Modern society has broken our brains through distraction and anxiety. So the solution requires us to change society.
Having trouble concentrating? Or are you obsessing about things out of your control? Have you taken to seeing everything through a lens of “this is the one thing I can do”?
There’s an obvious reason. Our brains are broken. We just don’t want to face it.
There’s also an obvious why.
Our brains aren’t broken because of one thing. They are broken by all of the things.
We’re always adding more.
My seminary dean once said that the church keeps adding to the list of things that must be taught in seminary. But they never take anything away.
Every couple years: students need a class in that. After a decade, that’s a whole semester’s worth. A few decades on, and we’re talking a 100% increase in expectation. Literally doubling what students need to learn in the same amount of time.
We want to keep adding to the pile, but we aren’t willing to take anything away.
I blame Ronald Reagan; whose principle economic argument was that you can have both a tax cut and more revenue. So nobody has to give anything up. It was pure fantasy, of course. The bill always comes due. We just pretend it doesn’t. Because the charade makes us feel better.
Working more / expecting same.
Seventy years ago, the nuclear family lived on one full-time income. Now the average family with two parents is struggling to live on three. More people are working more jobs to functionally earn less money. Which also means we have less free time and more anxiety. Fear of job loss leaving us unable to make ends meet is a far graver reality today than half a century ago.
And let us not forget the economic trap we’re leading our children into with education debt as required for entry into relatively low-wage jobs in the modern economy.
Information is constant.
We are being bombarded, not daily, or even hourly, but spontaneously by emergency after emergency. “Breaking News” interrupts our days at random and produce a deep unpredictability in our sense of time and space.
Studies show that it takes over twenty minutes to regain the focus lost by interruption. The average worker is interrupted every three minutes.
Our daily lives, from cell phone notifications to open-concept offices spaces, are built with the principle function to interrupt you. To deprive you of your most attentive self.
We’re missing things.
The daily overwhelm means we can’t take in all that we’re receiving. People are telling us millions of things every day and so little of it actually gets stored in our memory.
The old adage that we need to say something seven times to be heard sounds quaint these days.
But I think it is also misleading. Our communication problem isn’t embedded fully in our speaking, but in our receiving. We aren’t hearing each other. And when we are, we’re hearing each other wrong because we have run out of patience and compassion.
We’re also sleeping less.
Screens and indoor lighting, caffeine and routines (remember how we’re working more?), are interrupting our sleep and producing effects on the brain as severe as intoxication.
Meanwhile our “grind” and “hustle” culture persuades us to wake up even earlier for our “side hustle”. Which, of course, they argue would provide the economic cushion we need to…take more time off…someday…I guess?
There are so many other things.
I can’t name them all.
But this is the problem. Our brains are broken. And not because the wrong person got elected president or because of COVID (though the coronavirus does create brain fog, it simply adds to the problem).
Our brains are broken because they are overwhelmed.
If the brain were a computer, we’re using up our RAM by 9am. We have a whole day in front of us, but our brains are like the spinning wheel of death. It claims to be doing something, but it can’t.
So what are we supposed to do? We force it to shut down and restart. Which is way easier on your computer than your brain, by the way.
If your brain is overwhelmed by 9am on Monday morning, you can’t go take a nap and go back at it, right? That lost time needs to be made up! And besides, we’re missing the real point.
Our brains are permanently overwhelmed.
Taking a nap on Monday morning doesn’t help long term when your brain then locks up by Monday afternoon.
Taking Sabbath on the weekend is essential to recharge our batteries. But let’s be honest. A good habit of Sabbath in this culture gets us maybe to Wednesday. If we’re lucky.
You can’t rest your way out of this.
This isn’t your problem. There is no individual solution to a problem that afflicts all of us.
You can’t quit Facebook and stop push notifications and expect that to fix your brain. Doing this will reduce your stress and improve your well being. That is something you do have control over.
But the economy is geared toward keeping your brain broken by its priorities of distraction and extortion. Other people make more money from you when you are too tired to resist. When you think the pain is inevitable. Just what you have to do to make ends meet.
We must inspire a culture of rest.
Let’s not wag our fingers at each other and say “you need to sleep more” without dismantling the “hustle” culture. One’s ability to sleep is compromised, not by technology, but by the way everything distracts and demands from us.
Whether I get a good night’s sleep is generally determined before I wake up in the morning.
For most people, getting more sleep isn’t an expression of a lack of willpower but the presence of anxiety. To be distracted and to do more. To be “good enough”. So even if it were about willpower, all the cultural forces of modern society are built to eradicate our willpower!
Our brains are so broken, we can’t tell they’re broken!
Inspiring a culture of rest is a clear antidote to the grind. And has been for thousands of years.
The point is that it isn’t just about you. And your rest.
It is about us. All of us.
And you help me when you are rested. But more importantly, you free me to rest when we build a culture of rest.
I can’t be expected to choose rest when the culture demands I grind. When rewards go to those who grind and punishments go to those who rest.
We need to make tangible space for rest.
So you need to rest and help others rest. For the sake of their brains. And the best part about that is that the more you do to help fix other people’s brains, the less they will interrupt others, including you.
Fixing our brains helps us fix other brains, which in turn, helps us fix our own brains even more!
A good word for that is restoration.
Or, even better, Shalom.