Internet Brain is a Real Thing

We Need a Common Language to Talk About It

If you feel “off” more often than you’d like, you aren’t alone.

Many people do.

In my latest book, The Practice of Groundedness, I traced this general sense of dis-ease to a concept I called heroic individualism: an ongoing game of oneupmanship against yourself and others where the goalpost is always ten-yards down the field. Heroic individualism is a vicious spiral of go, go, go; more, more, more; nothing is ever enough. It is striving unhinged, the result of which is a frantic and frenetic lifestyle overflowing with busyness, restlessness, loneliness, and, eventually, emptiness. I argued that the root problem of heroic individualism is that we fail to properly ground ourselves with a solid foundation of habits and practices in our lives.

Since the book came out, something I hear frequently from readers is how helpful it has been to have not only ideas for the solution but also a name for the problem. Once you give something a name, it loses some of its power of you. You can identify when you are trapped in it. You can wrestle with it. You can discuss it with others.

It is in this vein that I’d like to propose a new term, which, for many people, is a key component of heroic individualism: internet brain.