Do you trust your intuition? Why or why not?

I have been going strong, for a little while, with prompts written by Robert Duff, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst, self-help writer, and podcaster who uses the handle @duffthepsych

I do trust my intuition. In a rather non-scientific sense, we are creatures that have evolved through an epoch of time, and the circumstances we live in cannot be totally random.

How could life as we have it be the result of chance? That it came about without some kind of order is just too strange.

It reminds me of the popular Marvel comic book character Spider-man’s spider-sense. You may know that what often informs Spider-man that he needs to act is a kind of awareness that reaches him when danger is upon him.

The odd instincts that occasionally perplex me, my intuition, must have some sort of a basis in programming from past experiences, ever calculating, given the eons of humanity I have to draw from and that have little interest in social mores, right or wrong, or even intellectual information. However well I am educated, even if I followed it to the letter in the year 2023, I think my intuition would hightail it around all of that if I were pressed badly enough.

The life in me, I think, becomes hungry for additional—we have heard how, for example, the reward system of scrolling through social media is addictive. The physiology I have wants more.

Given reasonable regard for others, I don’t see why I shouldn’t trust my intuition. The intuition may not be as refined as it could be, it has been co-opted by several influences that critics might claim are not in my interest, but at the end of the day, it has been with me all along. You can be sure it will fly.

I doubt it can be overcome completely.

Talk about a time that you are proud to have told someone “No.”

There is a blogger who writes under the name Beauty Beyond Bones. Since I found out that she had a blog, I often read it when she was online.

She is a proud Catholic, and her love of The Lord means a great deal to her.

Discovering her blog was like a reconnection with God for me as a Catholic.

Despite that, I am proud of the moment in my life when I said “No” to my mother when she suggested I take high school classes at a Catholic school when I was an adolescent.

My desire to honor the Catholic sacraments has changed. As a result of reading Beauty Beyond Bones, I felt my Catholic years were worthwhile because I hadn’t forgotten God.

My concern was that Carolyn might read posts from my blog when she wrote Beauty Beyond Bones, so I felt I needed to honor The Lord with my thoughts and actions.

Looking back, I remember what it was like when I decided to attend public high school. In my high school years, I chose not to return to a Catholic school.

When I told my mother that I no longer wanted Catholic education, she was remarkably agreeable.

My faith kept me grounded in the fact that I had essentially been a good Catholic. My pride came from deciding for myself which showed my independence.

I am proud that saying no to my mother and father about continuing Catholic studies was in my best interest. It was more genuine of me to say this than pretend to be a proud Catholic. Although I honored God, I was also free to pursue other interests than what I would have in a Catholic school.

I think of what Carolyn from Beauty Beyond Bones would understand this to mean. In addition to respecting my individuality, I imagine she would encourage me to return to Catholicism.

You can find Beauty Beyond Bones at this address: https://beautybeyondbones.com/

Carolyn is not the one I am saying “no” to, but perhaps even The Lord Himself. I remain sensitive to the possibility that there may well be a true afterlife.

I wrote this with a prompt written by Robert Duff, Ph.D., a psychoanalyst, self-help author, and podcaster who uses the handle @duffthepsych

Invent a holiday. How would you celebrate it?

I enjoy the holidays.

They hold a special place in my heart. In fact, today is National Read Across America Day, an excellent idea for a holiday. St Patrick’s Day is a holiday in Ireland.

My humble opinion is that Free to Technologize Day should be a national holiday. On the Internet, this holiday would celebrate the desire to connect all the people of the world. I think we need a holiday to make AI part of our normal day-to-day lives now that I’m seeing a lot of headlines about it.

We could celebrate the holiday right on social media, with “badges” to indicate we support Free to Technologize. I think it could be a compelling movement.

AI reminds people of films like The Terminator, Total Recall, Alien, and others in that movie genre. I think because those are scary films, we believe that AI will ultimately prove frightening and even dangerous.

I have read that AI can quickly assume characteristics that are not unlike the characteristics of a manic-depressive adolescent. I have not read much about whether there is an off-command to quickly reduce an AI chat to nothing. I would have thought that such a concern would be first and foremost in people’s eyes.

People who have examined how AI chat makes them feel have admitted that it is a disturbing experience.

One aspect of AI that has impacted me personally is that I no longer have any idea what the future will appear like, except that there may be unforetold opportunities I have never thought of. I feel that interacting with Mother Nature is very important for everyone, no matter who. There would be health consequences with never a moment setting foot in nature.

Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, continues to step up to bat every time he envisions a way that Meta could spearhead man’s interest in technology so that he retains his hold on wealth and power. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has a different strategy that he is pronouncing, what with the tremendous power Musk wields thanks to the fortune he built. Musk, of the billionaire social class, is the most humanitarian of the lot, I believe.

I wrote this post with the help of a prompt by Robert Duff, Ph.D., a self-help writer, psychoanalyst, and podcaster. He goes by the handle @duffthepsych