Junk food copy (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Forget all that diet talk for a moment. There are basically three food groups:
- Food that’s good for you. Let’s call that good food.
- Food that’s bad for you. Let’s call that poison.
- Food that isn’t necessarily bad for you on its own, but it doesn’t actually help you out other than to fill you up – basically, just calories. Junk food.
We’re pretty happy with these categories. Good food is fine any time. No-one will judge you for munching on a stick of celery (unless you’re in a job interview. That would be pretty weird). Poison should be avoided at all costs. Junk food is generally not the best idea, but having it as a treat every so often isn’t a bad thing.
Now, how about if we apply these principles not to what goes into our stomach, but what goes into our minds? What do you and I fill our eyes and ears with?
- Maybe it’s good food, like documentaries, non-fiction books, stuff that actually expands our mind.
- Maybe it’s poison, like snuff films, pornography (images, videos, stories), stuff that actively turns our minds bad.
- Maybe it’s just junk food, stuff that isn’t actively harmful but isn’t helping anyway. Like Angry Birds, Facebook, pointless blogs, celebrity gossip magazines…
I’m not sure that I/we actually take as much care for our minds as we do for our stomachs. There’s definitely way too much junk food in there for it to be benefiting us.
And, just to throw something a bit controversial into the mix, what do we make of the border-line media like chick flicks (which are ultimately fantasies of perfect relationships that our partners can never give us), violent sports like boxing, romance fiction, Grand Theft Auto and so on?
Just for the sake of argument:
“Good food” is bad for you if consumed in larger quantities than the body requires (based on the tasks you have to carry out). Likewise, if I watch too many documentaries maybe it is keeping away from a more worthy activity.
“Junk food” (highly calorific) is essential if you are deprived of sufficient energy to live – polar explorers each tons of junk food just to survive because of the demands of their lifestyle. Some “junk” activities maybe help us to live in the real world (even if we don’t approve of parts of it), otherwise how can we relate to others?
Fantasies of perfect relationships that our partners can never give us are not so dissimilar to reading the gospels and aspiring to live a better life. We need hope in order to live.
And now back to the work that I have been wrongly avoiding by reading stuff on the internet! Thank you for the thought for my day.