Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00089)

I was just thinking of the cliche "you are what you eat" and it 
occurs to me a corollary to that could be "your mind is what you 
think." That led to remembering the cliche "Garbage in, garbage out" 
and that led me to wondering if the habit some people have of feeding 
their minds nothing except cranky literature day in and day out is as 
harmless as we have all assumed it to be. One fellow on this list 
says he devours "The Watchtower" whenever it comes out, even though 
he is not a crank himself and presumably does not take it seriously. 
Others seem to be infatuated with garbage like The Book of Mormon, 
or, worst of all, the nonsense attributed to "W.C." Leadbeater and 
Annie Besant.

I always assumed feeding your mind a steady diet of cognitive barrel 
scrapings was a harmless and even amusing habit. Now I am starting 
to wonder. If it is true that "garbage in, garbage out," what would 
we expect to happen to a person who does not engage in appropriate 
mental hygiene?

Well, now that I got that off my chest pardon me while I return to my 
copy of "The Idiot's Guide to Elizabeth Prophet's Collected 
Yadayada." It's not exactly Sartre's Being and Nothingness, but then 
I just preach mental hygiene. I do not practice, heh, heh.