The Oxford University Press picked “brain rot” as the phrase of the year, defining it as the perceived result of scrolling through social media and consuming the internet's endless waves of memes and video clips. Today in “On-Target,” Mark Jacob and I praise an NPR report about how the phrase was coined in 1854 by Henry David Thoreau, who wrote, “Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?” The enemy, for both Thoreau and modern people, is oversimplification and a degraded capacity to know what’s true—aided, dangerously, by propaganda outlets like Fox News.
Cristin Ellis, an expert on Thoreau, offered this valuable summary of Thoreau’s thinking: “Try our hardest to commit ourselves to the things that matter most in our brief and miraculous lives…Devote your attention to what you know, in your heart of heart, really matters: meaning, beauty, love, wonder and gratitude for this earth."
That’s useful guidance from the 19th century worth reflecting on as we confront our realities ahead.
Jacob is author of the excellent “Stop the Presses” newsletter. Check if out if you haven’t already.
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