I Stopped Consuming Content Made After The 19th Century & It Changed My Life transcript

One of the greatest decisions I ever made was to undergo a modernity detox, I like to call it, where last year I decided to go 30 days without consuming any content created after the 19th century, meaning that the 19th century was fine, I could read my favorite author Dostoevsky, I could read books from the 1800s, but I couldn't consume any content created from the 1900s and beyond. And I didn't do this because I hate modernity or I don't like anything made after the 19th century.

There's plenty of movies I enjoy, plenty of books from modern age which I enjoy, and plenty of content creators that I enjoy as well, but I just felt as though my brain was getting cluttered. I just felt as though my thoughts didn't have the clarity that I wanted. I wasn't thinking clearly. And I do feel as though our age has something that no other age has ever had before, which is a noise problem. We have so much noise pollution because creating content has been so democratized and the barrier for entry is so low, we just have so much information and so much content fighting for our attention at all times that it can just overstimulate the brain and it can become too much and over time we lose any clarity of thought and we lose especially any uniqueness of thought, which I really do hold valuable to myself.

I don't want anything to rob me of my clarity and I don't want anything to rob me of my uniqueness and my unique world view and my unique thoughts that every individual human has. And I feel as though in the age of AI, something that will always separate you from AI is your uniqueness of thought. And when I underwent this modernity detox, I felt so much clarity come back. I felt that the work made in the past because the barrier for entry was so high was of a much higher caliber.

It was much more unique. It was much more clear. It was deeper and more importantly, it was slower. And that made it difficult in the beginning because I was so used to content being so fast-paced and modern movies being so fast-paced and modern music being so fast-paced that for a while it was a little bit confronting that I could never get that fast-paced dopamine. Everything that I was consuming was slower. Everything was was deeper.

Everything was darker in a sense. But over time, I started to see the value in that. I started to see the beauty in that and I started to see that that was having a healthy effect on my brain. Because at the end of the day, everything that you consume has an effect on your brain. No matter how trivial it may seem, it might just be a 5-second Tik Tok of a cat in a living room that you're watching when you just woke up and you're still lying in bed.

And that may seem pointless and in some ways it is, but your brain is still registering that. And so if you keep scrolling and you scroll past 30, 40, 50 different reels and Tik Toks, that's going to have an effect on your brain whether you recognize it or not and it's going to have a subconscious effect on your daily habits, on the way that you talk, on the way that you think, on what your opinions are, on the way that you produce, on your ability to have conversations.

Your whole life is going to be changed based on the content that you consume. Now, this doesn't mean we should run away from modernity. This doesn't mean we shouldn't engage with modern content. This is the world we live in. We are in the modern world and it's a good thing to engage with the modern world. I'm here on YouTube creating content right now. And so this video is going to be about how we can create a good content diet for ourselves and how we should approach our consumption habits so that our brain can operate at a higher caliber so that we can regain clarity of thought and so that we can all have our own unique worldview, our own unique ideas and create unique work which in the technological age will separate ourselves from everyone else and from AI in particular.

And so, I wanted to look at a figure who I think had the best approach to content consumption, who I think had the best discipline in how they consume content and that is J.R.R. Tolkien. And there's no disputing that that man was an intellectual genius, that he was incredibly unique, he had great clarity, he was a great learner and he was also incredibly well-read. But he was very focused on only consuming content that was good for his brain, healthy for his brain.

And so, in this video, I'm going to go over the three pillars of J.R.R. Tolkien's content diet and also his practical guide for how he approached consuming content on a day-to-day basis and throughout the year as well and how he balanced consumption and production. And so, with that said, let's get into pillar number one, which is to not confuse information for wisdom. Now, Tolkien was very big on seeking wisdom more than he sought information.

He believed that after the Industrial Revolution with the rise of newspapers and media companies, we were getting a lot more information and people were thinking that in order to be a well-informed person, in order to be a well-read person and an intelligent person, you need to consume this information so that you know what's going on. But Tolkien believed that this was almost pseudo intellect because this told you the facts of what happened, this told you all the little bits of information that is going on all around the world or the country or the city that you're in, but it's not giving you wisdom or context for why it's happening, what it could mean, where this could lead.

It just leads to your brain feeling cluttered. And so, while he did read the newspaper, he did engage with contemporary news, he believed that that should be limited. That you should only do that very quickly, see what's going on, and then move on. Your focus should always be on wisdom first. And you get wisdom from reading great books, from listening to great music, from engaging with great art. Because, in wisdom, in books, poetry, music, and art, there are things that go unsaid.

And it's in that beauty and that poetry of what goes unsaid and the mood that's created and the feeling that's conveyed, that allows you as a person to almost come to a deeper understanding of a worldview or an idea that you can't come to through just information and news. Because, information and news is just the spoken word, and words are great, but there there are so many feelings and ideas that we hold that words can't quite capture.

It's like if I ask you to to describe why a sunrise is beautiful, you can't describe it in its entirety. You will you will constantly say that there aren't the words to describe why that moment was so beautiful looking at the sunrise this morning, because there's just a feeling, there's an essence, and that essence is wisdom. And you get that wisdom from art, because art is able to capture that feeling or come as close as possible to capture that feeling, because it's not always just about the words.

Even a great book, there are feelings and emotions that you get from it that aren't from the words themselves, but are from the atmosphere that the story and book is able to create, especially from great art, from great music. That's a great example of this. And so, Tolkien really believed that wisdom was much more important. Cuz wisdom is what will inspire your curiosity. Wisdom is what will engage your brain to think and imagine new things, which is what allows someone who who who reads a great book to come up with um with a theme or an idea or extract an idea from that book that someone else might extract a completely different idea.

We're all getting something different because it's wisdom. It's it's spiritual. It's deep. It's beautiful. It's artistic. It's poetic. Whereas a newspaper article, everyone gets the same facts. People can be either angry or happy about the same facts, but it's the same facts. It's pseudo intellect. It's just information. And you can honestly understand more about the world through reading great books and engaging with great art than you can from just only engaging with newspapers.

Now, that's not to say you shouldn't engage in contemporary news and information as Tolkien did himself. But it is to say that you should always always always try to focus on wisdom before you focus on information. Information is just to catch up, just to know what's going on. But wisdom is what will allow you to have the prudence of knowing how to act in your contemporary age. Information tells you what's happening in your contemporary age, but wisdom and great art will give you the prudence to actually act and do something good with your time.

Like I'm saying here when it comes to AI coming into the workforce, coming into the world, understanding that what separates you from AI is your uniqueness of thought, is your clarity of thought, and your own personal um artistry and wisdom. That comes from prudence of reading great books. That doesn't come from reading newspapers and information. Newspapers and information will either just make you happy if you work in AI that AI is growing, or sad and anxious that AI is going to replace your job.

It's not going to give you the prudence to know how you should act in that situation. And so, at the end of the day, wisdom is a lot more important. And pillar number two is that Tolkien actually disliked allegory. So, when it came to how he decided what books to read, what content to consume, what music to listen to, he didn't actually want to consume any content that was allegory. He wanted to consume content that was a world in of itself.

Now, this may sound complex, but how can I break this down? I guess you could say that Lord of the Rings for him was a Christian story, but there was no Christian allegories within Lord of the Rings. There was no character that was a allegory for Jesus, and another character that was an allegory for Moses or whoever it is you want to talk about. It was more so to do with the themes and ideas and rules and spiritual forces that he was able to interpret from Catholicism and Christianity he infused into the world of Lord of the Rings and allowed a world to grow out of that seed of of spiritual philosophy that he was able to get.

And so, he believed that that's what separated great art from average art or propaganda. Propaganda is trying to express a world view, trying to represent a world view. It's not infusing a new world with philosophy and spirituality and seeing how that grows, seeing how that works in of itself within the world. It's not exploring ideas, it's not exploring deeper ideas of humanity. Uh it's just allegory is just uh telling you humanity.

It's once again going back in in some way to information over wisdom. And so, he was very very cautious with the art that he consumed that it wasn't art that was enforcing a worldview, but was art that was inspiring and engagement with the world, inspiring you to think about the world, to see how things play. It was empathetic art. It wasn't art that was just giving you info or trying to force you in one way. And I think sadly in the modern world, when you look at many modern films and books, so much of it is just a specific worldview that the writer or creator wants to say to the world, wants to get across.

This is where I stand. This is what I think. But, there's nothing really interesting about that. And too often that can lead to division and very superficial politics. Whereas uh great art is something that just explores deeper themes and can allow it to evolve over time. It's why classic books that were written, let's say like uh Dante's uh Inferno, that was written hundreds of years ago, but it still stands the test of time and it means something new to every generation because it's something that explored ideas.

It didn't say an idea in particular. It was Catholic in its theme, but it explored ideas which allows you to pull different things from it. A more secular example would be Charles Dickens. As time goes on, his books will mean different things to different people and will represent different things to different generations because it was deeper. There were deeper ideas explored there. It wasn't dogmatic. It was just exploring something within a world.

And Tolkien believed that this is the type of art you should engage with because that's what cultivates your mind and allows you to think. It's not telling you what to think, it's allowing you to flourish as a human being and bring your own uniqueness to it while also challenging you to engage with it because it's not telling you something, you can't just automatically have something to say about it. You actually have to think.

You know, if a book tells you this is bad and this is good, then it's easy to just say, "Okay, this is bad and this is good." But if a book is exploring the world in a deeper way, now you have to think about what's bad and what's good. Then you have to think about why it's bad and why it's good. And that's really getting your brain to work in a healthy way and it's almost like going to the gym and and exercising your imagination, exercising your philosophical ability, and that's really important in this day and age.

And I think that's something we are losing in some way. Plenty of great movies that do this still. Plenty of great books that do this still, but there are also plenty that don't. And I think there needs to be a renewed focus on understanding that we need to prioritize exploration and prioritize intellectual engagement over dogma and left and right politics and clear divides and and clear ideologies and batting for a team.

We see the world that leads to and I think Tolkien understood that and he understood that to become a better human, to become a more productive human, to become a better intellectual human, you need to consume art that engages you and doesn't just force you to believe one thing over another, which leads us into the third pillar, which is that to only engage with content that fuels your purpose. So, Tolkien was very much interested in mythology.

He was very much interested in romantic ideas of spirituality. And so, the music he listened to, the books he read, every piece of content he consumed really was something that that was about that. He listened to classical music that was very romantic and spiritual and very mythical and ethereal. Um and he enjoyed that. He enjoyed that mysticism element. And that allowed him to engage with that world which allowed him to create his own mythos.

That allowed him to create his own mystical world and create a great one at that. And so, the lesson we can learn from that is to not feel pressured to read every great book that's ever been said is great or to engage with all the different pieces of art and content that we should because others are. It's about just being true to you. If Dostoevsky doesn't speak to you at this point in time, don't read him. You know, if you're not curious about him, don't read him because others tell you to.

He's my favorite author ever. He's the greatest writer ever in my opinion, but that shouldn't pressure you. It's your journey. It's your uniqueness. It's your clarity. You go out and read what makes you curious. You go out and read what is interesting you because that's your journey. Now, what makes us all unique is the fact that different things call to us. You know, try and make yourself interested in something that you're not interested in.

You can't do it. There's something else at play here. There's some kind of whether it be spiritual or whether it just be in your brain, whatever it is, there's something else at play that not everyone is the same. People like different things. People are compelled towards different directions. People want to explore different ideas. That's great. Follow that journey. Follow that thread of your curiosity because that's what you need to do as a person.

That's what's going to allow you to create your own work, create your own path, and truly be a unique intellectual, a unique thinker, and a unique person. Tolkien wasn't pressured to go out and read all the books he felt as though he had to read. He read the books that he was interested in. He read the books that fed what he was trying to achieve, the mission that he was on. And so, really, the lesson here is when it comes to the content we consume, we shouldn't feel pressured to try and consume as much as possible.

I think I look online today and I see people who are like book talkers or or film talkers or film content creators, and they watch every film known to man, or a book talker reads every book. And it's just impossible to like every book. It's impossible to like every movie. It's impossible to be an art fan and like every painting. That's just not realistic, and it's fake, and it's not going to cultivate you as an interesting person.

You're just this bland person who doesn't have any real opinions and ideas over these things. You just like it all, whatever that means. Your identity is cinephile, your identity is bibliophile. It's not a bibliophile who likes one specific element or liked one specific element, which then compelled you to follow a different rabbit hole of books, but it's about following the thread of your curiosity. You know, a true reader doesn't like every book.

A true reader is someone who will dislike a book that everyone else says is great, not because they're trying to be contrarian, but because they have their own unique ideas and thoughts. That makes them interesting. You know, you might not agree with them, but it makes them interesting. It makes them an interesting thinker if they're being honest in that idea. And so, Tolkien was very much interested in being interesting, very much interested in cultivating your own individual intellect and creating work that stands the test of time, creating work that is of a high caliber, and being a person of high caliber.

And so, I really like this idea because I think there's so much pressure out there online to just like follow everybody else and do the thing you're supposed to do, and people will be quick to tell you, "Oh, you're not an art fan because you don't like this, or you're not a music fan because you don't like this." That's all crap. We're all individual. We're all unique, and you need to just follow the thread of your curiosity, and Tolkien was happy to do that.

He didn't feel any pressure at all, and that's a great thing. And so, that ends his three pillars of how he chose his content consumption diet, but what was his practical guide as to how he actually approached consuming content? How often was he consuming? How often was he reading? How did he balance producing and consuming? So, for him, he had a very seasonal approach. He believed that you don't have a daily routine that you just rinse and repeat every day.

That's not how the human brain operates. You You have a period where you're working on something, a project, you're producing something of high value, and then you have a period of more leisure where you're just consuming, you're thinking, you're meditating, and this is healthy healthy for your brain and healthy for your soul. And when you look at all the great artists and intellectuals of the past and professors and academics, they were much more seasonal people.

And so, Ernest Hemingway was very much the same. He would write for a specific time, and then once he was done with that book, he was off. He was exploring. He was going wild hunting. He was going skiing. He was going camping. He was reading lots, he was thinking lots, and that allowed his brain to develop a new unique thought, which then compelled him to create a unique piece of work, which was different from the last thing he made.

And Tolkien was the same. So, for Tolkien, when he was in leisure season, when he wasn't working, and he was on a holiday, or he's just at home, and he was just working as a professor at university, but not producing any books or anything like that, he was reading three to four hours a day. And he was reading what interesting to him. He was just following the thread of his curiosity, but he never read usually for more than three to four hours a day.

And this all this information comes from his own personal letters that you can go and find with the Tolkien organization, or you can find in so many different places online, but he was really great at writing letters to many people, and he got out these ideas. It was really brilliant. And so, he wasn't really reading much more than four hours a day. That was his consumption time. He didn't want to overclutter his brain.

So, in the time where he wasn't working like a dog, he wasn't working like a horse, he was still only consuming three to four hours a day. You know, check your phone time. I'm sure it's higher. I know mine is. I do work there, but it is higher than that, and I do think I'm consuming more than three to four hours a day because I'm consuming YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and doing my reading, and watching films when I want when I want to, and watching TV series.

We're in a consumption age, and the fact that we're trying to produce work while consuming more than Tolkien did when he was in leisure season is a real problem. Because you don't consume to consume, you consume to think. You consume to think about what you consumed to then allow your brain to use it almost as a tonic to create your own unique worldview and your own thoughts. You don't read a book and then have that book as your own worldview.

You read a book and it informs your worldview. It isn't your worldview. You're still different from that book, but it's worked its way into your worldview and you've taken what you want from it. And so then when he was in production mode, and so when he after he'd finished his reading, his thinking, and finally he felt compelled to write something, he was then reading for only about 90 minutes to 2 hours a day. This was before bed after he'd done all his work, he'd done all his productive day, and before bed he'd sit in bed before sleep he would sit in bed and read for 90 minutes to 2 hours on a book that he was enjoying or something that may be fed in to his work.

It was fairly simple. And so when we think about how we approach work, we might consume content while we're eating lunch on a lunch break, and then when we wake up, when we're in the bathroom, God forbid, before we go to sleep, when we're in work mode, we're consuming hours upon hours of content that's going to clutter your mind. You're not going to be able to think clearly. You're not going to have unique thoughts, especially if you're working in more intellectual work, if you're working in more academic work, if you're trying to work in creative work, you're producing something, what you're producing will not be unique if you've given your brain no time to actually think about what you've consumed, no time to actually come up with your own worldview.

And the problem that we have here now as well is that we've consumed so much that when we try and create time to actually think about our own worldview, 1 hour is not enough, 2 hours not enough, and we think I can't come up with any of my own ideas, I can't think clearly, my brain's scattered because you fried it for just days on end, weeks on end, months on end, years on end at this point. So a couple hours isn't going to be enough.

You need to work it into your daily routine that you have honest silence day in and day out. And maybe after a week or two or a month, you will then have a unique idea or thought. You know, trying to come up with ideas for videos would be incredibly difficult if I had no silent time. You know, when I come up with all my ideas for content, what I want to talk about, it comes at times where I'm not consuming or producing.

It comes in the quiet moments when I'm in the car driving with no music on, when I'm going on a walk, if I'm at the beach on a hot day, I'll have my idea then. You know, it doesn't come in active mode. It comes when I'm in a meditative state because that's when your brain is able to actually think through and come up with unique ideas. And so, at the end of the day, I think Tolkien's approach here is just perfect. And I think if you span it out over the course of a year to have one or two seasons within a year of productive work and then one or two seasons of leisure.

You know, if you want to be a writer, if you want to be a painter, you have the time where you're working on the big project and then you finish and then you take the time to rest and reset. That's a very natural process for the human brain. And I think Tolkien's approach to this was great. And I think he was incredibly disciplined with what he consumed. And I think we all need to be because I mean, some of the music we listen to today, no wonder our brains are fried and cluttered.

It's just it's too much. Some of the things, the vulgar things said in music is terrible. Not to be approved, but like, you know, it's it's there's a lot of just slop out there, I think. And no wonder our brains aren't working the way we want them to work. And I'm not an anti-modernity person. I engage in so much modern content that I enjoy. There are plenty of content creators I like, plenty of musicians I like at the moment as well from [snorts] all different genres of music, from from classical music to jazz, to rock, to hip-hop, to R&B.

I like plenty of music, but you need to be careful there. You can't just allow you yourself to run wild with it. You need to be very conscious of making sure that you only absorb quality content or at least as much as possible. Absorb quality content. You can have a cheat meal here or there, a cheat song, a cheat album, a cheat YouTube video, whatever it may be. Maybe there's a vlogger you like. Go out and watch a mindless vlog every once in a while, but just make sure it's not every day.

But with that said, I hope you guys enjoyed this video. I hope you guys got some value from it and you're able to implement it into your own life. Thank you all for the continued support and until next time, take care.