📿 Antidote to Brain Rot

The Oxford Dictionary word of 2024 offers solid motivation for meditation

🎧 Listen to me read this essay, above.

Hello you, Adreanna here for this week’s late dispatch of The Laundry —

Being a meditation teacher over the years means that I find that I’m also a bit of a carnival barker. I find myself, more often than I would like to, on my proverbial soapbox reminding people WHY meditation is actually useful, HOW this practice is beneficial, and WHAT the impact on their daily lives has the potential to be. It’s not my favorite part of teaching meditation. Not by a long shot. I would prefer to sing with the choir than bark to the crowd. In my ideal, I would like to just show up quietly, and guide folks in practice. And also — I honor that what allows many of us to relax into meditation (and let the practice work it’s magic) is a reminder of why we do this practice in the first place. Which of course, is personal, but a little suggestion helps.

It’s useful to have a bridge of understanding between the activity and it’s impact.

My mind flashes to the folks who have shown up to take a class with me, their arms literally crossed in skepticism, hoping that I’ll make a compelling enough case as to why something so simple as feeling their breath would ever be worth their time. To name the elephant in the carnival tent, meditation is not sexy. It doesn’t bark for itself. It won’t produce the flood of endorphins that a yoga class does when you’re moving your body through space. Meditation will not lift your buns or make you physically more attractive*. It’s quiet. It’s often boring. It’s personally confronting at times. Even meditation converts and devoted practitioners periodically need encouragement to keep their practice juicy with motivation. I know that I do. It’s nice to have a reminder why doing something so seemingly unproductive is one of the most healing things we could make time for.

Enter the experience of “brain rot” which, this week at least, is serving me fresh motivation for practice, and evoking a joyful desire to bark.

“Brain rot” was just selected by Oxford Dictionary as the word of the year for 2024. (I would counter that “brain rot” is more of a phrase, but if Oxford says it’s a word, then I’ll roll with it.) For context, the Oxford Dictionary chooses a word each year that reflects the current cultural moment. (For example, “vax” was chosen in 2021 as we were all grappling with COVID-19 vaccinations.) Apparently the usage of “brain rot” has surged 230% this year, and is used to describe the sluggish, foggy sensation that overwhelms the mind after consuming online content. 230 is a large percentage. This is a striking amount of people who are articulating something rotten that’s happening to their minds.

I know this sensation, too. I’m familiar with the “rot”. It’s the icky-cozy feeling I get after just a few minutes on Instagram, or online shopping, or falling into a Google rabbit hole — which is my personal online vice. It feels, to me, like a mental junk food bender. I get the curiosity munchies. I want a little mental snack. I have a hankering to look things up on the internet. Trivial things, that don’t enrich my life in any way, but have a yummy texture and are easy to digest. Ten minutes later I might emerge from my screen, having filled my mind with trivia and ephemera, feeling a little bloated and mentally flabby. Disconnected from the present. Brain rot doesn’t feel good. But, wow is that junk food bender compelling in the moment.

Art by Kathleen Ryan via @lostfoundny on Instagram

It’s a feeling that makes me want to hurl my iPhone into the woods and let the Earth reclaim it. I have a recurring fantasy of my digital devices sinking into the forest floor. I imagine fuzzy green moss creeping over the glass screens — screens that I spend so much time staring into — until they’re quilted over and reclaimed by nature, which is entirely unfazed by the seductive power of connecting to everything ever known at the push of a button. I imagine my phone smells like tinfoil and sulphur as it decomposes, and that the patch of Earth it sinks into produces tiny fluorescent blooms in the spring. I imagine my devices digested by the soil, and all of my captured attention released into the ether, like I’ve just broken the spell that’s kept my mind small and blurry and scrolling social media.

This is, of course, a fantasy. It’s not based in reality. There’s no future in which I see myself abandoning technology all together — especially now that I have a kid who’s being raised around screens and will need some guidance in how to relate to them. It doesn’t escape me that “brain rot” was first coined by Henry David Thoreau in “Walden”, which is the ultimate fantasy manifesto for hurling modernity into the woods. In it he writes:

“Why level downward to our dullest perception always, and praise that as common sense?…While England endeavors to cure the potato-rot, will not any endeavor to cure the brain-rot, which prevails so much more widely and fatally?”

These, I think are fantastic questions, Mr. Thoreau! Will not any endeavor to cure the brain rot? And if one does endeavor to cure the brain rot, by what means shall they proceed? I personally have a fantastic idea. It involves sitting down to practice. Come one come all to the carnival tent! It’s quiet and introspective in here! Come see the wonders of a mind that’s open and steady and clear!

One of most useful things about meditation (to be specific: mindfulness, or shamatha-vipassina meditation) is that it’s not meant to be entertaining. Unless of course, you’re entertained by the contents of your own mind. Even then, seeing your mind run circles around your usual list of topics — work, sex, money, chores, repeat, repeat, repeat — fails to entertain for very long. We lose interest in our thoughts after a while because there’s not much novelty in our daily concerns.

After a while we’re bound to get a little bored, and this is a beautiful thing. Boredom is fertile ground. When I would complain that I was bored as a kid, the instruction was always to go outside and play. Now I recognize this as another way of saying “use your imagination”. Boredom fosters creativity. It’s the space where ideas grow and new connections form. If we’re always entertained with someone else’s ideas, how will our own ideas work their way through as flashes of insight or inspiration? Maybe this is also a symptom of “brain rot”. A withering of imagination.

Art by Kathleen Ryan via @lostfoundny on Instagram

There’s a tactic that’s often used in teaching meditation to kids, where an instructor will shake a Mason jar full of water and glitter to illustrate what our thoughts do when we’re activated: either by running around and staying physically busy or busying our minds online. When the jar of glitter is set down on the table without any disturbance, the glitter gently settles at the bottom. Our thoughts are the glitter. Our mind is the jar. And this is what happens in mediation. What’s revealed through stillness is the open space of the water, the clarity to see through the jar. This clarity, this space is what we’re fostering when we practice. It’s the inverse of the sluggish, foggy, full sensation. It’s an antidote to brain rot.

I remembered an installation from photographer Peter Seidler back in 2012, who took “before” and “after” photos of participants of a month long meditation retreat and juxtaposed them side by side. I can’t explain why, but each and every participant looks undeniably more beautiful after their retreat. Embodied. Lit from within.

So scratch my previous statement — meditation DOES make you more attractive, I suppose. Especially if you find the qualities of steadiness and openness attractive. How’s that for a carnival bark? “Come one! Come all! To this little round cushion where we appear to be doing nothing!” And yet, there is so much that’s happening. Namely, the healing of our fractured attention span. And probably a little boredom, which in itself IS a novelty in a culture where we never have to be bored.

It beats throwing our technology into the woods because then I couldn’t connect with you here. And the ability to reach through the ether and find one another less alone in our world is also beautiful thing. :)

🌺 Thank you for reading along with us at The Laundry — we know that your attention is sacred. It’s the most valuable resource you have. And we’re honored you share it with us. May there be something here that enriches your practice, whatever that practice may be.

🎧 WHERE IS MY MIND — THE PIXIES (PIANO COVER : MAXENCE CYRIN)