Choose to trust yourself

Some businesses—not all, and not even most!—don’t trust you. They design their products and marketing to lock you in and make you feel reliant on them. The incentive for them is to have lots of steady customers; if you can come and go at any point, then that business isn’t as steady as it could be. (The prevalence of the subscription pricing model is an example of this. And there are many businesses who are fighting back by offering a pay once model, which used to be the convention.) These businesses and technologies alienate us not only from each other but also our inner selves. For example, let’s say you’re writing with AI. The AI has improved to the degree that you can’t tell if you wrote something or the AI wrote it. What can you do to trust that you wrote a piece? (The simple answer: don’t use AI to write. That’s why I don’t use AI to write on this blog.) When you trust yourself, you don’t need to trust a business. When you can rely on yourself, you don’t need to rely on a…