Are you using AI? Do Not Forget Your Whip - Skye

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Are you using AI? Do Not Forget Your Whip<br>On creating distance from AI, with some Nietzschean advice

Skye<br>Aug 12, 2026

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A good amount of my time and energy is spent pulling my teenager out of the abyss of screens and reminding him that there is a real and full world out here. “TikTok doesn’t love you like I do,” is something I’ve yelled more than once, along with “I’m not swipe-able!” as he gets impatient with me, or “Look at me,” as his eyes wander back to the screen and I try to smother my sadness with warmth. I worry about what screen time does. He seems fine, great even, but I don’t really know. A lot has been written about this, not least Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation.<br>I’ve been searching for philosophical inspiration for what to do about these attention-sucking machines. I’m not alone. In the New York Times Bret Stephens recently begged readers to never write with AI because it’s “mentally enfeebling.”<br>Friedrich Nietzsche wrote a lot about distancing ourselves. He was usually talking about his distance from women and many of his statements are tinged, if not drenched, with misogyny. I am not getting into that here, but what I am getting into is the notion of distance from what is confusing, mysterious, or beyond our control - which for Nietzsche was women. Much about technology, AI especially, is opaque to us. Distance from it makes us better thinkers and better company.<br>Why distance is precious

Distance is precious because, according to Nietzsche, if you get too close to another person, you might lose “the pearl” of your life (Human, All Too Human §428). Familiarity is like an artwork and if you keep touching it, you’ll smudge it, and you’ll just be left with dirty, tattered paper and, Nietzsche writes, “that is how it finally appears to us—we never see the beauty of its original design again.”<br>The other person or thing may well be as beautiful as they ever were, but closeness warps our perception. Similarly, with technology, closeness distorts how we think. What we’re spoiling is our ability to perceive the beauty of humanity. Familiarity blurs our vision, but the screen is even worse because it trains us to see people as low-resolution, swipe-able entities, like a flickable reel. Below are three Nietzschean-inspired tips for finding distance.<br>1. Find your whip

One of Nietzsche’s most notorious lines is in Thus Spoke Zarathustra:<br>You are going to women? Then don’t forget the whip!

That sounds bad. But wait for the context: a woman speaks the words and she gifts the advice to Zarathustra. But, she warns the wisdom has to be kept secret because in the wrong hands it will be misread.<br>A photograph also suggests it’s not as bad as it sounds. Nietzsche and his friends Lou Salomé and Paul Rée pose with a pony cart. Salomé holds the whip as she reins both men in from the seat.

Lou Salomé, Paul Rée, and Friedrich Nietzsche<br>The woman in Zarathustra wasn’t clear as to who was meant to be whipping whom. Conceivably, the advice was about giving the whip to another person for them to whip you. The whip could be an instrument used for keeping distance, something that Zarathustra might hand to someone like Salomé so that one or both of them might become greater. Nietzsche writes:<br>You cannot adorn yourself well enough for your friend: for you shall be to him an arrow and a yearning for the Overhuman.

The Overhuman (Übermensch) is someone who challenges themselves and strives to be better. In the context of relationships, the great ones are where there’s space for both agreement and disagreement, for both enjoyment and challenges, and where the partners are brave enough to whip each other into shape.<br>The difference between a great friend and AI is that a friend can push back on their own. AI molds itself to what you want, so you have to create the friction yourself. If you think of the whip as a tool of self-discipline and self-defense, it becomes a way to keep yourself at a deliberate distance from things that you can’t control, including AI. AI is built to be easy, always there and endlessly agreeable, so the default is closeness and you have to intentionally create distance.<br>The takeaway: Decide on your relationship with AI. Ask yourself: What’s your whip? A drawer to hide your phone in? A brick? An app that blocks social media? Turning off the wifi (gasp!) Whatever your whip is, the point is to purposefully withdraw and keep your distance so you don’t lose the pearls of your life.<br>2. Nurture your goodness as a thinker

Nietzsche saw the pull towards closeness with another as a kind of madness, and he prized the distance that lets a person keep power over themselves. He writes:<br>Love and truthfulness. - For the sake of love we are inveterate transgressors against truth and habitual thieves and receivers, who allow more to be true than appears to us true - that is why the thinker must always from time to time drive...