Two teaspoons of information, please.
I've listened to dozens of podcast episodes about what to eat and why. I've read at least five or six books on nutritional science. And I had two small packets of sweet Bhujia three hours before writing this post.
The same goes for many other areas of life. I have a good amount of information on:
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Mental health
- Happiness
- Emotional intelligence
Now, I am health-aware but not healthy, happiness-aware but not happy, and so on. My brain is somehow convinced that knowledge gathering is the final step of the process. Information was supposed to be a means to an end – the end being living a good life – but it has become an end in itself.
We all know the story about sugar: We evolved in a food-scarce environment, so we want to eat calorie-dense food. Our brains don't recognize that sugar is abundant now, so they don’t stop the eating frenzy.
The case of information consumption is somewhat similar. We evolved in an environment where information made a life-or-death difference (where is the source of water? Is an enemy tribe coming? Is this fruit poisonous?). But our brains don’t recognize that times have changed. We still crave information as if a bunch of information-dense media will change our lives in an instant.
I don’t mean to imply that all information is worthless. Information is important, but only if it's followed by enough time for rumination and then action. But we have displaced the time and action part with more information. Now it’s just information, followed by more information, followed by even more information.
We have recognized sugar for what it is. It’s time we recognize that passive information consumption can be just as hollow and addictive as sugar.