Mental pollution by scientific community is defined as the acquisition of useless information which creeps into our living room, bedroom, work area etc… and cause hindrance and havoc for our creative faculties, decision making and learning processes. In simple terms, these can be termed as distractions which appear to sway me and you from our path of greatness.
In the current world, where we live is the world of information and technology. With advent of technology and Internet, a tornado of information has been made accessible and available to masses with click of few finger movements. Accessibility to information becomes a mental pollutant, when the consumed content is not of any use and distracts us from our own objective. Such distractions have increased exponentially in past few years and have caused impaired decision making, criminal mindset and general numbness and inactivity of mind. Clinically, we are seeing rapid rise in attention disorders in kids, learning disorders in adolescents and mental disorder cases in adults.
The real question to ask is ….
Is there a way out?
Can we learn to control such phenomena in our life?
Yes, there is a way out. You can control the media consumption of your life. The answer is in 2 words ‘Being Responsible’ for the content you consume, forward, share and multiply. The following few paragraphs encapsulate the ways one could manage ‘Mental Pollution’.
One of the greatest minds of the world said, “You don’t get a brain you want, you get a brain you deserve”. Neurologically, Brain is just a neuro-muscle, it learns and adapts depending on experience it gains via the sensory stimuli. What it means is, Brain is going to learn what you feed it. Like healthy body needs healthy nourishment. Similarly, a healthy mind needs healthy experience/content. One may want to balance intellectual, academic, healthy entertainment and sometimes junk to give good experience your mind. So, censoring certain amount of media could be preferable
Mental development and physical development follow the same underlying principle. Healthy inputs lead to healthy outputs. You may sort the content based on the reviews posted by so many people around the globe or based on recommendations of your friends and family. You can also look out for inspirational content over internet. Inspirational content in form of movies, videos, books or even text should be always welcome.
Recently, I have realized most of the knowledge of the world still resides in hard printed books. Its unfathomable to acknowledge that people have just stopped reading books, just because snackable content is available so easily. Reading books based on recommendations from internet be a good way out to avoid the so called ‘snackable content’ served to you on your screens.
In summary, Mental pollution is a real thing. It does affect mental faculties like creativity, rationality, learning etc. If overdone, can lead to real clinical diseases. Hence, one needs to start becoming aware about this and act accordingly.
Nihit M
12 thoughts on “Mental Pollution: Hazard of Modern Society”
My suggestion to stop mental pollution is to have quality people around you .
Good and useful topic…
Very Useful topic for discussion in the current World
Nice Nihit.. its useful
A very well thought and nicely written article.
Very relevant topic Nihit. Here are some of my thoughts triggered by your article:
There are two kinds of content that we are everyday bombarded with – relevant because it entertains you, make you think, make you act and make you better than what you were before consuming that content and the other is irrelevant, frivolous and not your kind. The ability to identify the second one either through source credibility or quick read will help us save us from mental pollution.
Your point on books still being the best source is very relevant. In an era where all of us are suffering from attention deficit, we need to take charge of all our sensory organs because all our sensory organs are continuously sending signals to brain. Books involve some of our sensory organs but still leave leave some space in mind to imagine because not all sensory organs were active. Long format articles, books also ensure we remain on one topic long enough to let the impressions be formed. Snackable content make us move from one topic to another a bit too quickly and we don’t make commitment to the topic – it becomes a good fodder for small talks in networking sessions, hence still relevant but fail to stimulate serious thinking in most cases. Books do help us avoid mental pollutants.
Good topic worth discussing. Keep writing to stimulate discussions and cross learning.
There are so many traps all around us – clickbaits, AI driven content suggestion etc. to lure us into snanckable content. This cheaply available dopamine overdose is highly addictive and makes it very difficult to enjoy serious, slow, knowledge building stuff as latter does not fetch you high levels of drug (dopamine) you crave for.
Well thought and nicely written, these r the real problems being faced by the society, indeed an eye opener
Nihit has raked up correct issue where we have to be prudent about what info to consume as we do in buffet spread about optimum take
This article opened my eyes, I can feel your mood, your thoughts, it seems very wonderful. I hope to see more articles like this. thanks for sharing.
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi
Thank you very much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Very cool. Thanks. nimabi