Good morning,
Well, in case you were wondering, the word that has won 37,000 votes to be crowned Oxford Word of the Year 2024 is brain rot. To me, brain rot sounds like the stuff of nightmares. I imagine a disease which destroys people’s humanity. Equally, the word could be a moral judgment about what happens when a person’s mind is rotted away with sin and vice. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, however, it means the "supposed deterioration of a person's mental or intellectual state especially as a result of overconsumption of online content considered to be trivial or unchallenging."
That’s something I recognise only too well. Like many, I spend a lot of time online. In recent years I’ve noticed a marked tendency in myself to use trivial, if amusing online content like cat and dog memes to distract myself. I sometimes feel as if I am thereby less able to concentrate. At the same time, I know my particular neurodiversity means I enjoy ever-changing content. Well, I do, until my brain becomes overwhelmed with too much stimulation.
For Christians, the season of Advent is an invitation away from distraction towards a focus on what really matters. Traditionally, this takes the form of attending to the return of Jesus Christ in glory at this world’s end, as well as on preparing to worship Christ when Christmas comes.
Certainly, focus and attention can be powerful counterweights to the lures of endless distraction. The philosopher Iris Murdoch suggests that ‘attention is rewarded with knowledge of reality.’ I think she means that when we focus on things of substance we see the world more clearly and truly.
The gospels reveal that for Jesus Christ daring to focus on that which slows us down and makes us attend to what really feeds us is essential. One of the striking things about his behaviour is how often he dared to unplug from the endless demands on his time. He retreats alone to pray and be silent. When the crowds want him most, he makes himself completely unavailable.
The fact is that getting offline or going on retreat or simply being unavailable for any length of time is unrealistic for most of us. However, the notion of brain rot brings me up short. It reminds me that to take quality breaks from online distraction and offer my attention to things which demand real care, like reading or praying or just staring out at the world in wonder, can bring a richer quality of life. The trivial distractions which might lead to so-called brain-rot are fine in small quantities, but they are as nothing to real ‘brain food.’