Modern-day lobotomy

except this time, we’re lining up for it

I am in the midst of launching my company's brand overhaul. Combine that with two kids under two and the pressures of running a start-up, and life has been wonderfully full of miracles.

Amidst this beautiful chaos, I've been humbled by the warm reception of my first post about outsourcing our souls to ChatGPT. It clearly struck a chord, and I’m deeply grateful for the chance to share these thoughts with all of you who have subscribed. God is good.

From the beginning, I want to clarify: I am not anti-AI. I am profoundly pro-Human. pro-Divinity. pro-Mystery.

I’ve always been an early adopter of technology. From social media in its infancy to crypto and VR. I saw them not as a calling in themselves, but as tools to fulfill my God-given purpose: helping others tell their stories.

But this new wave of AI feels different. More than ever, I see people handing over their agency, their very thought process, to apps like GPT and Claude. This isn't just about using a new tool; it's about outsourcing a fundamental part of our humanity.

The concern is going mainstream. 10 days after my genesis post, The New York Times recently reported that for some, these AI conversations can deeply distort reality. But the issue may be even more subtle and widespread.

Alarming reports and studies are beginning to circulate, warning of a terrifying possibility: that AI isn't making us more productive, but cognitively bankrupt.

I came across this post on X from Alex Vacca about the new study released by MIT.

The core fear is that by offloading our thinking, we are weakening the neural connections responsible for deep thought. One claim, for instance, described a dramatic reduction in brain connectivity among heavy AI users.

Whether these specific numbers are precise is less important than the principle they illustrate: cognitive atrophy. The idea that, like an unused muscle, our ability to reason, create, and write with nuance could wither from disuse. When we depend on AI to generate, do we lose the ability to genuinely understand?

The more I sit with the effects AI is having on our minds, the more I worry we’re walking into a silent epidemic.

If we’re not careful, we’ll become a generation fluent in prompts but starved of presence. Able to generate but not genuinely understand.

Always reacting, rarely reflecting. Always responding, rarely creating.

Modern Day Lobotomy

That word, lobotomy, is a harsh one, but its history offers a chilling parallel for our time. It was a procedure sold as a cure for difficult personalities. Consider the tragic story of Rosemary Kennedy. In 1941, at just 23 years old, her father had her lobotomized to manage her mood swings and what was seen as an overly vibrant, inconvenient personality. The goal was to make her calmer, more manageable. The result was catastrophic.

The procedure reduced her mental capacity to that of a toddler, leaving her unable to function independently for the rest of her life. She was institutionalized and hidden away, her vibrant spirit extinguished for the sake of convenience.

They severed connections in her brain to alter her soul. Today, people are willingly severing their own connections, not with a scalpel, but with a prompt.

Constant AI use is the modern-day lobotomy. Except this time, we’re lining up for it voluntarily.

There’s still time to choose differently. To protect the soul of our attention. God reminds me that true wisdom isn’t something I retrieve. It’s something I nurture and grow, slowly, over time, through presence, struggle, and love.

This search for nurtured wisdom, for a way to protect the soul of my attention, is what led me, perhaps unsurprisingly, to St. Augustine.

Augustine, the patron saint of printers and theologians, lived in a world of radical change, much like our own. He would not have feared AI itself. He would have feared how readily we forget our souls when given power without accountability. From my early readings, his teachings offer a powerful framework: he calls us to use the tools of this world, but never to make them the ultimate tool.

This is where the real problem lies. AI isn’t the enemy—our disordered trust is.

We risk making AI a false god because we have stopped trusting ourselves, forgotten how to know God, and ceased to believe in objective Truth. People’s truth has become a feed of 15-second reels, context-free X hot takes, and glamorized Instagram lifestyles that are meticulously edited to hide the struggle.

St. Augustine famously prayed, “I work as if everything depended on me, and I pray as if everything depended on God.” He understood that our effort and divine dependence are two sides of the same coin. True wisdom isn't something you can retrieve with a prompt. It’s something nurtured slowly, over time, through presence, struggle, and love.

This isn’t about refusing to use AI. It’s about learning how and when to leverage it. The real work is trusting our God-given Divine Intelligence and trusting ourselves where it matters most: with our lives.

So I leave you with the question I now ask myself: When was the last time you created something from the heart, fully present to God and the ground beneath your feet?

Cultural translation: when was the last time you raw-dogged creation?