Food for our Minds and Spirits: We Are What YOU Tweet

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Science educator and social media darling Hank Green has a message for us about the interwoven relationship between our minds and the world that we live in. It’s important, especially in a month where we are focusing on the theme of “resistance.” This video is a little bit about technology and social media. But it’s also about a much bigger idea about how we navigate our values in a world where how we consume information has become so fraught. You can watch his reflection here:

@hankgreen1

Posted by @paytmitch

♬ original sound – Hank Green
Hank Green is talking specifically about a dynamic happening on social media. And he is focusing on a dynamic that we can notice is happening in the sort of “life cycle” of these platforms. But what he is describing where the desire to capture viewers’ attention by drawing us in with negative, angering and frustrating phrases is really important whether we’re talking about newspaper headlines or bus ads or what they play on CNN. Green explains how the world around us is shaped by the values that we consume, including when we are enticed into consuming things because it taps into our anxiety, fear and sense of injustice.

I’m going to suggest that we should take Green’s ideas here even MORE seriously, because this taps into a very important UU value, which is that our pursuit of truth should be free and responsible. And we do not live in an age of free and responsible truths.

I know a lot of people who wrestle with a sense of deep fear and anxiety, especially when fueled by the television news, digital print media and social platforms like Facebook, Twitter and TikTok. A free and responsible search for truth is a call to liberation, and I think that being liberated from the attention-captivating forces that feast on our anxiety and fear is a big part of that.

So, if we want to take Hank Green’s advice, we should take care about what we consume and about what we share. It will make us freer and more responsible as we live out our values. The work of justice counts on HOW we do as much as it does on what we do.

Sometimes it is hard to tap into our spiritual selves or find time to nurture our creativity and intellectual curiosity. Here is a section that reflects on some nourishing materials from around the web and related media channels in order to get us thinking, get us feeling, and get us reflecting on the lives we are living in this big world. **Some Adult/Mature Themes May Appear in Links and Other Attached Material**

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Allan T. Georgia, MDiv, MTS, PhD