Shame

Shame is an emotion that I discuss with other people quite a bit, as a gay man I can say that it is something that is baked into our culture, something that most gay men would rather didn't exist at all I hasten to add. My interpretation of shame is slightly different to most people in that it's rare that I feel shame for anything, it does happen from time to time but for the most part I don't feel it. The reason for that is because I recognised at quite a young age that shame is not an emotion that originates within the self, it is an emotion that is put there by someone or something else.

I think one of the major criticisms of organised religions and belief systems is the idea that they are set up primarily to control and manipulate others, this idea stems from the fact that almost all of these systems at their core have a concept of shame and one or more religious texts which define what is shameful and subsequently encourages their adherents to shame others who deviate from their definition of normalcy. This concept isn't limited to religion however, I went to an all-boys Primary School and High School both were Private Schools maintained by the Catholic Church so I have an intimate understanding of indoctrination and the rigidity of these belief systems. I don't deny this is a problem within religion as a concept more broadly, and I don't apologise for it because it can't be justified.

Eye to A.I.

When you ask people to draw a line between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence the definition most people use is that one imitates the other, or that one is the original and the other is the duplication. Is that really a fair assessment of what we actually interact with? Whilst most AI models at present are based on large volumes of human generated data which they then process and use to structure their responses, there's no guarantee this will remain the case in future, in fact you could argue that there is a guarantee that it won't.

When you look at data as a resource you can track its production over time and assert that production of data has grown at exponential rates. Humanity in the last few years alone has produced more data than it did throughout its entire history up until that point. That might be something you would protest at first but when you stop and think about it, with few historical records that were kept in the past there wasn't an emphasis on documenting everything in the way that such an emphasis now exists.

Random

I watched one of those Vogue 73 Questions videos recently and one of the questions they asked was if you had a superpower what would it be? Of all the questions they asked, this one stood out the most because it touches upon some very deep issues that most people have which then informs their choice. You can be superficial and think that there isn't much meaning behind the choices people make, that they are random, but that's not strictly true. Human beings have a remarkable incapacity to act with true randomness, something which I think in the modern era has become quite unnerving to many who sit and reflect upon the nature of the human condition.

What do I mean by the nature of the Human Condition? Well quite simply the state of being human. There's no lack of stories in the news and splashed across social media discussing AI right now and what that means for the future of humanity but this post isn't about pondering where AI could lead us but rather looking back and reflecting upon the fact that we don't completely understand how we got here.

Trist

Alone with your thoughts is not a place to be
When your mind is a prison you can never be free
An idle state feeds the guilt of inaction
So we seek anything to serve as distraction

Always coming, never going, always waiting, never knowing
A life of certainty sounds like a dream to me
The reality a debt of emotion and wealth, both forever owing
Oh how we long for a world that once more feels free

Our age of innocence and ignorance is gone
Replaced by awareness of all that goes wrong
We swim in the sea of sorrow and trist
And drown in the memory of the chances we missed

Life is a game without a save state
How to win is the question we all sit and ponder
One move throws the game and we realise too late
With no way to win we're left but to wander

Duolingo rant

I love learning languages and learning about different cultures. I've used many tools over the years to try and develop my language skills with varying levels of success. Duolingo is far and away one of the most effective language learning tools but it's not without its limitations.

One of the things I don't like about Duolingo is that it relies on momentum to be effective. If you break that momentum then you start to fail miserably and the whole experience can become disheartening and discouraging very quickly. What I mean by momentum, is your continued use of the site. This is built into the design with the emphasis placed on daily streaks. Users are encouraged to return daily to complete lessons in their course or to practice for a few minutes at least to keep their streak alive. The longer your streak becomes the more imperative that impulse becomes. Now there are ways to freeze your streak and take a day or two off from lessons but there's a danger when you do this that you will lose the impulse to continue.

My Latest Project: The Tarot Trifecta

For the past 6 months or so I have been working on a book about Tarot Cards and I've finally published it. I've chosen a separate pen name for this publication, Caesar Devine, as it doesn't really fit with anything I have written under my current name S J Doran which so far has mostly been LGBTQ oriented fiction. I've also created a separate webpage for it where I will post Tarot related content, so if you're interested in learning more about Tarot cards you can hop over to caesardevine.com to find out more.

The Tarot Trifecta is available now only on Amazon

The Tarot Trifecta at Amazon.com

The Tarot Trifecta at Amazon.co.uk

Breaking The Circle

I think about the concept of confidence quite a bit, mainly because I have social anxiety and I have struggled with my self-confidence or lack of it for many years. In that time I have read many books around the subject but one text in particular has stood out, perhaps most surprisingly it isn't a book about anxiety at all but rather a book about Cold Reading that had a generic extract that at first pass was so specific I thought it had been written for me personally, but that was the point. The extract served to demonstrate how statements that seemed precise and personal were actually generic when you stepped back and considered them objectively, free from the original context in which they were made.

Whilst the purpose of this extract was to demonstrate the effectiveness of confidence trickery, the key take away for me was the fact that the specific insecurities the passage referred to were considered generic which alluded to the wider experiences that people have; or more succinctly the prevailing relationship to confidence that people have in general. If a fear of being judged and what other people might think of you is considered generic in this regard, then it had to be a fear that everyone, or at least the vast majority of people had.