who you are being true to?
That is the other half of this blog’s purpose — not for you necessarily, dear reader, but for me. It’s a space to go deep, to turn writing into thinking and back into writing again, to continue the search for my truth. As I find it, I will strive to be honest, uncensored, and true to it. For any readers that care to join me, or also find it illuminating, the doors to my souls are wide open to you — and I sincerely hope you enjoy and find value from sharing my journey.
(ChatGPT could never.)