Brain Nourishment
Brain rot bankrupts the soul and senses. Brain nourishment replenishes and enhances it
👋🏼 Hey, I’m Joanna! I’m a communications consultant sharing insights and ideas relating to democracy, wellbeing, business, AI, culture, spiritualism and the human condition…read on if this has piqued your interest.
“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow.” – Pico Iyer
As the end of the year draws closer, and as we feel the depth of winter – the stillness and starkness of nature, the sharp cold frost and brutally short days – the only thing I want to do right now is to slow down, root myself, reflect on the past year and to nourish myself.
This is something which many of us can relate to because the stillness and coldness of the weather demands that we stay in, slow down and nourish ourselves like the rest of nature does.
Yet without this external seasonal change, would we willingly slow down and take it easy? Would we feel an instinctual move to nourish ourselves and our senses, gravitate inwards instead of being overstimulated from outside influences?
I ask because I’ve been thinking about the Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year for 2024 – brain rot – and its complete opposite. Brain nourishment.
When I hear the expression “brain rot” I feel a bit ill, as if my own brain is rotting by reading the words. This is why I’m focusing on “brain nourishment” and what it adds. It’s about respecting our brains and what they’re there for – thinking, having time to dwell in wonder, creating ideas, forming connections and living and thriving with physical objects and human beings. If we think about it in this way, brain rot is all the opposite things.
If something is in the process of rotting, it’s on the path to dying. If something is nourished, it remains active and alive through feeling and connection – something which is vital if we want to make meaning of information and use it rather than consume it to the point where consuming overwhelms and drains us.
Of all things, our brain is the bounty and reviver of our lives. It’s a memory keeper, emotion-propeller, physical-instigator and the seat of our intellectual health. Which is why it’s a mystery that so many people are enabling brain rot to exist, despite the mental exhaustion it brings. Rather than leaning into the low-hanging fruit activities which create brain rot, we need to put in the enjoyable effort of the more time-consuming things which nourish our brains, and in turn, our lives.
‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration”.
Oxford University Press noted that ‘brain rot’ has gained new prominence this year as a term used to capture concerns about the impact of consuming excessive amounts of low-quality online content, especially on social media. The term increased in usage frequency by 230% between 2023 and 2024. That’s an alarming increase. But why?
Accepting or tolerating low-quality anything is likely to lead to a lesser life. It’s a low-grade energy which feeds and filters into everything, from how we speak to how we act to how we treat and perceive others. It’s a discomforting hum which turns sharpness to slop, refinement to roughness and standards to shameful behaviour as the new norm.
There will always be variations in quality, and we should celebrate the full spectrum of this. But when most of it is low-quality we will feel the low-vibrational feeling of that. In turn, it will be more difficult to uplift our vibration into the higher frequency feeling of joy, wonder, beauty and style. That’s why we need to take brain rot seriously, and not just as a token reflection of 2024.
Rot indicates the reduction of something – energy, expectations and excitement. If we are to spend time scrolling through low-quality information, the act of scrolling itself will lead to rotting as it unnaturally speeds up the process.
After all, a ripe apple is sweet through the slow nourishment from the sun, water, air quality and space it has when growing. We are always a mirror of nature, and to spend time creating and consuming as if there’s a constant deadline will inevitably lead to a shorter-self life and a faster rotting process.
In contrast, to nourish is to savour. It’s recognising that every moment is worthy of deep, full attention, and that by investing our energy this way every moment will count and gift us something back in return.
Nourishment is about richness and riches. It doesn’t mean mountains of financial wealth but possessing the presence and patience to invest.
To nourish is to not stretch ourselves wider and thinner. There’s no rush or hurry involved. It’s the ability to go deeper, to take and offer depth of experience and meaning, to feel something in its full breadth. That’s what it means to be nourished and to give nourishment.
And as the global mental health crisis keeps revving up – continuing to run with speed, whilst we remain disengaged with the systems and lifestyles catered around the very things that are causing it in the first place such as social media, disconnection from community and friends, slow and gentle living – we must offer and embody the gentleness which nourishment provides.
When you feel brain rot sink in, that’s your signal to breathe life into your brain again.
Brain nourishment is about doubling down on what nourishes your intellect, emotions and growth. As our intellect speaks of our innate humanness, divesting your attention into a thousand different directions will not enable your intellect to grow.
When we scroll, we reduce space for the seeds of silence to grow into thoughts and ideas which help and uplift us in our own unique ways.
My word for 2024 was “truth” and I’ve received so many lessons from leaning into this word. My truth, and I sense it’s a truth that many will relate to, is that I love knowledge, true knowledge. If we aren’t teaching something – facts, feelings, a different perspective – what are we even doing?
The truth is that when we keep scrolling, we participate in the process of brain rot. When we scroll, we don’t feel the gravity or the weight of the words in front of us. This fundamentally alters how we communicate.
Yet when we spend more time and energy into finding, rather than searching, the process of finding will nourish us back so long as we give our time, energy and attention to it so that our senses are fully engaged, active and alive. What is being said, and what are you taking from it?
Looking without absorbing, seeing without sensing and consuming without thinking is the antithesis to living. When we choose what to do with information, information – or I should say the algorithm – has less of a chance of choosing what to do with us.
As I think of what 2025 brings, and especially my writing goals, I want to bring more richness and nourishment to what I’m saying. Or as Brett Scott brilliantly said in my recent interview with him, he seeks to bring a “warmer take on the world” through his writing.
Through thinking of what gift we give and receive through our own creations and the creations of others, the more you and I will feel nourished and gifted in the moment which is, I think, what communicating something, anything, should be more about.
Wishing you a peaceful Christmas 🌟