I’ve been reading The Wisdom Pyramid: Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Modern World, by Brett McCracken.
(See below for a link to get your free copy.)
Here’s how it starts:
“Our world has more and more information, but less and less wisdom. More data; less clarity. More stimulation; less synthesis. More distraction; less stillness. More pontificating; less pondering. More opinion; less research. More speaking; less listening. More to look at; less to see. More amusements, less joy.
“There is more, but we are less. And we all feel it.
“We have vertigo from the barrage coming at us from every direction, every day. We are nauseous from the Tilt-a-Whirl nature of a constantly changing, always unstable world described in (often contradictory and whiplash-inducing) feeds of fragmented and partisan news. Our ears are bleeding from the screeching multitudes who daily assault our senses. Everyone has a megaphone, but no one has a filter.
“Our eyes are strained, brains overstimulated, and souls weary. It’s hard to know if anything can be reliably known. We are resigned to a new normal where the choice seems to be: trust everything or trust nothing. Or maybe the choice is: trust nothing or trust only in yourself . . .
“How can one flourish in a world like this? How can one fortify one’s immunity and be healthy amidst a contagion of foolishness whose spread shows no sign of stopping? How can Christians become storehouses of wisdom in this era when more and more sickly people will be looking for a cure?
This description of our world and the challenges we face certainly resonates with me. Fortunately, the author also provides a solution to the problem:
“We need a better diet of knowledge and better habits of information intake . . . we need to be more discerning about what we consume. We need a diet comprised of lasting, reliable sources of wisdom rather than the fleeting, untrustworthy information that bombards us today; a diet heaven on what fosters wisdom and low on what fosters folly.”
So, if you feel yourself becoming more foolish the more time you spend scrolling on social media, this book is for you. If you ever get the sense that “smartphones” are actually making us dumb, you’re not alone. Addictive algorithms make huge money for Silicon Valley, but they make huge fools of us.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With intentionality and the discipline to cultivate healthier media consumption habits, we can resist the foolishness of the age and instead become wise and spiritually mature. In this book, Brett McCracken offers a rubric (inspired by the food pyramid) for what it might look like to build a “diet” of intakes conducive to spiritual health and wisdom rather than spiritual sickness and foolishness.
The Gospel Coalition is offering this book to you for FREE as an ebook. Click below to get instant access to this timely tool for growing in wisdom in our post-truth digital age.
https://pages.thegospelcoalition.org/the-wisdom-pyramid
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