Ep. 011: A CHRISTIAN PYRAMID SCHEME?!?! w/ Brett McCracken

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. It’s Andrew Marcus. We have a great show for you today. We have Brett McCracken as he discusses his latest book, The Wisdom Pyramid. No, it’s not a pyramid scheme. It’s like that food pyramid where the things that are super healthy should be at the bottom and the things that are unhealthy should be at the top. But he walks through that. We also want to remind you, it’s April, so you have this month to get a free resource from us. Indoubt.ca, you can go there, the promo code is SYF23. It’s a book by Matt Smethurst called Before You Share Your Faith. Fantastic resource. Enjoy the show.

All right, we got Brett McCracken. Thank you so much for joining us today, man. How are you today?

Brett McCracken:

Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m doing well. How are you?

Andrew Marcus:

Awesome. I’m doing great, man. We were just talking earlier about how it’s just sunny on both ends of our worlds.

Brett McCracken:

It is.

Andrew Marcus:

Tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing since the last time we talked to you, it’s been a few years.

Brett McCracken:

Yeah. I can’t actually remember the last time, so I don’t know how far to go back in terms of filling in what I’ve been up to. But I guess the biggest thing that’s new for us is we have a new baby. We now have three children, my wife and I. We have a nine-month old baby girl, Helen, who joins her two big brothers, so we have a four-year-old, a two-year-old, and a nine-month old, which makes life-

Andrew Marcus:

Come on.

Brett McCracken:

… just thrilling and wild and stressful and exhausting all at the same time. So that’s the big thing. I work for the Gospel Coalition, that’s my full-time job, my day job. I’m senior editor for The Gospel Coalition. So I’m still doing that. And I’m an elder in the local church here in southern California called Southlands Church. Aside from that, yeah, we’re just enjoying parenthood and living in sunny southern California where it’s 70 degrees in February.

Andrew Marcus:

Come on, bro, except for your atmospheric river that just happened, but-

Brett McCracken:

Except for the atmosphere. Are you guys Celsius in Canada? So 70 degrees-

Andrew Marcus:

Yes.

Brett McCracken:

 … might be confusing. I forget, I don’t know what the conversion is, but it’s nice.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s nice. Basically, it’s nice. That’s amazing, man. Well, it’s so good to connect with you again. So you released, this wasn’t around when we last talked, I’ll show it to everyone here, it’s called The Wisdom Pyramid. Now, sometimes I do judge books by their cover. I don’t know if it’s because I’m Egyptian and I saw a pyramid and I’m like, “This is a good book. It must be a good book.” I also thought, “Could it be a pyramid scheme? Maybe. I don’t know.” But if it is a get rich quick, I’m into it because inflation sucks. But tell us a little bit about this because I started reading it and I’ve been very blessed with what I read so far. But if you could just give us the premise, how it started, and what this book means to you.

Brett McCracken:

Yeah. It’s not a pyramid scheme.

Andrew Marcus:

Dang it.

Brett McCracken:

Pyramid is a reference to the food pyramid. Those of us who are of a certain generation grew up on the food pyramid in terms of guidance for a healthy diet. The healthier food groups at the bottom of the food pyramid, and then at the top of the food pyramid was fats, oils and sweets, the dessert category. Essentially, the origin of this book was maybe like 2017, I think. I was giving a conference talk up in Portland, Oregon, and I was talking about the post truth information environment that we live in and how do we find wisdom and flourish as Christians in a world where there’s just so much falsehood and fake news and post truth. And so in the process of developing my talk for that, it just popped into my head this concept of, “What if adopted the food pyramid for our media habits and our intakes of information?” Because I kept coming back to the idea that so much of health in the Information Age depends on our diet of intakes and where we’re looking, the sources we’re looking to, and what’s feeding our soul, so to speak.

And so I thought, I wonder if I could adapt the food pyramid. That’s essentially where it began. I had a graphic designer friend help me draw up a graphic that was essentially mapping categories of knowledge onto the old food pyramid idea with the healthier sources at the bottom and then at the very top, in the fats, oils, and sweets category is where I put the internet and social media. And so yeah, that’s where it began. And then a couple of years after that, Crossway, the publisher agreed to turn it into a book. And so, I wrote the book version and that came out in 2021, I believe. So it’s been out for a couple of years, but-

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing.

Brett McCracken:

… yeah, that’s how it came about.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, 2021, but I mean, honestly, it’s becoming more and more and more relevant every day. I think even you think of, you mentioned fake news or just people are bombarded with just anything but truth these days, and that takes a toll. That takes a toll. I feel like I’ve seen that a lot in the last couple of years, just what it’s actually doing to us spiritually, mentally, emotionally, all those things. And so, very, very timely book.

And so walk us through, because I know I was reading through some of it and I thought it was very fascinating because even you go through to the source of our sickness and then the sources for our wisdom. I found it fascinating because, of course, you talked about the sources of our sickness is media and all that kind of stuff, all this stuff we’re being bombarded with. But then at the same time, one of the sources of wisdom is the internet and social media, which is like, “Oh, that’s interesting because mostly I think of it negatively.” Could you walk us through how it’s a part of the sickness, but how it could also be a resource for us for our wellbeing and wisdom?

Brett McCracken:

Yeah, that’s a good question. Like so much in life, it’s all about the proportions and whether you’re engaging in something in moderation or in excess. I would say the internet and social media as a technology is neutral to the extent that there can be good things on it or bad things. You can consume it and engage with it in healthy ways or in unhealthy ways. And so, that’s why the food pyramid idea is helpful, because so much about the food pyramid is about the proportions, how much of each food group should you be consuming? And that’s why even on the food pyramid, it’s okay to have a little bit of dessert every now and then. It’s on the food pyramid. It can be part of your diet to have candy bars and popcorn and brownies. But if you make that the foundation of your diet, if you put that food group at the base, then you would be sickly and you would probably die.

And so, the same is true with me putting the internet and social media on the wisdom pyramid. It can be a source of occasional truth and insight, and if you use it in moderation, it can be a good thing. But too often, I think, if each of us drew up our own wisdom pyramid in terms of our day-to-day lives, if we’re honest, we would probably say that the internet and our smartphones occupy the foundation. It’s where we start our day by scrolling. It’s where we end our day by scrolling. All throughout the day, any chance we get, we’re mindlessly wandering on the internet. It’s the equivalent of being at a buffet and just going back and filling your plate with more junk food all throughout the day. It’s not good for our health. And so we’re just constantly snacking on Twitter and TikTok, and it’s basically like going to the candy store and just binging on really unhealthy stuff.

I can talk more about healthy ways to use the internet and social media and how it can be a source of wisdom potentially, but the key idea is just in its proper place, in the right proportions of your diet, that’s crucial.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, it’s huge. I think we’ll get to that. I think it’d be good to end with, hey, what are some healthy ways and kind of help our young listeners maybe set boundaries and figure out how to maybe remove social media and their smartphones from the bottom because I feel like you’re absolutely right. I see in the picture the Bible’s on the bottom and then church is right above it. And then on the top is obviously the iPhone or smartphone, but I feel like you’re right, it’s opposite.

Brett McCracken:

We’ve flipped it.

Andrew Marcus:

We’ve flipped it. Before we talk about the health and the benefits of creating healthy rhythms there, what are some of the dangers that maybe you’ve noticed with people around the internet? Did you write this book maybe from your own experience in some degree, if you want to talk through that?

Brett McCracken:

Yeah, 100% I wrote it from my own experience. My job is I’m an editor of a website, so I spend a lot of time on the internet and social media because I have to. I just started noticing, when you have a job that requires you to be online all the time and very aware of the social media conversation, I just started feeling my soul suffer. I felt anxious and I just felt depressed. I talk about this in the book in the first couple chapters, but it’s no surprise to me that mental illness and anxiety and depression are skyrocketing across the world. This is a global trend. Mental unhealth is a major problem. It just so happens to coincide with the smartphone being released about 15 years ago. That’s when anxiety started spiking and depression and loneliness and all these things.

Andrew Marcus:

Is it because we’re getting too much information, like the brain just can’t take it?

Brett McCracken:

The first half of the book, you already mentioned, is called Sources of our Sickness. That’s the depressing part of the book where I lay out the sobering reality of what digital technology and the information age that we live in is doing to our souls and to our ability to discern truth. And so, the three sources of our sickness that I talk about are too much information, information gluttony. Just eating too much food makes you sick, being bombarded with too much information, our brains literally don’t know what to do with it. There’s science that’s actually showing, interestingly, that in the digital age when our brains are encountering an unprecedented amount of information, humans throughout human history have never had to process as much stimulation as they are now. Research is showing that because our brains are in this constant triage mode where it’s so much information coming at our brains that it’s all we can do to just quickly sort like, okay, is this cat video on TikTok important? Do I need to file that in the important category? Is this headline tweet about Putin and Russia and Ukraine, is that on the same level as the cat video? Our brains are encountering this steady stream of disconnected information that’s not part of any cohesive web of narratives.

And so, our brains are expending all this energy on triage that there’s nothing left for deeper level assessment, critical thinking, evaluation of information. Anyway, the long and the short of it is, if you are observing that people in the digital age aren’t good thinkers, we’ve lost the ability to be critical thinkers, there’s actually a science showing that that’s the case. Everything is just triaged, everything is surface level information processing, and so our brains are being rewired so that we’re not even capable of critical thinking anymore. Which is super alarming, right? When we’re talking about wisdom and the importance of wisdom, we need to have the ability to think carefully and slowly and critically. But in a world of too much information, information gluttony, it’s hard to do that because we’re just trying to survive the onslaught minute by minute of media and information.

Sorry, that was a lot on just the first source of our sickness, which is too much information. The second source of our sickness is too fast. Not only there’s too much information, but the speed of information in the Information Age goes by so rapidly that we don’t take the time to think carefully and slow down and maybe that information. This is why things like fake news can go viral and conspiracy theories can be spread around the internet, because no one is going slow enough to pause and ask questions about, “What’s the source of this information? Is this a legit source or is this some sort of propaganda?”

So both the speed of how fast information is produced and disseminated, and also our own speed in terms of we consume things so rapidly and we move from one thing to the next so fast that we never let any of it percolate long enough to turn into wisdom. To use the food metaphor, if you’re eating food so fast, it’s just going to come in and out without actually absorbing into nutrients in your system. The same is true with information and knowledge. If you’re just glutting yourself super fast, constantly, you’re never going to be able to turn that into nutrition for your wisdom.

So the glut and the speed of information are making us sick, and then the third source of our sickness that I talk about is that information is too oriented around the self, the individual. I get into the algorithms and how the very structure of the smartphone and the internet is around tailoring everything to you. We all know that this is true. Your social media feeds over time basically become echo chambers where you’re fed more of what you already like and more of what you already agree with. That’s not healthy. It’s not healthy in food to only eat the things that you like. If you only ate your favorite food and that was the only food you ever ate, you would probably die. You have to go outside of your favorite genre of food to have a balanced, healthy diet. The same is true of information. If we’re only ever in these narrow windows of reality where everything that is fed to us is just exactly what we want to see and what we want to hear, then it is just going to feed our bias more and more and we’re going to be more and more delusional about the complexity of the world because everything we’re seeing in our social media feeds, everything Google is showing in the search results is just what we want to find and what we want to see.

So the orientation of information that just amplifies our existing human tendency to look within ourselves for wisdom and trust our gut, which I think because of the fall we tend to do that. We want to believe that we are the best source of wisdom, that we know better than God or other people around us. That’s just false, the Bible is clear on that. “Do not lean on your own understanding,” Proverbs 3, “but trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not be wise in your own eyes, but in all your ways acknowledge Him.”

And so I just think that biblical reality, that it’s not good to just trust your gut and follow your heart and do what is right in your own eyes, that is harder than ever in the Digital Age because everything about the internet and your smartphone tells you that you should listen to your gut and your consumer tastes and preferences reigns supreme. They just want to feed you more of what you have demonstrated a proclivity towards, which often isn’t good. It’s a little bit disturbing when you notice the ads that are starting to show up on your Facebook feed.

Andrew Marcus:

That always creeps me out, man.

Brett McCracken:

And it’s convicting because it’s like, “Oh, they know that I watched that video that I shouldn’t watch.”

Andrew Marcus:

Or even said something. I tell my wife, I say, “Oh yeah, we should watch a movie and have some Twizzlers.” Two seconds later on my Facebook, Twizzler ads. I’m like, “Are you kidding me?”

Brett McCracken:

Yeah, it’s super creepy, but it should be a wake -up call, I think, that this is not healthy for us. We’re not at our best when we’re just fed more of what our sinful nature is wanting to click on. That’s not good for us. Anyway, I’ll stop there, that was long.

Andrew Marcus:

No, that’s huge. That’s huge.

Brett McCracken:

That’s a quick summary of the problem that I see in the Digital Age.

Andrew Marcus:

I mean, I see it, and I’m starting to connect some dots for me. So what kind of wisdom would you give to the young person who’s listening right now who is just glued to their phone? I’m looking at the video guy right now behind the camera, and he’s just glued to his phone. And he’s laughing right now-

Brett McCracken:

I believe it. I believe it.

Andrew Marcus:

… because he’s just busted. But you know what? Called him out. Straight. You can hear him laughing. That is Brendan. And so what could I tell Brendan right now?

Brett McCracken:

Yes. Well-

Andrew Marcus:

Or what could I tell the Brendan, let’s call him?

Brett McCracken:

The Brendans of the world.

Andrew Marcus:

The Brendans of the world. I’m just kidding, man.

Brett McCracken:

Which is everyone. Which is everyone.

Andrew Marcus:

No, honestly, it’s not just Brendan. Because we are a generation that is just glued. It’s like it’s stuck on my hand, what are some practical things for us to help us with the process of removing and starting to rewire?

Brett McCracken:

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the first thing I would say is just we’re all struggling with this. I struggle with being glued to my phone as well. The reason why it’s so hard is because these companies, they make profit to the extent that people are glued to the device. The more time eyeballs are scrolling, that has a direct correlation with the amount of money that they make. And so, they have every incentive to design these technologies to be addictive, and they do, right? If you watch that documentary, The Social Dilemma I think it was called, but it gets into this. But Facebook, Google, these companies, they actually consult with behavioral psychologists in how they design these things. They intentionally designed them to play into the psychology of addiction. It’s kind of disturbing. The reality is these technologies are meant to be things that we cannot live without, that we literally can’t go an hour without pulling out our phone and scrolling at it and checking our notifications, let alone five minutes. Many people can’t go five minutes without pulling their phone out of their pocket.

Andrew Marcus:

Crazy, man.

Brett McCracken:

I would just start there by saying, don’t heap guilt upon yourself because you struggle with this, because we all struggle with it. The deck is stacked against us because these technologies are designed to be addictive. Having said that, I think that my recommendation is start small with changing habits. You’re not going to be able to go from glued to my phone to not looking at my phone at all overnight.

Andrew Marcus:

I had a friend do that.

Brett McCracken:

Oh, really?

Andrew Marcus:

He’s a huge producer in Nashville, and him and his brother went to this retreat, and it was a specific retreat to detox from social media and smartphones and all that kind of stuff. He goes to this retreat that you have to leave your phone at the door, and you’re there for a week. He said he was sweating, and he realized how addicted he was when he went to this because it was 10 minutes in, and he’s like, “Oh my goodness, I need my phone.”

Brett McCracken:

Yeah, right. Yeah, you have withdrawal-

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, totally, totally

Brett McCracken:

Just like alcohol or other addictions.

Andrew Marcus:

Which is crazy.

Brett McCracken:

You could go to that drastic measure if you want to just put your phone in a box and lock the key, and by all means, give that a try. But I think it’s healthier for us to be able to have our phone in our pocket and exercise the restraint in not pulling it out. It’s almost easier to lock your phone in a vault where it’s not even an option. It’s harder to have your phone within arm’s reach and actually make the conscious decision to not pull out your phone every five minutes to look at it. One thing that I often recommend as a place to start, because it’s something that I did a couple of years ago, when I was writing the book, my wonderful wife, she was challenging me, like, “You need to practice what you’re preaching in this book, so you need to-

Andrew Marcus:

I love our wives, man.

Brett McCracken:

Kira is her name, and she is my rock in terms of making sure that I’m practicing what I’m preaching in my books. But she basically said, “What habits are you changing right now in your life that are demonstrating what you’re writing about in The Wisdom Pyramid?” So I was like, “Point taken. I’m going to try something.” So what I tried is, at that point in my life, like many of us, my phone was my alarm clock, so it was right by my bed. I looked at it right before I went to sleep. And then right when I woke up, I’d look at it and start scrolling, “What did I miss? What headlines happened overnight? What’s the Twitter buzz, et cetera? And so the habit that I instituted was essentially, “I’m not going to look at my phone for the first hour of every day. I’m not going to look at my computer. I’m not going to do anything with technology for the first hour of every day.”

And it is super hard to do that, I’m not going to lie. Everything in you wants to get started with your day and start checking email and be productive. But it has been such a game changer, honestly, in terms of giving me space at the beginning of my day to do things like read my Bible, have a meaningful quiet time where I’m distraction free. It’s not every day that I actually am able to do this because I have three kids, like I mentioned. So sometimes that first hour of my day is just making breakfast and getting the kids dressed, and I don’t have time to read my Bible. But on the best days, I have the ability to start my day not by looking at Twitter and not by letting my smartphone set the tone for my day, but sitting in my chair and looking out the window at my backyard and just being still and praying and reading a psalm or something.

It’s been so life-giving. I cannot tell you how much changed in my temperament. I feel like I became less anxious. I don’t know, just my days were better when I didn’t start by looking at my smartphone. I would challenge people who are listening to this, it doesn’t have to be the first hour of your day, it could be the first half hour, but try to do something like that where you have some sort of protected time when you wake up that isn’t glued to your phone right out of the gate of your day. Because if you think about it, if our days are just starting with what the algorithm wants to show us, it means we’ve lost control of our lives. It means we have basically seated our lives to the algorithms. You tell me what my mind and my soul should be oriented around as I begin my Wednesday, and that’s just not healthy. It’s so much better to orient yourself at the beginning of a day around the things of God and His presence and His purpose. So that’s the big habit that I would challenge people. If they walk away with any idea from this, I would challenge them to do that.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s really good. I think that’s huge. I also started doing that towards the end of the night as well. I haven’t started the morning, which I think I really should, but if you could allocate time in the morning and then no screen time at night, I feel like I know that I am restless and I struggle to sleep, and I’m sure it’s connected to you’re glued to screen right before bed.

Brett McCracken:

One easy thing to do is just don’t have your phone be your alarm clock. That way you can plug in your phone in another room that isn’t your bedroom, and that solves both the morning and the evening because then it means you’re climbing into bed and you have to do something else aside from looking at your phone. I have a book on my bedside table, and so typically the last few minutes of my waking day, I just read a few pages in a book, and it puts me to sleep sometimes. So rather than looking at Twitter, which often makes you anxious and you don’t really want to go to bed thinking about some atrocity, some mass shooting that happened in the last hour.

Andrew Marcus:

Brett, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate all your wisdom. Thank you for this book, I think it’s going to be so helpful to all those who read it. Thank you for your time and we’ll hopefully chat again soon.

Brett McCracken:

Cool. Thank you so much.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content, check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca, we have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.