Notes On: Brain Rot, Study Curriculum, Astrology

I was on an overnight transit through Sri Lanka when I started writing this issue. The last two days have been very stressful, but I think days close to travel are always stressful. As I finish this, it's Sunday evening, and I am ready for sleep to lull me in after a heartbreaking day. But, moving on with the spirit of work, I am excited to return to work on exciting projects and explore new avenues this year.

Brain Rot

In the movie She Came to Me, Anne Hathaway, who plays a therapist and is obsessed with cleaning, comments about how she imagines herself getting into her clients' brains and cleaning them out. To be honest, all of us could use a deep cleaning of our brains, given all the useless content we accumulate online.

I would gladly sign up for something that clears my brain rot.

I can imagine my brain cells shrinking into little amoeba-shaped molecules with every reel and useless screen media I consume. Access to knowledge has never been easier, but we have just turned dumber. We have lost the art of thinking. Critical thinking has long left the building. The brain is ultimately an organ that needs to be used again and again, remade anew like bread, or you let it rot—almost like attracting rust to it.

Like a lot of things, there are solutions to it as well. Many of these solutions involve taking time away from screens but also engaging your brain and actually using it. I saw someone on Twitter recently tweet about how they still do mathematics problems on weekends. This was one of those pivotal moments where I went, "Oh, you can do just that?" Using free will to carry out activities you can have fun with? Engage yourself with?

Then there’s also the question of what all this amounts to. Is this a way to make money? Is this beneficial even if there is no monetary reward? The real question we should ask ourselves is, “Why Not?”. Why not just do things because of free will and because they engage your brain and mind? Is there a greater reward?

Study Curriculum

Something to help me practice this is my version of a system called “Study Curriculum.” The idea is to pick a topic a month and study it. To conclude the study, I will write an essay in whatever direction seems pertinent then. The idea is to get back to learning with the purpose of knowledge and exercising my brain.

The idea for a study curriculum came from my friend

Rini Singhi

newsletter where she recommended

Olga Koutseridi

’s Research As A Way of Life who recommended/mentioned

Celine Nguyen

Research as a Leisure Activity. Study Curriculum is the idea of taking research in an organized direction motivated by learning and exercising the brain.

Of course, there are puzzles, riddles, and even Sudoko, but I want to explore other ways as well. I might download a video game or pick up the guitar again. However, as someone who loves researching and writing, I believe this is a reasonable way to start.

The topics that I have for the next few months are:

1. Astrology in the Design World

2. Hieroglyphics

3. Impressionists (Monet specifically)

4. Scribes

5. Japanese Buildings

6. Marine Life in South America

Astrology

I am reading Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, where the main character is obsessed with astrology and William Blake's poetry. For work research and promotion by the book, I have been reading about astrology and diligently checking my charts. As an Indian, of course, the discourse of astrology is not free from its prejudiced history and present. But I have been looking more into astrology as a way of understanding the self. While I don’t have many conclusions yet, I think we can all use an astrologer’s advice of “Take what resonates with you and leave everything else” as a way of living. If only using astrology as a tool and not the definite was possible.

Coming up in the next newsletter: Fruit Museums Around the World + Food Art

I will see you next week!

-Shikha