How do you find meaning in your life?

By trying to find meaning.

Centuries back, Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote The Sickness Unto Death. And one key lesson I took from the book is that despair is a natural human trait.

What I think he meant is this: we spend our lives trying to find meaning, and when we look for it in the wrong places, the result is despair.

So most of the time, we will be in a state of despair. We will be inaccurate with our aim. We will aim at the wrong things. As a result, we will be unsuccessful in our quest to find a sense of meaning.

But that doesn’t mean we should give up.

Scholar Alistair Hannay’s introduction to Kierkegaard’s classic points to this difficulty:

“But a person manufactures his or her own identity in vain. And this is a central feature of Kierkegaard’s account of despair. When you manufacture your own identity, choose, construct and pursue your own ideal of human fulfilment, something essential is missing. Something that would prevent you simply demolishing the ideal and beginning all over again with a new ideal when the fancy takes you.”

This brings us onto a key point about modern mental health.

We are chronically wrong in our beliefs about what gives life meaning.

Building on Hannay’s words, we are manufacturing an identity characterised by addiction, self-worship and vanity. Social media, our ego, and our quest for happiness direct our lives all too much.

People think they are mentally unwell. They are not.

They are merely looking at the wrong things to give their life meaning.

This raises the question: what should we pursue?

We should aim to be of service to others

Contrary to popular belief (and popular practice — because if you’re a serious thinker, what you believe is what you do), our pursuit of meaning, and meaning itself, is to be found outside of the immediate self.

Take attention. We find life most meaningful when we are deeply engaged in something.

We are paying attention.

Where you direct your attention reveals where you think meaning comes from.

For those addicted to Instagram, it’s social media and their vain personal brand.

For those addicted to dating apps, it’s invariably promiscuity, and a quest to optimise for romantic optionality.

Yes, these are both external sources of meaning, but they are unhealthy.

But critically, their external focus is ultimately a means to an end (usually, their own immediate gratification).

Instead, the subject of your external focus should be the end. And that end should be service to others.

An example:

You should write to help others make sense of the world.

You should read to fuel your writing, which helps others make sense of the world.

You should go to the gym to declutter your mind, so that when you sit down to write, you’re helping others make sense of the world.

You should have a loving relationship to serve the person you most deeply love.

Your writing should serve others so that it becomes your purpose. This takes the pressure off the person you most deeply love. They remain the love of your life, but they are no longer the thing filling that void.

I use writing here as one example of how you can serve others. But the truth is, there are many.

They are, however, beyond the scope of this article.

Another quote from Hannay’s introduction stood out to me. Speaking about Kierkegaard again, he wrote that:

“his life had been a ‘great and to others unknown and incomprehensible suffering’ which looked like ‘pride and vanity’ but ‘wasn’t’. He regretted that he had not married and taken on an official position.”

This reminds me of two points I’d like to make about cultivating meaning:

• We tend to overestimate the level of suffering we’re going through.

• We underestimate the level of meaning our life already has.

Kierkegaard no doubt experienced a great deal of suffering in his life. But this was almost two centuries ago. Today, we are (generally) blessed with a comparatively high standard of living, and if we suffer, it’s (usually) because we have reached old age, an age which would have been unfathomable to Kierkegaard.

To my second point: although high standards of living can paradoxically lead to less meaning, we still underestimate the meaning around us. Although Kierkegaard would regard this as an earthly form of despair, we still find an intense sense of meaning in our family, our friends, our hobbies, our vocation etc.

Taking a moment to realise this, I have found, helps immensely.

As a tangential point, it also supports the claim that we should read more history. History gives perspective, and there is no better cure for much of the suffering we go through.

Learn to accept your insufficiencies

Weirdly, a good part of cultivating meaning and human flourishing comes down to our ability to accept our flaws.

There is no such thing as a great person without flaw.

Hannay touches on this also:

“A deep urge on the part of human beings is to be complete in the way God is conceived as being is psychologically understandable. But the passion that derives those in ‘bad faith’ uselessly in a quest of a divine nature is precisely a form of despair; it is an attempt to be rid of inherent deficiencies of the human state.”

This is a remarkably similar point to one Carl Rogers makes in his masterpiece On Becoming a Person. To paraphrase, Rogers emphasises the need to commit to being a process rather than a complete individual.

For humans, it is the climb, not the destination, which gives life meaning. Our dopamine circuits respond to the progress we make toward a goal, not the goal itself. And in pursuit of a goal, there will be failure.

We have to accept this.

In a weird way, accepting flaw is one of the most liberating things a human can do.

You stop trying to be perfect. You stop trying to give off the impression that you’re perfect.

It’s interesting that Kierkegaard frames this pursuit of perfection as an act of ‘bad faith’. It’s implied we’re aiming incorrectly.

Losing yourself = losing meaning

We lose touch with who we are when we lose our sense of meaning.

And losing touch with who you are is one of the biggest dangers we all face.

Kierkegaard said as much:

“The biggest danger, that of losing oneself, can pass off in the world as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. is bound to be noticed.”

And this is what a lack of meaning looks like. It’s not self-evident. We drift. Life happens to us. We are passive. We aren’t intentional.

It’s not clear that our life lacks meaning. It’s not clear we’re losing ourselves.

But many of us are.

We drift in the mornings before work. We drift in the evenings after work. We spend our workdays in front of a screen, not fully engaged in what we’re doing.

And the state of not being fully engaged? That’s literally the late writer David Foster Wallace’s definition of living a meaningless life.

So the antidote to a meaningless life seems to be engagement and attention.

How can we cultivate engagement and attention?

Two practices stand out to me the most:

Writing

Writing is meditation. It is verbalised thinking. It makes you aware of your thoughts like nothing else.

Writing helps you articulate your concerns. It helps you connect more gracefully with past trauma. It helps you map out your future.

Ultimately, writing helps you evaluate your current position in life. It helps you understand what matters most to you.

It’s why I have started writing. It is a routine that we can all commit to, for half an hour each morning.

Reading

Reading is the engine for your writing routine. Read anything you can get your hands on. Read old books. Read new ones. Draw connections. Resonate with thinkers of the past.

Reading is a cheat code to finding out what truly matters in life. In our own daily lives, our vision is clouded by all sorts of trivial concerns. Reading puts that into perspective.

It allows you to understand that there is something more important.

And that is the crucial point about meaning, and it is worth repeating:

You need to find something more important. More important than yourself.

Writing and reading are a start, but as I mentioned above, there are many ways we can do this. Faith, family, flag used to be my country’s (UK) solution, until we abandoned it.

But faith, family, flag, writing, reading — any of these are better than the current solutions, which range from TikTok to almost entirely counterproductive therapy sessions: ones that involve wallowing in your own meaninglessness, only to be told you should ‘love yourself more.’

A useful byproduct of studying a great CEO is that you begin to understand how effective and efficient they are, but also their capacity for dealing with pain. A useful skill, you’d think. Your personal problems (to an extent), your career problems and other problems you may have are put into perspective when studying people like Ben Horowitz. As co-founder of software company Opsware and venture capital firm Andreesen-Horowitz, his threshold for dealing with uncertainty, pushback, and potential armageddon is arguably unmatched. His book - The Hard Thing About Hard Things - is a perfect case-study of a business owner who has dealt with every possible emotion when trying to succeed as a CEO of a technology startup. Below are some insights from the book, and some thoughts about how we can apply the key principles / themes to our own lives, careers and businesses. If you just want the key message of this piece, here it is: As cringe as it sounds, we are all CEOs - CEOs of ourselves initially, and then this scales out into a family, business and wider community. Learning how to apply principles from people who have lived in the trenches is imperative for long-term success in any domain.

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1. Master Your Psyche

Great leaders manage to deal with uncertainty and pain incredibly well. They may reap the rewards of building a successful company, but part of the reason they can do this is because they coped with the pain at first. The self-doubt, the crippling sense that you’re not worthy, that you’re not good enough to be in the position you’re in. The greatest leaders, whether in business, sport, politics etc, are able to deal with these emotions, accept them, listen to them, park them, and continue with their desired end in mind.

It’s a vital skill to develop - but maybe one that you can only cultivate through experience. The Stoics taught about detachment. Aurelius highlighted that most of our suffering was imaginary. And this is what Horowitz is alluding to - a lot of your pain as a CEO (and even in life) - is contained within you’re own psyche. Pragmatists and empiricists would doubt whether this is even real pain. Nevertheless, it certainly feels real when you’re in business and in the trenches. What’s helpful is that the likes of Horowitz are prepared to admit that it happens to the best of us. We must expect it.

It’s normal to think that your problems are the most important problems. This is part of human nature, in that we concentrate on our own issues before others’. But part of elite performance is detaching from this mindset and focusing on how best you can contribute to making the wider objective reality - in spite of how you’re feeling. We fall down this rabbit hole constantly - expecting our family, friends and clients to drop their things and understand the emotional turmoil we’re going through. Sometimes that’s not the case. Sometimes, we have to become a master of our own psyche.

2. There is no formula

Contrary to popular belief, or maybe what we want to believe, there isn’t an instructions manual for elite performance. This is one of the key messages of Horowitz’s book. Social media personality Sahill Bloom says one of the best skills you can adopt in your career is the ability to just figure out the answer to the problem. This aptly aligns with Horowitz’s philosophy.

Dovetailing nicely from the last idea on managing your own psyche, there will be times, typically when facing armageddon, where you’re the only person you can rely on. This is why it’s so important to be the master of you’re psyche! Elite performers typically encounter problems that can only be solved by yourself. You will be the one who makes the decision, and nobody else will know which route to take. Again, perhaps this is one of those skills - the ability to make decisions when no-one has a clue which decision to make - that is only learnable through experience. Yet, it’s still important to know this principle when you encounter a similar situation in your own life.

3. There are no shortcuts

Here I am, revealing what lessons you could learn from reading. And above is a quote which entirely contradicts this mission. Some lessons you only learn from experience.

But I’m particularly interested in the idea that there are no shortcuts. In the world we live in, the world of (cliche I know) cheap dopamine, we’re being trained to believe that there are shortcuts. We now think there are shortcuts to pleasant emotions like happiness and joy - this explains why modern man enters the flow state after work and indulges in two hours of doom scrolling. We believe we can expeirence these emotions with little effort. Similarly, we fake emotional experiences involving pain and anger - by arguing on social media - because we feel like there are genuine shortcuts to these emotions as well. Why have time for bereavement and heartbreak when the intensity of life’s emotions can be felt at a click’s notice?

Wrong!

We can’t experience any of these emotions superficially. If we can, we are not experiencing them to their true depths! So the idea that there are no shortcuts is both true practically and emotionally.

4. Have faith in yourself, especially when nobody else does, but even more so when everybody else does.

When the chips are down, self-help gurus will encourage and say things like: “Back yourself, even when everybody doubts you.” This is obviously true. For most people who require advice like this, they themselves (unfortunately) are all they have. It is the only choice they possess: to keep the faith.

However, it’s my view that this advice becomes even more important when things are going well. Take the example of Google above. If they had succumbed to the temptation of selling up in their early days, they would not have changed the world. Whilst it would’ve been completely understandable, selling up is an implicit admission which communicates: I have taken this product as far as I could possibly have taken it. It’s not worth my time anymore. Anybody thinking rationally who accepts that this is the true meaning of selling up would never have sold Google then.

The point? You’re business, you yourself, at some point during your lifetime, will be a sought after product. Then, it will be most tempting to cash-in on your winnings. But it’s important you reject this temptation, re-ignite faith in yourself, look after number one, and continue to build. It is the process which makes this life so fulfilling. No amount of money, wealth or reputation can change that.

5. “You need two types of friends.”

The older I have gotten, the more I have realised how rare the second type of friend is. Good job I already have one. That one friend you can call when all hell breaks loose. He knows who he is, so I’m not going to unveil his name on this newsletter. He’s the type of person who wouldn’t even care whether his name was mentioned or not. He’s pretty much immune to the emotional dangers of status increases (a good indicator of what sort of friend fits the second type of friend).

Nevertheless, it’s vitally important that when we find people like this in our lives, we treasure them. Invariably, not only are they this type of friend to you, but they are this type of friend to many, many people. What does this mean? We can learn from them! Steal their traits, adopt some of their core, most reliable behaviours. A feature of Horowitz’s book is his relentlessness in learning from those around him, but also having the humility to identify which character traits he’s lacking, and to seek out those people who have developed those same character traits more effectively. He then hired them.

6. Ask the question: What are you not focusing on?

It’s common for all of us to be pre-occupied with the problems that face us in the moment. This is true for both businesses and individuals. I guess it’s human nature - our survival instincts react when they detect threat. Naturally, we will respond to the threats which are (a) most obvious and (b) seem most threatening. Typically, the most threatening problems seem to us to be the ones that stare us in the face daily.

But, as Horowitz alludes to above, this is actually wrong. It’s often the case that the discreet problems, the problems that aren’t flagged in meetings, the issues that aren’t obvious - these are the problems we should be focused on.

It reminds me of a clip from Triggernometry host Konstantin Kisin. I’m paraphrasing, but he argued that one of the most important lessons his father told him is to look out for what’s not being discussed. I think this is true in all walks of life. In the media, we should be alert to what stories they’re choosing not to cover. In our careers, we should sense what our boss isn’t complaining about. In business, we should analyse what our customers don’t talk about in their reviews. Sometimes, by delving into what’s not there we find either (a) what’s missing which could enhance our service/product offering or (b) we understand what we have been doing well, and we can double down on it.

This is an important part of truth seeking.

7. Keep death in mind at all times

Deep down, I think people know and understand this principle. They just need reminding. They like to turn a blind eye because, well, it’s morbid.

We need to create a sense of urgency in our lives if we are to achieve more, and there is no better way to do this than by reminding ourselves of our mortality.

There are unique ways of doing this. Some have backwards calendars, whereby they remind themselves of Oliver Burkeman’s productivity classic Four Thousand Weeks. I haven’t read that book, but the amount of times I have seen it recommended proves its authority on this subject.

Ultimately, this might seem a morbid principle to live by. Why would I want to remind myself of how many days I have to live? Surely I want to just enjoy the moment? The trouble is, many of us aren’t operating anywhere near to 100% of our operating capacity. And for those of us that know this, and are conscious of it, it’s very hard for us to subsequently “enjoy the moment”.

Therefore, our mortality acts as an important reminder not only to create a sense of urgency, but it also provides us with perspective and motivation. You may feel that the problem you face is cataclysmic, but death could soon be upon you, so what excuse do you have to move quickly to tackle it head on?

8. Detach, detach, detach.

There are two lessons here - I will discuss both in turn.

The first is a lesson I have talked about comprehensively on this blog before. People think expressing emotions in discussion is not only ok (it is by the way), but also desirable. It definitely isn’t desirable.

You’ll hear endless relationship advice today implying that if you’re not having emotional discussions with your spouse, you must be doing something wrong. This is stupid. The best ‘emotional discussions’ are the ones where emotions are acknowledged, but parked, for the benefit of the relationship. Prioritising emotions is a modern-day addiction and demonstrates how much we value the short-term. Why the short-term? Because emotions tend to be fleeting. They tend to change over time. Therefore, how can we rely on them? The Stoics knew this.

You may argue it’s a mechanical mindset to disregard emotions. Maybe. But it’s a mindset that optimises for perspective and control.

The second part of this excerpt is also important. Horowitz claims the second key to a healthy emotional discussion is being clear about “what you’ve decided and what you’re going to do”. Commitment is key to emotional discussion, and also problem solving in general. Great leaders tackle such problems with conviction. In order to have conviction, you need to have clarity over what you do. This becomes more important when the stakes are higher - i.e. this is vital in the military where your lives and the lives of your unit are on the line.

9. No dwelling

There will be times, whether in relationships, your career, your business, when you are in a mess. There will also be times when you have caused yourself to be in the mess. It’s very important that you don’t dwell and ask “what if?”.

People think asking this question is important as it allows reflection. Wrong! Just by going through the consequences of a bad decision, invariably, you will learn not to make those same choices which resulted in those consequences in future. You don’t need to reflect when life experience teaches you by itself.

In my field of work, law, things go wrong all of the time. Every error you make seems cataclysmic. But the truth, is there rarely much you can do about it - you just have to suck it up. The best lawyers I have encountered are those that can (a) tolerate the most uncertainty, (b) are very good with people and (c) are professionals when it comes to moving on from a mistake. They may be a lot of things, but one thing’s for sure, they don’t dwell. They can’t afford to.

This is also the case in sport. If we all dwelt on that time when we pulled a stinker (sporting slang for having a bad game), we’d be handicapping ourselves, and making it less likely we’d have a good game in the future. Why? Our focus is distorted. We can’t concentrate on what needs to be done. Instead, we are fixating over perfecting past actions.

Do not fixate over perfecting past actions you can do nothing about.

10. Be effective in wartime and peacetime

Throughout his book, Horowitz details what a harrowing experience being a CEO can be. It is, for him, one of the existential realities of being a CEO. You have to cope with the suffering.

Tied into this is the idea that CEO’s, according to Horowitz, must have a peacetime nature and the wartime nature. Some CEO’s have one or the other. The best have both.

Why is this necessary? Well, it’s necessary not just for CEOs, but for all of us.

There will be times when we are hating our business, hating our career, hating those closest to us. You might think what’s happening to you, the emotions your experiencing, are completely unfair. As is the case for a CEO, there will be time when a minute of your life feels like a year.

During these times, it’s important we develop a warlike persona. I.e. We focus on the most important task at hand - and execute.

Running our lives is easy during peacetime. Everyone is happy. Everyone is working hard. Your working hard. Good habits are easy to develop and hard to break.

If the above interested you, and you want help applying these principles to your own life, send me a message below:

Want to know something that's never talked about?

Abortion in Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Article 8 of Palestinian Public Health Law No. 20 (2004): in the West Bank and Gaza, abortion is prohibited by any means unless necessary to save the pregnant woman’s life.

How many people know this?

One study found that in OPT "abortion is illegal in all cases, even in extramarital pregnancy. It is only allowed for health reasons for the mother or for fetal anomalies. The law doesn’t allow for anything else, even for unmarried women or rape. They don’t do it."

Another woman in OTP said : "I know that no doctor will allow me to abort without a reason—it’s not easily found here with us, unless it’s in a private way or through someone important you know. But still it’s not common.…Everything is in secret. If it’s a medical issue for the woman, then it’s fine. But not for other reasons."

Palestinian hospitals regularly turn women away when they ask for an abortion:

"Because abortion is illegal and highly restricted in the OPT, Palestinian women seeking an abortion are forced to turn to Israeli hospitals, to expensive Palestinian clinics, or to self-induced termination."

"While neither hospital policies nor the law prevent hospitals or physicians from providing post-abortion care, some women may understandably avoid seeking such care out of fear."

Many women in OTP attempt to carry out self-induced abortions:

Access to abortion is far easier in Jerusalem:

Source: Maffi I, Tønnessen L. The Limits of the Law: Abortion in the Middle East and North Africa. Health Hum Rights. 2019 Dec;21(2):1-6. PMID: 31885431; PMCID: PMC6927385.

In life, we feel lots of feelings.

We have a tendency to categorise these into postive feelings or negative feelings.

But this is the wrong thing to do.

Feelings cannot be positive or negative.

Just because you feel good about something, doesn't mean you 'deserve' to feel good about it.

Feelings are just guides - they only suggest - they're not concrete evidence.

It follows just because you're feeling bad, doesn't mean that you're on the wrong path.

The feeling of struggle and strife is often accompanied by a sense of meaning.

When we run a marathon, we tend not to feel good about it until afterwards.

This is a tough lesson.

When we're feeling down, anxious, insecure, it's the 'reaction' to the feeling which is good or bad, not the feeling itself.

Recently, I have been reading 'The Triumph of Tyranny' by Con Coughlin, a book about the former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The book documents, amongst other things, how Bashar reacted negatively to his anxious/insecure feelings about being inferior in his own family by making poor political decisions.

This is a good example of how feelings are neutral - that it is only the reactions to the feelings that are either positive or negative.

There are many people who suffer from insecurity and self-doubt, but they don't all react like President Assad.

Which brings me onto a section of one of my favourite poems:

If we can meet positive feelings and negative feelings with the same or similar reaction, in Kipling's words, we will be men.

So if you're feeling bad, remember a time when you felt good, and if you feel good, remember a time when you felt bad.

But, they connect with each-other so much so that they actually depend on each other.

Here's why:

What is Attention?

Attention is something we 'pay'. We must 'pay attention', we're told in school. This implies that attention is a store of value - we can choose to pay it in some instances but in others, we can pass.

It's an interesting idea that attention must be paid. Paid for what, exactly?

Well, sometimes, we receive nothing in return. That's why it's often said to be the greatest gift to somebody that you pay attention to them without expecting anything back.

But ultimately, we pay attention to what's valuable, or else, why would it be worth our attention.

If we pay attention to futile, meaningless tasks, not only do we waste our time, but it grates our conscience: we know our attention is too valuable for it to be wasted.

Thus, attention serves a purpose. It indicates that when we pay it, we find something to be valuable.

This is why it helps to watch people (not in a weird way) - because you find out what they value by seeing what they pay attention to.

What is Meaning?

Now lets turn our attention to the concept of meaning.

Meaning is a difficult one, partly because reasons for being in a meaningful state are different for different people.

It's also hard to put your finger on because the people engage meaningfully in different tasks.

Someone might find playing football incredibly meaningful, whilst another will find it incredibly tiresome and onerous.

But one thing is for sure, a meaningful experience is experienced by everyone at some point.

And it often happens when we're playing complete attention to that one activity.

Anna Lembke in her bookm 'Dopamine Nation' articulated this well. A meaningful experience occurs when we're not distracted and when we are completely focused on the task in hand.

Bizarrely, that task can be as mundane as a task can be, but we can find it meaningful if we pay attention.

This dovetails nicely onto the point Viktor Frankl made in his book 'Man Search for Meaning'.

The crux of Frankl's argument was that we can even find meaning even through immense suffering.

So, how do the two relate?

Well, just look at when yout attention is fragmented. Are you in a meaningless state or are you in a meaningful state?

Time might fly by when you're on Instagram reels, but it's a curse of distraction rather than a meaningful flow state.

A true meaningful flow state, like the one Lembke highlights, is when you're purely focused on one thing.

It's when lawyer Noah Feldman, for example, is at his most productive best - when he is focusing on just one thing at a time.

Interestingly, Feldman also makes a more philosophical comment in that same podcast with Tim Ferris.

When Feldman is walking his son to school, he tries to be as present as possible with his son, thinking of nothing else.

Why? Because he wants to garner every scrap of meaning from that interaction as possible.

Feldman doesn't care if 99% of the interaction is futile. If 1% of that experience with his son is meaningful - it's worth it.

What's the moral of the story?

In order to live a meaningful life, we must pay attention, not to multiple things at once, but to one thing at a time.

The curse of meaninglessness in the modern world is largely down to our inability to do this.

We're constantly distracted, constantly juggling multiple tasks at once. Multitasking is a badge of honour.

But, in the long run, this is a strategy aimed at a life of meaninglessness.

2/ Bashar Al-Assad, former President of Syria, offered Syrian intelligence resources to the United States to help reduce the threat of Islamic extremism in the Middle East.

This intelligence developed so much that Al Qaeda had no presence in Syria.

3/ At the same time, Assad wanted to maintain Syria's stance as enemy of Israel. This put his country in a precarious position diplomatically.

Closen ties with the United States, but aleniate Israel - a foreign policy tightrope.

4/ Former British PM Tony Blair was one of the Western leaders enamoured by Assad's attempt to build bridges with the West.

Including providing a state visit for Assad and his wife, where they met Queen Elizaebth II, he even considered giving Bashar a knighthood.

5/ Not all British politicians were sold on Assad though.

Henry Hogger, a former British Ambassador to Syria, had this to say about the former Syrian President:

"Why are we cosying up to this nasty dictatorshop that locks up its own MPs."

7/ But tides soon turned, and Assad became critical of the West in the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Assad was prepared to support the U.S in the Arabian Peninsular after 9/11, but not when they invaded a neighbour - in spite of turbulent Syrian/Iraqi relations.

8/ Assad:

"We are a better judge of this because we live in the region. It is not logical that other should decide that something is or isn't a problem for the region. The bigger problem is that any country should interfere with the internal affairs of another country."

9/ Assad accused the States of only being "interested in gaining control of Iraqi oil and redrawing the map of the region in keeping with its worldview."

America was "a car speeding towards a concrete wall" without realising that, on the other side, was "an abyss".

1/ Luan Kohng

Spirituality is "seeing and understanding the truth for oneself, rather than following a set of beliefs based on blind faith."

2/ The Buddha

Do not "depend on others for your salvation [but] develop your self-confidence to gain it."

3/ Sogyal Rinpoche

"the root of all our suffering in samsara is ignorance. Ignorance, until we free ourselves from it, can seem endless, and even when we have embarked on the spiritual path our search is fogged by it."

4/ Seth Robert Segall

Spirituality is "the practice of opening oneself up and being receptive to the flow of sense perceptions, emotions, and thought processes in each given moment while attempting to hold judgment in abeyance."

5/ Marie-Louise von Franz

On Jung's conceptualisation of projection:

"Jung speaks therefore of a 'hook' in the object on which one hangs a projection as one hangs a coat on a coat hook."

6/ Carl Jung

"Just as we tend to assume that the world is as we see it, we naïvely suppose that people are as we imagine them to be."

7/ Von Franz on Jung again:

Jung "once compared the ego-complex to a man who sails out in his boat onto the sea of the unconscious to go fishing. He must take care not to

haul more fish (unconscious contents) from the sea into his boat than the boat can carry, or it will sink"

We have a "will to meaning", and are motivated to find our "concrete meaning" in day to day life.

Frankl:

"what man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal"

When our will to meaning is hindered, "existential frustration" frustration results. We argue there's no reason to live.

So, what healthy functioning individuals do is find reason to live. They appreciate that by treating life like everything matters, they find the most meaning

2/ Roy Baumeister

For RB, meaning is defined as "ideas that are connecting together".

If you can bring all aspects of your life into a coherent whole, you'll be on a meaningful path.

Baumeister argues we need to avoid situations which are banal, and don't correlate with our life story.

Baumeister:

"A person wants his or her life to make an interesting or

inspiring story, to exemplify a high theme or lesson, or to be part of grand and important developments"

3/ Ernest Becker

For Becker, similarly to Baumeister, we need to feel valuable in the world.

We need to be of primary importance - something Becker described as "cosmic specialness"

This is especially important given that being human is inherently anxiety provoking.

EB: cultures are essential:

"It doesn’t matter whether the cultural hero-system is frankly magical, religious, and primitive or secular, scientific, and civilised. It is still a mythical hero-system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value"

Recently, I came across this X post by modern-day thinker Jash Dholani:

Disagreeableness is almost definitely an underrated trait - a bit like how politeness is overrated - and this comment from Dholani exemplifies this so well.

In the productivity space, we obsess with controlling our environment. Youtubers like Ali Abdaal and Thomas Frank obsess over productivity and controlling their environment. Maybe it’s harsh to single these two guys out (I’ve only watched Abdaal’s material extensively), but they seem to epitomise the modern urge to “optimise” surroundings to produce more.

They give us tips like the pomodoro, or ‘study with me’ sessions. They provide us with the latest books which will help us become more efficient (Essentialism by Greg McKeown is one of the best). They encourage us to use the Google Calendar, and schedule time for “deep work” (a term coined by productivity guru Cal Newport). They discuss how to make money on the side whilst also finding quality time to spend with your family and friends.

What they don’t discuss, however, is that all of this requires saying “no”. And out of all the productivity hacks out there, this is probably the most important.

Ultimately, the target audience of each of these productivity gurus are young people with fragmented attention. Those people who grew up with Tik Tok and Instagram. My achilles heel is Youtube reels - I tend to procrastinate by watching cricket shorts (yes, I am quite a sad person). But the reason we’re all addicted to the social media platforms, the reason algorithms control us, the reason we find ourselves doom scrolling and not working on the stuff that truly matters to us is because we haven’t developed the power to say no. We have an agreeableness issue.

We’re too kind to the algorithm. We don’t tell it to f*ck off. But we should.

This is actually one of the core arguments of the book Essentialism, Mckeown just articulates it in a different way. He argues we should say yes to very few things, and disregard the rest. This is the same as Mark Manson’s law of ‘F*ck Yes or No’.

I actually find that one of the best ways to incorporate this practice of saying no into your life is to start with the insignificant. Start by saying no to the pointless television you watch, don’t worry about the social media algorithms just yet. With time, the habit will cultivate, grow stronger like a muscle, and any attention deficit you had before will be tamed (note it won’t go away completely. Everyone gets distracted at some point).

So that’s the point of this article. The productivity gurus at I mentioned will definitely help, and they’re free to listen to. But it’s important to communicate the philosophy behind their work. Their productivity hacks are downstream from the ability to say no - and that is an agreeableness issue.

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Politeness is encouraged by almost every parent in the world. Be kind, compassionate and considerate of others. These words are shouted from the rooftops in pretty much all modern-day households.

But the households who ignore this advice are the households that are winning. No, this isn’t to say there isn’t a place for politeness - of course there is. But as a society, particularly in the West, we have massively overcorrected as to the utility of politeness.

When is politeness necessary?

Politeness is necessary in everyday conversation. Even when somebody is being annoying, I do believe we all have a duty to remain civil at the very least.

I get annoyed with people who can’t do this.

Some people think it’s ok, when they’re offended in conversation, either to lash out physically or verbally. This is obviously ridiculous and a good sign that the person is greatly under-socialised.

Politeness is particularly important when talking to strangers. In any vocation, you’ll almost always encounter strangers. It is your duty to remain polite to them until they abandon they’re own responsibility to remain polite. Being annoying isn’t the same thing as being impolite. Some people are very polite but incredibly annoying. It is your duty to ensure that they don’t find out that you think they’re annoying. Somebody else will likely let them know.

Other situations which require your politeness include your sister’s wedding or your mother’s birthday. Just because your rogue uncle is being vulgar, doesn’t give you a license to do the same. Although, a there’s nothing quite like this combination: beer, cigar, and a debate on the most controversial political topic you can think of.

Other situations that require politeness go without saying. You know what situation I’m referring to.

When can politeness be dispensed with?

In pretty much every other situation, I believe you should be able to say what you think.

Note that we’re getting closer to the definition of what constitutes politeness - and reticence plays a big part.

When you’re being polite, you tend to withhold what you truly think, those opinions that you don’t think will sit well.

But politeness is overrated because it’s encouraged in too many situation you encounter.

You shouldn’t need to be polite in every day conversation.

For instance, if you disagree with what someone says, you should say so, generally speaking. If they’re exercising their right to their opinion, why shouldn’t you?

In sales, there is a basic rule called mirroring. In order to build rapport, you mirror the other person’s tone, speed of speech, and body language. Sometimes, this means being opinionated! And to hell if someone thinks that’s impolite!

Politeness in everyday conversation is not necessary, it’s overrated.

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Former Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has written himself into the history books of many as a leader to be forgotten. He divided Syria, continued his father’s strategy of brutally repressing his own people, and is now, in hiding, reportedly in Moscow.

This isn’t a post about Assad’s tenure as Syrian president, or even Madeleine Albright pictured above. It’s about the human tendency to be so bad at predicting character.

Because one would think, after so many years socialising and trading with eachother, we would be able to understand the mystery that is the personality of the human being. We would be able to predict with confidence whether someone was going to be a success, or a complete failure?

The sorry example used above suggests otherwise. Optimists would say that Albright was merely praising Assad to prove to the incumbent Syrian President that the United States wanted Syria at the negotiating table. This may be partly true. But cynics like me are less forgiving. I believe those words were at least somewhat representative of what Albright thought at the time.

And let’s be clear - Albright is just one example. Over the years, there have been countless examples of notable, highly respected individuals choosing to associate themselves with bad actors. Some do it deliberately, to maipulate, to gain political advantage, to play reverse psychology. But others genuinely do it out of belief that they are associating themselves with somebody good.

This begs the question - why are we so bad at judging character?

I have a few theories:

1/ Attention

As human beings, we are wired to attend to oursleves, and attend to the things that will help us personally. This results in a lack of attention being paid to other people.

This means, ultimately, that we never truly understand what people are up to. This may be a trivial matter at the local level - you’re rarely that bothered about knowing what your neighbour is doing (or maybe you are). But when you’re dealing with high stakes issues, failing to understand the individuals you’re working with is a major issue, and it may well be because we’re just not wired to pay too much attention to others.

2/ The Halo Effect

When dealing with individuals, we tend to judge based on one or two of their traits. If they portray themselves as generous, we tend to think of them as ultimately good.

But this is a mistake, for one can be generous, but exploit their generosity at the same time. People in charitable organisations do this constantly, whereby they present themselves as so generous - downstream from their superior empathy - but then use this to abuse their power in senior positions. To my mind, this doesn’t make them good, but this won’t stop us from judging them favourably because of their initial generosity.

3/ We overestimate the goodness of our own character

Maybe we are bad judges of character because we can’t accurately judge our own character?

Do we have a tendency to overestimate our own goodness? I think so, and it is an understated form of self-deception.

Just look at the lengths people go to nowaday to signal their virtue. It’s almost as though they’re sub-consciously unconvinced of their own ethical standing, so they have to consciously convince themselves, either by criticism of others or by elevating their own moral stature, that they’re the second coming.

This is a mistake - and I think one of life’s paradoxes: the more we judge others and look outward, the more inaccurate our judgment of their moral character, but the more we look inward and within ourselves, the more accurate our judgment becomes of others….

Recently, I have been reading a journal article from Catherine Gimelli Martin on the conceptualisation of evil. Specifically, the article is about how our conception of evil changed in the aftermath of the Reformation and the counterreformation. However, I wanted to merely draw your attention to some interesting insights on the idea of evil and how it can be conceptualised.

1. “The unruly senses, appetites, and passions all play a part (in evil)… but as Milton especially emphasizes, real evil only comes into existence through conscious, rational choice,”

The idea that we are possessed by evil, and more, that we don’t choose to do evil, is deeply flawed. Many cite external circumstances as being the reason why they did certain things, but this is rarely accurate.

People do evil things because they choose to do evil things.

2. “Unlike instrumental or common wrongdoing, which by definition serves rational if selfish ends, wickedness for its own sake transcends or even forsakes normal worldly benefits.”

This is an interesting distinction which Martin makes. Ordinary selfishness, to her mind, confers some gain on the selfish party. However, if we are to discuss absolute evil, a type of evil that’s similar to the opposite of the Kantian categorical imperative, it is not clear that any benefit is conferred upon the person committing it. This, in Martin’s eyes, distinguishes evil from daily wrongdoing.

My counterargument, if I had any, would be that ordinary selfishness leads to absolute evil, one small act at a time. Martin, in fairness, acknowledges this point:

“at some point, selfishness abounds to such an extent that it affords a perverse, ultimately “inhuman” pleasure that delights in ills that do nobody good”

Interestingly, Martin cites Kant, who states that even taking small pleasure in “the misfortunes of our best friends” is an indicator that you’re practicing this sort of ordinary selfishness. There is no shortage of such behaviour in the modern world.

3. “To rise above these perverse impulses, ethical individuals must therefore follow his [Kant’s] categorical imperative and, so far as possible, heroically deprive themselves of all self-interest, petty jealousy, or pride in their behaviour toward others”

This is Martin speaking as though she was Kant.

I see the above as a sort of Puritan doctrine. Self-deprivation is the key to moderating the manifestation of evil. I think there is some truth in this - hedonism doesn’t seem to be healthy philosophical doctrine and is the antithesis to self-deprivation. That being said, I am always wary of simple explanations for complex ideas - and this could be one.

4. Natural human “propensities include the desire for social acceptance and cohesion, which is in turn rooted in an instinctual preference for promoting pleasure and avoiding pain, not merely for ourselves, but also for friends, families, and close associates, especially where no overt rivalry or conflict of interest is involved.”

Our desire to fit in, to be part of the social group, is arguably what make sus pursue pleasurable things over pain.

This is an evolutionary adaptation in part. Hunter gatherers who could alleviate pain and provide pleasure to their close family and wider tribe were subsequently rewarded.

But, as with any pursuit, the need to fit in can become toxic. Today, this manifests in addiction to social media, where having a phone and a social media account is considered ‘trendy’, and therefore parents can’t fathom not allowing their child this largely ill-understood device for fear that they’ll encounter social rejection.

5. “In the case of truly aberrant, universally abhorred behavior, however, empirical explanations have generally failed to diagnostically, predictively, or otherwise evaluate it. At the same time, basic standards of right and wrong, while not grounded in objective fact, are generally understood even by small children.”

Martin in the article makes a case against moral relativism.

Whilst ethics diverge dependent on what culture you’re a part of, the most “abhorred behaviour” is universally abhorred. Our children can detect what’s right and what’s wrong at the extremes, even before they’ve been educated and socialised into such cultural norms.

I work in the corporate world, and one of the many concerns bosses have, and have always had, is how to attract and retain the best talent.

Yet, I have noticed a shift in rhetoric in my short working life. Bosses are now growing ever more frustrated with, well Gen-Z, for lack of a better phrase.

To my mind, seniors fail to understand new-starters. They don’t understand the way they work, the way they operate, their priorities. But, as usual, it takes two to play the game. Part of the issue is also the reluctance of the youth of our day to treat elders seriously. We have to be best mates with our boss, and brag about it to our friends. Resultantly, not only are bosses afraid to say what they think for fear of having a bad reputation as a boss and destroying this relationship, they can’t actually behave like an ordinary boss would, and create a culture of superiority.

Workplaces are now obsessed with creating a non-hierarchical environment. However, the downside is that you don’t know who your boss is, and employees don’t know who to respect.

A major part of attracting talent is restoring a culture whereby bosses are considered bosses. And I don’t mean we should return to an old-fashioned “I give you blunt orders mentality”. I mean integrating the need to be a boss with the need to create an environment where people want to work. There is a middle ground to be struck.

In any case, here are a few more issues which, if acknowledged and resolved, would bring more clarity and efficiency to workplaces.

The generational divide

For many older adults in the workplace today, their early careers were marked by high levels of scrutiny from senior colleagues. Judgment was harsh, punishments were severe, and their character had to adapt to those conditions. Now, due to factors such as safeguarding laws and the increased focus on mental health in the workplace, managers can no longer treat new starters as they themselves were treated 30 or 40 years ago. This is obviously for the better in many cases. But, as a result, workplace culture has changed drastically over the past four decades, widening the generational divide - perhaps more than ever before.

We’ve arguably overcorrected to the point where creating a healthy culture has not only been prioritised, but overly prioritised. In doing so, we have sacrificed hierarchy, and a culture that provides clarity and ensures people understand their roles. Instead, many now simply want to be friends with their bosses and superiors. This presents challenges not only for managers, but also for young employees. Young people may say they want a friendly, approachable boss, but what they truly seek is guidance, structure, and someone they can rely on. They want somebody who can push them to their limits and realise their potential.

Unfortunately, we’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to workplace culture. The trade off with rigid hierarchy is that you end up with people who abuse their power and position. But we are now experiencing the trade off of an anti-hierarchical culture, where work lacks meaning, and lacks importance, Maybe this is an understated contributor of the age’s mental health crisis?

Priority Differences

Part of the problem with youth in the workplace today is that they struggle to focus on a single task, as they spend much of their time on social media and juggling multiple activities at once. As a result, devoting two hours to drafting a document or engaging in a meeting often feels like a chore for many new starters entering the workforce. This is to the great frustration of seniors, who cannot understand their own children behaving like this, let alone young adults who are being paid a handsome salary at their business.

Social media also plays a significant role. It tends to reward individuals who prioritise appearance above all else - something many in older generations struggle to understand. They can’t grasp why young people seem more concerned with looking good at work than doing a good job. Yet, for many, this is the reality: meaning is sought not in the work itself, but in a new pair of shoes or a corporate hairstyle. Seniors often find this philosophy disillusioning.

This links to another issue: anxiety. About a year ago, I spoke with a boss who wondered aloud why young people prefer sending voice notes on WhatsApp instead of simply calling friends or family. I understood his point—he was, perhaps indirectly, touching on a broader problem: many young people now struggle to speak to others directly, whether over the phone or face-to-face. That’s a serious concern.

However, in fairness, the youth have been raised in an environment that rewards such behaviour. They’ve been encouraged - often by their own parents - to be online, kept quiet with phones and screens. And these same senior colleagues who now criticise them sometimes boast about having done exactly that: putting a screen in front of their child to keep them occupied. In that sense, it takes two to tango.

Take responsibility

So what’s the conclusion in all of this? It’s that both parties must take responsibility.

Bosses must take responsibility for making the workplace an attractive environment to work in. They must take responsibility for being a boss - recognising their greater experience, their broader knowledge, and the fact that they grew up in an age that encouraged traits and characteristics worth passing on to a generation that may no longer cultivate them. That is what leadership is about.

On the flip side, young people also need to take responsibility. They must take ownership of creating meaning in their work and recognising their own talents. They must take responsibility for when they make mistakes, accept that their emotions may be affected, and manage those emotional responses themselves. It is not the boss’s job to ensure you feel good about your role - it is your responsibility to improve and grow, and own up to your mistakes.

Ultimately, attracting and retaining talent is a two-person dance. It requires bosses to understand both their own priorities and those of young employees. And it requires young people to understand not only their own priorities, but also those of their senior colleagues.

I found this to be an interesting statistic which sparked general intrigue in countries that laboured to allow women the vote.

Therefore, here are some interesting facts about women’s suffrage you may have not heard about:

1. Early adopters weren’t always democratic nations

• New Zealand was the first self-governing country to grant national voting rights to women in 1893.

• But before that, Pitcairn Islands (1838) and Isle of Man (1881) had already allowed some form of women’s voting—well before most major nations.

2. Some countries allowed women to vote before universal male suffrage

• In Finland (1906), women gained full suffrage before many men in other countries could vote.

• In fact, Finland was part of the Russian Empire at the time, yet still gave full political rights (vote and stand for election) to women.

4. Some nations only recently allowed women to vote

• You might be surprised how late some countries granted suffrage:

  • Switzerland: Women got federal voting rights in 1971 (some cantons delayed even longer—Appenzell Innerrhoden didn’t allow women to vote in local elections until 1991).

    • This is interesting because you hear many Westerners talk of countries like Switzerland (and often Scandanavia) as being admirable and ethically in-tune countries. But rarely do you hear facts like this one.

  • Saudi Arabia: Women only gained the right to vote and run in municipal elections in 2015.

5. Suffragists were sometimes militant

• In the UK, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) led by Emmeline Pankhurst used tactics like:

  • Hunger strikes

  • Property damage

  • Chaining themselves to public buildings

6. Some suffrage campaigns were against women voting

• There were organized anti-suffrage movements led by women, often arguing that voting would undermine traditional family roles or was unnecessary.

7. Some women could stand for office before they could vote

• In Australia, women could run for Parliament in 1902 - long before many other countries even let them vote.

• This paradox was even more extreme in UK colonies like India, where female candidates existed despite widespread female disenfranchisement.

Recently, I read a article in Artificial Intelligence and Law relating to inroads AI has made in law enforcement. When I say inroads, I mean how it is being used to uphold justice, although some would say that’s an apt word for describing AI’s threats. Many see it as a threat - and threats make inroads.

Just to be clear about how bigger an impact AI is currently making in the legal industry, “the number of legal tech companies in the Codex Techindex grew from 700 to more than 2000 in the last five years.15 ChatGPT is being actively used by, for example, judges16, and countries like China are investing heavily in legal AI and NLP for courts.” This raises a whole host of problems, not just regulatory but also from a philosophical standpoint. Could large language models really challenge human reason in the legal world? Could judgments, suddenly become ‘artificial’? And what would this mean for human motivation, when our work is such a great source of meaning in and of itself?

Well, one ominous answer came from this article, which stated that recipients of legal services were likely to trust robots in a legal setting provided that they were able to provide explanations for their conclusions. Just have a read of this:

“So here we had a situation where the system told the participants it was probably not criminal fraud in their case. We then asked them whether they trusted the system’s conclusion. More importantly, we also measured their trusting behaviour: the system told them it was probably not criminal fraud, but did they still file an official report? We compared two groups. The control group received no explanation – “it is probably not criminal fraud, so the system recommends you don’t file a report”. 40–60% still filed a report, so quite a large number of respondents from the control group listened to “computer says no”. With an explanation similar to the one just discussed, however, only 20–35% still filed a report, so significantly more people followed the recommendation if it was accompanied by an explanation. From this we concluded that citizen trust increases with explanations.”

This, to me, is wild! Yes, the optimist may argue that AI bots can’t be trusted when they’re just asked to provide an answer - but the very idea we’d be just as likely to trust a robot so long that they provided an explanation? What happened to lawyers needing emotional intelligence!

And this is where I think the AI hype is overstated. Yes, artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology. It threatens to transform the legal industry in ways we cannot even begin to comprehend. But, if used wisely, it can’t take over completely. Humans need human contact - we’re not rational creatures designed purely for productivity optimisation.

Law Enforcement

One area AI has been tried and tested is in the sub-sector of law enforcement. But, it has been shown to be flawed. Police in the Netherlands (amongst other countries) are using AI cameras to see if people are on their phone whilst driving. But, in an unexpected twist, the cameras have been shown to be elitist because, well, many modern cars have tinted windows preventing cameras from looking inside. Therefore, it’s only the older, cheaper cars which are subject to government intrusiveness:

“In practice, however, there were some unexpected surprises. Many new cars had a sun-blocking windscreen foil that made it hard for the AI to detect whether someone was holding a phone. So, according to some metrics we could say the system was being “unfair” to people with older cars. Also, whenever the human officer was unsure about exactly whether the driver was holding a phone, they took a picture of the screen with their own phone and sent this to a colleague to ask for a second opinion. This was all in good faith, but it does run contrary to the data minimalization principles designed into the system at the start. So designing responsible AI, requires continuous training of the system – in the case of new windscreen foils – and the human users – in the case of assessing photographs”

I thought AI was supposed to uphold the rule of law!

One of the things I like about studying law, and then going onto practice it, is that it can provide subtle hints as to how to organise your life.

Under UK planning law, in order for a planning obligation to be acceptable for planning purposes (as part of a wider development), it has to pass a three stage test. They must be:

• necessary to make the development acceptable in planning terms;

• directly related to the development; and

• fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the development.

This is a set of rules which I’ll argue can be applied to our personal lives. In order for a requirement we place on ourselves to be acceptable, it must be:

• Necessary to make our life acceptable (to us and to other people)

• Directly related to the part of our life we’re trying to improve

• Fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind to the part of our life we’re trying to improve..

This is fascinating because, quite often we will try to discipline ourselves, and make ourselves do all sorts of things, but the stringent measures we subject ourselves to will not directly contribute to the most important elements of our lives.

But by applying this criteria, things can be different. In the same way in UK planning law where local authorities are required to implement planning rules on developers which are directly related to the development, we should be reluctant to implement rules on ourselves which don’t materially contribute to improving aspects of our lives.

But, as any lawyer will appreciate, it’s one thing knowing the law, but it’s another thing applying it. Understanding whether a planning obligation is directly related to the development can be difficult to know in real time, and will invariably be subject to great debate. Solicitors and barristers will tend to have the debate on behalf of landowners, developers and local authorities, but sometimes, we don't have people to call upon when applying the test to our personal lives.

This often means having the debate with yourself. Let’s say you’re looking to eat healthily and do more exercise. Most people would agree eating healthily and doing more exercise is necessary to make almost everyone’s life acceptable. If you neglect to do so, your mental and physical health plummets.

But, is eating healthily and working out directly related to the part of our life we’re trying to improve? This obviously depends. Maybe you’re already fit and healthy, so the returns on investing more time on nutrition and exercise are limited. Furthermore, the law of diminishing returns suggests that we can spend too much time focusing on nutrition and doing exercise. This rule, typically applied in an economic sense, is a principle which suggests:

“that profits or benefits gained from something will represent a proportionally smaller gain as more money or energy is invested in it.” - Oxford Languages

And maybe this is true for exercise. Maybe exercising and eating healthily is theoretically a good strategy but that any returns on investment would gradually diminish as we gradually become more obsessive about it?

There is also something to be said about trade offs and opportunity costs. By focusing obsessively on nutrition and exercise, you’re paying less attention to your family, your work, your finances and your education. And this is where the prong fairly and reasonably related in scale and kind can be applied. Doing more exercise is unreasonable if that’s all we’re doing with our life - and we have four children to look after. I’d actually go as far to say that if you have a young family, going on a 100k bike ride and obsessing over calorie counting would be a bad thing. You’d be paying too much attention to yourself, and not to other people.

And this is the beauty of applying aspects of the law to our personal lives. Planning law in the UK is typically set up so it takes into account the interests of landowners, developers and government. Similarly, when planning for your life, you are just one factor amongst many. Your family, your local community and future generations all have to be included when strategising

A recent case in the First Tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) covered the question of whether the public have a right to know how different branches of government (specifically in the UK) are using artificial intelligence to determine outcomes to their specific caseloads. The result of the appeal is a small win for the laymen who seek transparency as to how large scale organisations may handle their sensitive data.

In this instance, the question was surrounding whether HMRC, the government’s tax collection authority, ought to disclose to the public how they’re using AI to facilitate decision making - for example, whether certain individuals are entitled to tax relief.

The Appellant used what’s called the Freedom of Information Act to request HMRC to disclose such information, implying that fraud could result from use of AI. The Appellant said:

“Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I am writing to request information regarding the use of Large Language Models and generative AI [Artificial Intelligence], such as ChatGPT, by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), specifically within the context of the 'R&D Tax Credits Compliance Team'. My request focuses on the following areas:

Implementation Details: Please provide details on how Large Language Models are currently being used within the R&D Tax Credits Compliance Team. This should include, but is not limited to, the purposes for which these models are employed (e.g., data analysis, decisionmaking support, enquiry responses, penalty justifications, etc.)

Model Selection and Development: Information on the criteria used for selecting these models, any custom development or training undertaken, and the providers of these models.

Data Privacy and Security: Details on the measures in place to ensure the privacy and security of taxpayer data when using these models, including any data protection impact assessments conducted. Given the sensitive nature of R&D claims, detail should be provided if information is being uploaded relating to the claim which is then used to train language models and be available for use by private companies engaged by the Government, who own the overarching tool.

Outcome and Impact Analysis: Any available information or studies on the impact of using Large Language Models on the efficiency, accuracy, and overall outcomes of the enquiry processes within the R&D Tax Credits Compliance Team.

Policies and Procedures: Information on the policies and procedures governing the use of these models, including guidelines on human oversight and ethical considerations.

Future Plans: Details on any planned expansions or changes in the use of Large Language Models within the R&D Tax Credits Compliance Team or other departments within HMRC”

HMRC refused on specific grounds that it wasn’t in the public interest.

But is it in the public interest to know how governments are using artificial intelligence?

The Appellant argued that use of AI would call into question public confidence of its own governments due to the AI software using sensitive information to come to, in this case, tax compliance decisions. If the government were able to disclose how they’d use AI effectively and securely, it could work the other way by enhancing public confidence.

There is also the question of whether AI tools can be truly accurate, which certainly explained at least partially why the Appellant filed a freedom of information request in the first instance.

Interestingly, the appeal was allowed. It appears she concurred with the notion that governments do have a duty to disclose how they use AI to reach decisions.

There are some points I’d like discuss here which just show how complex AI will be ethically going forward.

Who actually handles your data?

Is it a robot, or is it a branch of government. When you submit data to the government, you are entrusting them with personal data that is potentially incredibly sensitive. You are also entrusting them, sometimes, to not share this with anyone. Does a robot fall into this bracket of ‘anyone’? It would appear that the judge in this case would think so. Consequently, maybe it will soon become commonplace that governments will have to disclose how they are using AI tools to handle sensitive data.

As a business, this is surely good news. You wouldn’t like it if the government was going behind your back to disclose sensitive information to an AI tool you knew nothing about. This is especially the case when we don’t know how powerful these AI tools will become.

What about trust?

Trust is an important psychological component to any relationship. This is particularly the case when speaking of the government and the people. But it’s even more the case when you have a third party involved, such as an AI tool. To what extent will the AI tool have access to the personal data of an individual or business is a crucial question that ought to be taken seriously.

And Moral Responsibility?

As HMRC outsources its decision making to an AI tool, is it simultaneously abdicating its responsibility to produce fairness (and subsequently undermining public trust in government decision making). Ultimately, it’s James Murray, Secretary to the Treasury, who’s the elected officer who oversees HMRC decision making. An AI tool is not electable, and therefore, is anybody truly accountable for potentially poor decision making?