When I was in college my personal
food pyramid was built on a base of Coke and Krispy Kreme Donuts. I managed to
stay not fat and not dead because God gave me a decent metabolism. In the years
since then I have lost that metabolism but gained a wife who has taught me a
curriculum’s worth about eating a healthy and balanced diet, about mixing
healthy proteins with an abundance of fresh foods. As a result I am healthier
now than I have been in years.
In this way, the mind is no
different from the body. Too often we feed our minds with rubbish –
intellectual donuts and coke. This might be pulp novels, gossip magazines,
reality television shows, shock-comedy, poorly written or argued works, or
simply those books and articles that propagate untruth. When we consume this
type of material in quantity our minds become fat and sluggish. They gravitate
only toward what is easy for them to handle and digest not realizing the damage
that is being caused. The mental processing systems will be short-circuited as
the arteries of the mind become coated with the plaque of anti-intellectualism
and untrue thinking.
Just as the body needs a variety
of nutrients to maintain health so too does the mind. It needs multiple genres
to increase our ability to process information in different forms. Good writing
is whole food for the minds; bad writing is bologna and McNuggets. Most of all,
though, the mind needs truth. A steady diet of faulty worldviews, incorrect
assumptions, and blatant vainglory will do the same for your mind as a steady
diet of coke, donuts, and cheeseburgers do for your body.
Thankfully the mind has an almost
infinitely greater ability to metabolize material than does the body. The body
absorbs whatever it your put in it for good or ill meaning we must be
vigilantly selective in what we ingest, and in the selectivity we rule out an
enormous number of food possibilities for the sake of health. The mind, on the
other hand, can metabolize a massive number of genres, mediums, and forms. What
is more, it can be trained over time to successfully digest an ever-increasing
number of these, unlike the body for which food is food no matter what. Because
of this the balanced diet looks different for the mind than for the body. Over
time, in seeking to feed the mind healthily you will find that you know how to
absorb certain things that you couldn’t previously, so your balanced mental
diet increases in variety and enjoyment the more you seek to faithfully feed
it.
Finally, though, we must remember
that this ability to metabolize all sort of mental material is a risk and a
benefit. The body gives clear symptoms when we have consumed exorbitant amounts
of unhealthy food – weight gain, energy loss, headache, digestive issues, etc.
The mind is subtler because it isn’t tangible. Its weight gain and digestive
issues are much less visible but even more dangerous. And so, in spite of our
ability to process enormous varieties and quantities of mental material, we
must be doubly vigilant to keep non-nutritious material from becoming the
substance of our intellectual diet. Yes, it can be consumed, but it must be
done so as part of a balanced diet of truth and craftsmanship.
