I just finished my Philosopher’s Note on Michael Easter’s great book Scarcity Brain.
As you know if you’ve been following along, we featured wisdom from his first book called The Comfort Crisis.
Michael is a great writer and I loved both of his books.
Now…
I decided to create this +1 because I found the connection between the wisdom I shared in a recent +1 called One Coke = 1 Year of Sugar 😲 and the final Big Idea I featured in my Note to be fascinating.
Let’s get straight to work.
So…
Scarcity Brain is all about how our brains are wired to run on what Michael calls “The Scarcity Loop.”
There are three parts: “Opportunity → Unpredictable Rewards → Quick Repeatability.”
Our modern world (and the engineers behind the screens we use and the food we eat!) take advantage of this “scarcity mindset” in less-than-awesome ways.
In the context of information overload, Michael tells us: “At the start of the twentieth century, humans spent no time taking in digital information. By the 2020s, the average person spent between eleven and thirteen hours of their day consuming information on-screen and through speakers. Now 40 percent of this content is ‘user-generated.’ It’s the YouTube and TikTok videos we watch, blogs and Reddit threads we read, and many podcasts we listen to.”
He continues by saying: “Some scholars estimate that in one day we are now exposed to more information than a person in the fifteenth century encountered in a lifetime. Much of it leverages the scarcity loop to make us feel self-righteous, outraged, happy, sad, or correct—all so we’ll see ads.”
And: “The Columbia University media scholar Tim Wu explained, ‘A consequence of [the advertising business model] is a total dependence on gaining and holding attention. This means that under competition, the race will naturally turn to the bottom; attention will almost invariably gravitate to the more garish, lurid, outrageous alternative.’ This trickle of unpredictable negative information grabs us, leveraging the loop.”
Plus: “And this affects us. Consider, immediately after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, investigated two groups. The first group was made up of people who watched six or more hours of televised bombing coverage. The second group was people who actually ran in the 2013 Boston Marathon.
The findings: The first group, the bombing news bingers, were more likely to develop PTSD and other mental health issues. That’s worth repeating: people who binge-watched bombing news on TV from the comfort of home had more psychological trauma than people who were actually bombed.”
THAT’S CRAZY.
🤪🤪🤪!!!
I REPEAT...
Research shows that we are exposed to MORE INFORMATION IN A SINGLE DAY than our ancestors from the fifteenth century were exposed to in THEIR ENTIRE LIFETIMES.
😲 🤯 !!!
So is the fact that people who watched 6+ hours of news of the Boston Marathon had more PTSD symptoms than people who were actually there.
All of which brings us back to the connection we made about that single can of Coke.
Remember that wisdom gem from Casey Means' great book Good Energy?
She told us: “Consider this: when a kid drinks one bottle of Coke, they ingest as much added sugar as they might have had in an entire year if they were living 150 years ago.”
One can of Coke = the amount of added sugar we might have had 150 years ago.
One day of normal information inputs = AN ENTIRE LIFETIME in the 1500s.
THAT’S CRAZY.
🤪🤪🤪!!!
(Right?)
Today’s +1.
If you feel so inspired…
Pause.
Reflect on those stats.
And commit to doing ONE thing that can help your mind and body function more naturally…
TODAY.
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