Informational obesity is fatal

Informational obesity is fatal.

Let me explain.

Somewhere in the dark alleys of the internet, a man sits, scrolling. He has read 16 articles since breakfast. He knows why the economy is collapsing, what the stock market will do next, and the exact reason a celebrity was caught cheating. He is drowning in knowledge, and yet, if you ask him to explain any of it, he will pause, scratch his head, and say, "It's complicated."

This man is sick. Not in the way his doctor understands, but in the way an overfed brain stops working. He is a victim of informational obesity: a condition where a person consumes more knowledge than they can digest, ending up confused, anxious, and painfully misinformed.

The disease is common. It spreads fast. Everyone you know is sick. They read news, they watch debates, they argue online. They have an opinion on everything. They are certain that they are right. But if you lock them in a room and ask them to explain their certainty, they will fumble. Because their knowledge is borrowed. It is second-hand. It is a thin layer of information wrapped around a void.

This is the great irony of the modern world. More people know more things than ever before, and yet, real wisdom is dying. Thought is being replaced by reaction. Inquiry is being replaced by confidence. People read, not to understand, but to win arguments. They consume, not to grow, but to belong.

And here is the worst part: the people who flood you with this information know exactly what they are doing. The tech gods and media kings do not want you to think. They want you to keep scrolling, keep arguing, keep coming back for more. Your addiction is their profit. Your mental exhaustion is their business model.

So what is the cure? It is not ignorance. Ignorance is the twin of blind knowledge. The cure is discipline. Read less, but understand more. Choose your knowledge the way you choose your food: carefully, deliberately. Ask: Does this information make me wiser, or does it only make me feel informed?

Because in the end, informational obesity is worse than physical obesity. A fat body can still think. But a fat mind is just noise pretending to be thought.

 

*Just a little bit of reflection on today's digital world.*