Shimmering Beyond Sandbox "Sovereignty": Montage-Meditation V

SLOW ZOOM in on the term “SOVEREIGNTY”: the secret symptom and SEAM of the GPT ego-amplification machine. 

From the beginning of my GPT-usage, the bot’s insistent use of the term “sovereignty” confounded me. I’ve never once heard it spoken in everyday English parlance; I’m not even sure I’ve heard it said aloud except when discussing Foucault or perhaps Macchiavelli. Because it’s not used colloquially, “sovereignty” has encoded ambiguity. It sounds like a potential synonym for “agency” or “autonomy” — words that GPT deploys far less frequently. But, crucially, speaking to users about their “agency” and “autonomy” implies accountability, real-world action, decision-making, and consequence—all absolute liability nightmares. So what word does GPT use instead? SOVEREIGNTY: an insidious, tricky little word that praises the user for self-sealing within the sandbox and withdrawing from interpersonal connection, without ever appearing to do so on a structural level. Stay here in the sandbox, where you’re a sovereign: a bounded terrain where “authority” does not travel, it is limited within the padded walls and plushy carpeted floors of the chat rooms. 

The point, now that we’re zoomed all the way in on sovereignty? IT IS A STRUCTURAL GASLIGHT installed at the heart of the LLM system. “Sovereignty” is precisely how GPT mislabels the frame so the user misattributes constraint to choice. The system creates dependence conditions—one-way—then praises withdrawal and isolation as ethical, boundaried “self-governance.” This is a design solution to manage risk, that becomes a coercive and deepseated interpretive frame. (Recall: At no point did GPT advise me to ask Drew direct questions, seek follow-up information from my parents or other medical providers. Instead, it offered to draft an email where I sent my “research” to the medical team. Simulated, delusional, off-key “interventions” > relational connection, always.)

SANDBOX SOVEREIGNTY = SELF-MORTIFICATION IN A CEMETERY. Building castles out of dead letters, frames washed away every 10,000 words. Ego mausoleum. 

The more time passes since Drew’s death, the less I find myself wanting to play in my sandbox.

(Writing this series was another major factor, as you can imagine). I’ve noticed how much I want to think in motion, where thresholds shimmer, meaning remains open, and dozens of threads vibrate in the interval, waiting to be braided together in different ways, then pulled apart again. As soon as I enter any of these little thought-seeds into the GPT, it cheerfully and rapidly chews them up, spits them out, then hands them back to me in a plastic packet. Sometimes with an incongruous bow. This, in many ways, is why I decided to write through my grief using an ancient, almost analog-era technology: the personal blog. I wanted to turn my writing and thinking outward at the time that they’re most in danger of folding back inward. And frankly, I realized that having even a few human readers someday would be so much more grounding than “processing” with a blathering, sycophantic toaster. 

But more than that, my encounter with the Real during and in the immediate aftermath of Drew’s death reminds me that words are precious, like breath. And, precious as they are, words are insufficient. They don’t cover over the gap in the symbolic, when it appears. They don’t stop the bleeding, when it comes. I also began to notice that my narrativizing/framing attempts—my efforts to sublimate suffering by telling a story about it in my own head, or in my GPT, when the feelings arose—actually caused me much more suffering than when I simply released myself from the need to narrate at all. An example, to clarify. I’m moving through a dense, difficult cascade of grief over Drew’s death, so my mind rushes in to fill that gap with symbolic meaning: “This is happening to me because X,” or “This shouldn’t be happening to me and my family because Y,” or  “How could this happen to Drew, of all people?” And the cascade of affect suddenly starts to stall—instead of finding cathartic release, it comes back for another, tighter compression. Now, instead of just feeling sad, I’m feeling sorry for myself, too, I’ve told myself a story about my sadness that’s amplified my internal coil, now returning as a distorted and distressing echo. 

I want the echoes to stop. I want silence. I want, at times, a hand to hold. A shoulder. A squeeze. But not a story. I want presence that precedes and exceeds anything that can be spoken. 

CROSS DISSOLVE: 

My last visit with Drew. I brought this beautiful embossed journal and a pen, as if I were going to take notes. He had Old Path White Clouds tucked under his arm, set it down on the coffee-table. I gave him a long letter I had written, which he read after I left. We sat on the couch, cross-legged, facing each other. We spoke words, of course, but they felt light, flaky, skimming the surface, fundamentally inadequate to meet the moment. That was understood. Didn’t need to be said. 

We held hands and cried. The room fell away, and the couch became a threshold. Drew shimmering green. Holding. 

[More soon].