A Worrywart with the World Wide Web

A Worrywart with the World Wide Web

The human mind is one of the most amazing and complex things in the universe. Humanity has only begun to unravel all of the nuances and subtleties involved in cognition yet a few trends stand out after careful observation. The human mind works through association which leads to inevitable consequences regarding behavior. The practice or repetition of any action will inevitably start to affect how the mind operates. In Homo Religiosus by Karen Armstrong, Waiting for a Jew by Jonathan Boyarin, and Is Google Making Us Stupid? by Nicholas Carr, repeated action purposely and inadvertently affects the mind and its ability to comprehend new concepts, and causes change in behavioral patterns or practices that lead to short and long term changes in behavior and cognition.

The brain is full of thousands of neurons that comprise our memories. New neural pathways form from repeated access between two neurons. The stronger the neural pathway, the easier it is to remember what is stored in those neurons. Learning new ideas involves understanding the new concept in terms of something the mind already comprehends. In order to access a new memory it must be connected to a past one, explaining how metaphor exists at the heart of the learning process. As a result, any form of understanding through association means that actions performed repeatedly, especially those regarding communication have effects on the actual chemistry of the brain, and directly affect how the mind functions.

Many religions involve the practice of different beliefs and rituals that gradually alter the minds of the participants. The effects of said practices show clearly in the Hindu practice of yoga. Armstrong describes the demanding task of practicing yoga as “a systematic breakdown of instinctive behavior and normal thought patterns” (Armstrong 35), where after years of practice and actively controlling ones thoughts and actions the yogin’s mental state becomes...