The world is systematically dumbing itself down to feed the dopamine starved masses, and we’re all complicit in this intellectual race to the bottom of the barrel…
Everything is getting shorter, simpler, more digestible.
Books become audiobooks become podcast summaries become TikTok highlights become tweet
sized nuggets of “wisdom” that fit perfectly between ads for teeth whitening kits and crypto scams.
(Crypto scams have been WILD on Twitter, especially more so since all of this war shit has gotten more legs etc)
We’ve taken complex ideas and pureed them into baby food for adults who can’t be bothered to chew.
Netflix adds speed controls because sitting through a 90 minute movie is apparently too fucking demanding.
News becomes headlines. Headlines become notifications. Notifications become emotional reactions to things that may or may not have actually happened.
The algorithms are optimising for engagement and hell to us going deep on ideas and thoughts and going for enlightenment.
This is all junk food for the brain, designed to keep you clicking, scrolling, consuming and best of all…
Never thinking, never questioning, never sitting still long enough to form an original thought.
Dumbification is destroying you…
- Your attention span is dying. You used to be able to read books. Now you struggle through long emails. Your brain has been rewired to expect constant stimulation, making deep work feel like torture instead of flow.
- You’re losing critical thinking skills. When everything is pre-digested and spoon fed, you stop learning how to analyse, synthesise, and form your own conclusions. You become a consumer of other people’s thoughts instead of a creator of your own.
- Your tolerance for difficulty is evaporating. The moment something requires effort. Like real cognitive effort, you bail. You’re training yourself to quit when things get challenging, which means you’ll never develop expertise in anything that matters.
But listen up. You can undumb yourself starting today…
- Read actual fucking books again. Not summaries. Not highlights. Complete books by people who spent years thinking about complex problems. Start with one chapter a day and build your attention span back up like a muscle.
- Embrace boredom. Stop filling every empty moment with content. Sit in silence. Let your mind wander. Some of your best ideas are hiding behind the compulsive need to check your phone every thirty seconds.
- Seek out difficult material. Find writers, thinkers, and creators who challenge you instead of validating what you already believe. Read things that make you uncomfortable. Engage with ideas that don’t fit neatly into your existing worldview.
The dumbification isn’t inevitable.
Dumbification only happens when you pick easy choices over the ones that make you marinate in your own brain meat for more than 15 minutes…
Stop choosing easy, it’s that simple.
Stephen Walker.
P.S. Do the thing. Click the link. Join the group…