- Not The Only One!
- 02 Jan 25
- Post # 171
- ” BRAIN ROT”
- Howdy,
- Thanks again for checking in. I don’t believe that I’m the only person that felt as if 2024 had on track shoes and just made a mad sprint for the finish line , and just completely turned the marathon into a forty yard dash ☺️☺️. We survived another year and if you are anything like me, survival could just be an understatement ☺️☺️. Unless we have had some traumatic event, such as a family crisis, a health scare, or some kind of financial melt down, we should count ourselves blessed. I’m not going to mention those incidental blows to our hearts, where someone else thought that it was some kind of a speed bump, or door mat. ☺️ If it’s not our kids, then usually someone else that we fail to vet properly ☺️ At the end of the year , if you find yourself whole and something close to peace of mind, then celebrate the win.
- Out with the old and in with the new. Welcome to 2025, which will be another year with some fast balls and that unexpected curve as well. One of two things that take place at the end of a year and the beginning next new year is reflection and goal setting. While I do prescribe to planning, I’m not really the resolution type of person. I guess it goes to personality type. Some of us will set goals and just absolutely knock them out of the park. There is some percentage that will miss their goals by a Longshot and then maybe just be super critical of themselves, or go down in a blaze of glory, by continuing to try and open a door, that is closed for some good reason, that just hasn’t been revealed to them yet. Of course it could just be simply biting off more than they could chew☺️☺️. No matter, most will find themselves somewhere in the middle between, what may be seen as two opposing extremes. The Bible is just so full of wisdom and my brain quickly jumped to the story in the new testament, where people are making plans to go to another city, set up shop and make a profit. God’s Spirit ask the question, ” how do you know what your life will look like”, in the next year? It was a pertinent question for them two thousand years ago and for us today as well. Plan yes, absolutely, but hold your plans with an open hand and not a clinched fist, and if nothing else leave room for God to intervene in your plans, because while we don’t know the future, He most certainly does☺️☺️
- I don’t know about you, but I’m actually getting very curious as to what this has to do with ” Brain Rot”☺️☺️. Well , brain rot is actually the word of the year. You could think of it as Casey Kassem’s count down of the biggest songs of the year to see who gets to end up on top, and becomes the number one song of the year. Whenever we start to quantify things as to the best of the best as Top Gun always likes to say, I just feel that there is some part of it , that’s subjective. We will talk about a movie , book, or some actor, as with the Oscars, and there is never a hundred percent consensus. Having a word of the year actually makes a little bit more sense to me , than some of the days that we have designated for various other things, such as national take your pet to work day.☺️☺️ I think that we tolerate those things because there are just so many of them, that there has just got to be one that catches our fancy. Maybe national coffee day, or pizza day and who doesn’t like ice cream?☺️☺️. Who comes up with these days and there designations, because I would love to get in on it and it wouldn’t be something along the lines of national clean your chimney day. ☺️☺️My dark side would make it something like national sit down with your ex day and tell them all all the things that You were wrong about and having to cap it off with a hug☺️☺️.
- This word of the year thing is a little bit fascinating to me. A little background. It started back in 1971 and it started with Merriam-Webster, mostly known as the dictionary people ,but now it falls to Oxford University Press. They apparently took a survey of thirty seven thousand people, not a huge sample size , and along with some online tracking determined that this was the most sort out word of the year, which sometimes can also be a phrase . . I said a little fascinating because the word of the year just tracks along with the culture. Just looking at some of the recent history over the last twenty years , we can see how culture has really driven the choices that have been made. Let’s just look at a few to see the point. Going all the way back to 2002, the word was WMD, who could ever forget weapons of mass destruction? Just a few highlights to make you smile and remember where you were and maybe just maybe make you feel a little older☺️☺️. 03 was ” metrosexual, I still have one of those in my life and I was so grateful for a way describe him….we love to label people ☺️☺️. 04 was ” red/ blue/ purple states, and yes that was twenty years ago and for me still qualifies as a ” Hoot”☺️☺️.05 was ” podcast “, 09 was ” unfriend”, 2013 was ” selfie”, 2014 was ” vape”. 2015 had a split decision because it was shared between the ” tear emoji and binge watch”….go figure ☺️ The one from last year was ” Rizz” , which if you didn’t get that one, it stands for charisma. That may have been a little fun to look back, but maybe also an opportunity to cringe just a little, our culture and technology has made it possible for us to come up with a reason to use a word such as ” unfriend “, sad actually. I get stalkers, but it has just become another way to burn bridges. I didn’t mention ” ghosting ” but it made the list as well.
- I’m not saying that I have a personal favorite, just because I singled out ” unfriend “. I know quite a few parents who wish that the word ” vape ” was never a thing ☺️☺️. As I said much of this is culture driven and as to whether you believe that it’s chasing the culture or setting the tone for the culture, here we find ourselves with ” Brain Rot “. Now I will tell you that this mostly started with the amount of time that we spend endlessly scrolling, mostly on social media. I don’t believe that any of us can deny that smartphones and the internet has drastically changed our lives forever . Most of us can’t even remember a time or how we got along without constant and instant information at our fingertips. Looking for a place to eat or checking on a start time for a movie is just second nature now. However, with most things in life it’s should be about some kind of moderation, because it’s not all good or all bad, but the potential for both does exist. Now, when you look at some of the research for Brain Rot, it does talk about low levels or low quality of information that we scroll to . This also brings us back to something that is subjective. What is low quality for some, may not be for someone else, but there is a bigger picture here that we are missing out on. I think that on the surface we can just see that it’s a waste or at least not the best use of our time. I wonder if we have just become the kids from the late nineties and early two thousands who were afraid to go outside and play. ☺️☺️. It’s just a thought and I know that it’s a little bit more complicated than that, but it might do us good to take a walk without our electronic leash or to pick up a new hobby or even better yet go serve someone and have a real relationship with someone other than your closes screen ☺️☺️. I’m not preaching, guilty at times as well.
- Going outside to play, could be a solution for some, but then there’s that FOMO. Fear of missing out….really? What did I miss out on when I took that twenty minute walk? Well, yes there could have been some update as in someone freshening up there profile photo or post that recipe, or pictures from their last vacation, and guess what? It’s still going to be there tomorrow and the next day, and the day after that, plenty of time for you to give a 👍 like ☺️☺️. Here’s what you really missed out on , and it’s reduced brain compacity….what? Yeah, the data shows that scrolling changes our brain patterns and the way that we receive information about rewards and changes our alertness. It seems harmless to just be scrolling, but could have long term effects down the road that we are just not thinking about or paying attention to. A couple of quick notables. I have trouble sleeping, so I pick up my phone or turn on the TV and they both can be a stimulant much like caffeine. So instead of helping me to sleep, it’s actually having the opposite effect until I’m just so dead tired, that the TV eventually ends up watching me drool all over my pillow ☺️☺️ . I don’t think that we want to believe that the things that we watch changes our brains and our habits, but we don’t have to look any further than the millions upon millions of porn addicts that are struggling to make it out the door, or to go to bed at night, or be productive at work. It use to be a primarily male addiction, but no more 😕. It’s just one of those invasive things in our lives, and just like those snakes in southern Florida are consuming everything in it’s path, porn is doing the same thing to people’s lives. I don’t want to make it sound simple, but what watch and think about matters!!
- What we think about will determine our actions, and those actions will most often determine the path or course of our lives. I usually get a little sad around this time of the year. In stead of getting excited about the playoffs, I think about the season being almost over and then football is over until next season. My thought process could drive me to watch the CFL, but is that really football? ☺️☺️. What I’m trying to say without , the not so good humor is that the things that we think about does often move us into a certain direction and manifest themselves into actions and that they don’t always play out in a way that is to our advantage. I’m not even sure that most of us know that we are manipulated with “AI” and that the things that we click on encourages the technology to continue to send us more similar content or images. I think that we have trained ourselves to mostly disregard the ad content, but it is about money, so while you are mindless clicking, someone, somewhere is making money off of You.
- Most of us have some understanding of what a double negative is. We may know it from grammar, but it also takes place in every day life, maybe we think of it as overkill. Someone once explained to me that we don’t guard against our strengths. It just doesn’t make sense to us because if I’m strong in a particular area, then I’m good, or I’m probably going to get better….right? Actually not guarding against a strength is a vulnerability that you never see coming, mostly because of your confidence in that particular arena. Not being on guard means that you aren’t just not protecting the parameter, but there is a lack reevaluation, not nurturing or sharpening something that may be becoming dull or exposed from lack of care. It’s a double negative because you have to move two spaces back to get to where you should have been all along. Think about what you may do for your profession and the mandatory continuing educational requirements that go along with. It’s a strength, you studied hard , got established, but you keep it sharp. It may not seem like the same thing or a little bit of a stretch, but I learned that lesson from a failed marriage. An area that I thought that I was doing pretty good in. How does all of this contribute to our brain rot? We aren’t and see no need to protect what our eyes see or our brain’s ingest. We just take it for granted or as they say as a grain of salt.
- I want to say that it’s your right to spend your free time in any way that You see fit. You should spend it doing what you enjoy and what relaxes you. I believe that we think about porn as being different from watching a bunch of negative political disinformation, but I would argue that they are one in the same or pretty close in the end result, and don’t send me emails about how porn has been a homewrecker and a relationship killer, because I can point to instances of that being true of politics as well. Let’s not get caught up on the content, as much as about how it invades our thoughts and actions and how those things propagate to whom we become and how it effects how we see the world, interact with the world and our influences on others. I’m not sounding the alarm about scrolling, but I do believe that it’s something that we should absolutely be more intentional about and maybe set a timer to be used to set some limits. I would suggest, if you aren’t snowed in somewhere and you are spending hours upon hours with your face and eyeballs in front of a screen and it’s none work related, …then you might want to learn to go outside and play ☺️☺️
- I will leave you with this today. Even though we may always like to rush or run to the worse case scenario, it’s not always that, but it will sometimes grow into things that we hadn’t considered. It’s nearly impossible to be bombarded by all of the things that we see each and every day and not have it create some kind of longing or desire, be it shopping, food or a physical relationship of some sort. Corporate America has made it it’s primary goal in life to create needs in our lives and often things that we didn’t even know that we needed ☺️☺️ . The half brother of Jesus put it this way. Temptations comes from our own thoughts and desires and they can drag us off and entice us. Those desires can often, not always, lead us off into the wrong direction, and yes, that is a paraphrase ☺️☺️. Don’t let the ” Brain Rot ” of 2024, steal and piggyback into your 2025. Again not saying that all media is bad, definitely not condoning porn or any other malfeasance that you may find on a screen somewhere.
- Here is my final thought on brain rot. If we weren’t on something close to a steady diet of things that clearly stand in opposition to God, then maybe we wouldn’t find it so hard for us to believe that He loves us as much as He does….don’t know, just a thought!!
- Till Next Time ✌️ Peace!
- Sandy The Southerner
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