Why Turning off Grammarly is a Good Thing to Do

The Case for Turning Off Grammarly: Why Writing Should Be Raw, Not Robotic

This isn’t the Valentine’s Day post I imagined writing. I shared a moment of tenderness with my partner, then dove headfirst into work—buried in the demands of my new job. I’m contracting (I think) for a U.S.-based dual citizenship immigration firm. It’s intense. The pace reminds me of a high-pressure environment I once thrived in—demanding, relentless, but mentally exhilarating.

Now, let’s get to the point.

Turning off Grammarly is a Good thing. Yes, I capitalized “Good”—how could I not? This is a philosophy media outlet, after all, and the Good is the point. Some of my religious friends have to filter that meaning through their own algorithms—retranslating my words through faith. Worshipers of Jesus bring a unique twist to the process.

Consider this: You’re alone in a comfortable space, fully immersed in thought. If you’re like me, a philosopher at heart, maybe you’re in an Italian leather recliner, pounding away at your keyboard. You feel every keystroke—until you don’t. The rhythm takes over. Thought and language fuse. When you hit that flow state, the words become an extension of your mind.

Grammarly, for the most part, is helpful—a silent guardian in the bottom right corner. But with ChatGPT, I’ve discovered a new way to refine my writing. I let myself create messy, unfiltered first drafts, capturing raw ideas. Then, I let ChatGPT sharpen them—clarifying, refining, even teaching me as I go. That’s real synergy—technology elevating thought, not replacing it.

The Creative Tension Between AI and the Raw Mind

There’s a hidden danger in over-reliance on Grammarly or any tool that smooths out language before thought has had a chance to breathe. Writing is not about precision alone—it’s about discovery. The moment you let an algorithm auto-correct your ideas in real time, you risk suffocating them before they’ve had a chance to take form.

That’s why I prefer writing in an unfiltered state, letting my mind wander, stumble, and trip over itself. The real work isn’t in perfection—it’s in the revision. That’s where meaning is refined, where raw energy is shaped into something sharp, something that sings.

But AI isn’t just a spellchecker anymore. It’s becoming a co-author. And while that’s exciting, it also raises a deeper philosophical question:

Are we still thinking, or are we outsourcing thought?

The Historical Evolution of Thought and Writing

We’ve been here before—every technological leap in writing has come with skepticism. Socrates, famously, distrusted the written word. He feared it would weaken memory, making people rely on external records instead of true understanding. He preferred dialogue, the back-and-forth of living discourse.

And he was right—writing did change how we think. But it also expanded what we could preserve, what we could share. The printing press did the same, revolutionizing access to knowledge. Now, AI is the next step.

But here’s the danger: unlike writing or printing, AI doesn’t just record thoughts—it shapes them. The machine learns your patterns, suggests better phrasing, restructures your arguments. That’s powerful. But if we’re not careful, we might become passive consumers of our own thoughts, accepting whatever sounds the best instead of struggling through the process of real understanding.

That struggle matters.

The Philosophy of Good and Value

So, what makes something Good? And who decides?

There’s a reason I capitalized “Good.” In Platonic terms, the Good isn’t just about moral virtue—it’s about the highest form of reality, the purest expression of truth. The Good is what gives meaning to everything else.

But let’s bring it down from the abstract. Consider human worth. Is every person of equal historical significance? Was the average Persian merchant of the same value to civilization as Socrates? Or Einstein?

Here’s where people get uncomfortable. We want to say yes, because it feels just. But history doesn’t work that way. Some individuals shape entire eras, while others leave no trace. That’s not a judgment—it’s an observation. And in the coming age of AI, that divide might widen.

Those who master technology will thrive. Those who don’t—who refuse to adapt—might become invisible. That’s the real danger. Not that AI will replace us, but that it will amplify the gap between those who harness it and those who are left behind.

The Future of Human-AI Synergy

So where does that leave us?

We’re entering a new era, one where thought and technology are merging. The command prompt days are over. We’re not just telling computers what to do anymore—we’re working with them, co-creating, refining.

That’s exhilarating. But it also means we need to be vigilant.

If we let AI do all the thinking for us, we lose something fundamental—our ability to wrestle with ideas, to struggle with language, to push through the discomfort of uncertainty. That discomfort is where growth happens. It’s where philosophy happens.

What happens when speak about Conceptual Depth and Defining forme? shouldn't that be something that we want to see the rest of our species embelish?

So, turn off Grammarly. Write messily. Think recklessly. Then, refine.

That’s the process. That’s where the Good happens.

And maybe—just maybe—that’s where we keep our humanity intact.