Sugar for the soul.

While they sip on fine Merlot and enjoy an even better conversation, one of the four friends suddenly says…

Atheist: A dessert tastes delicious, nourishes the soul, but both the time we spend eating a dessert and the time afterward, when we savor it in our thoughts, pass quickly. The effect lasts only a short while.

Researcher: That’s the sugar in the dessert; it’s the essence of energy. It tastes sweet, you want more and more, but the effect is fleeting.

Theist: It’s the same with today’s short internet videos—they’re like chocolate and candies, like sugar for the soul.

Atheist: Well said! You want to watch more and more of them, but you don’t feel satisfied. Neither afterward nor while watching them. It’s the same with texts—many are on Twitter, where we force each other to speak as briefly as possible, to say only the little that’s essential, because we’re already programmed to not take in more. Short, short, short, but as intense and flavorful as possible.

Researcher: Could there be a parallel to the body? We know that excessive sugar consumption harms the body, and it also harms the brain.

Philosopher: Indeed, I drew this parallel some time ago and explored it through self-sufficiency, concluding that these so-called “shorts” harm our souls even more than sugar harms our bodies. On the other hand, good “shorts”—those filled with wisdom and advice—can repair some weak and damaged structures in our consciousness and even in our subconscious. They are a double-edged sword.

Theist: This is probably why so many people today exhibit addictive behavior with these short videos. In other words, they do the soul good and harm it at the same time. The parallel to dessert and sugar fits well—after all, dessert is nourishing; it makes you somewhat full.

Researcher: But what exactly is harmful about the videos? Sugar is a neurotoxic substance, poisonous to our brain, and too much sugar increases the risk of dementia, Alzheimer’s, and strokes—three of the ten leading causes of death worldwide. At the same time, certain types of sugar, like fructose, are partially converted to fat in the liver and can contribute to diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and even gout. Too much sugar is literally poison for the body and brain, yet it’s necessary in small amounts. How can we draw a parallel to videos and the soul?

Philosopher: Well, just as the body needs food, the soul needs nourishment, and soul nourishment essentially consists of information. In these “shorts,” large amounts of information are compressed, just as large amounts of energy are compressed in sugar. When we watch too many shorts, our soul takes in too much information, processes it too quickly, and then becomes hungry again just as fast. They are focused mental carbohydrates. But the worst part isn’t that—it’s that a habit forms, like with eating sweets. You can’t and don’t want to stop consuming shorts, even when you know they’re harmful.

Atheist: And our soul falls ill from what we hope will refresh and satisfy it. Over time, we condition ourselves to take in information in compressed mini-formats, which harms us more than it helps, and we become addicted to it.

Theist: It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy. As the poet Reade wrote, thoughts become words, words become actions, and repeated actions become habits that we can’t shake off.

Researcher: Reade also wrote that habits shape our character, and character shapes our destiny.

Atheist: I agree with that because it shows that freedom lies entirely with us. We hold our destiny in our hands if we pay attention to our thoughts, words, and actions. We can break bad habits with practice.

Theist: We are free, I agree with you there. And what Reade beautifully shows is that not everything we can do benefits us. But habits that are deeply ingrained are not so easily shed—sometimes it takes years, even a decade, to break them. That’s why Reade is right: they become our character, and that becomes our destiny, because for some, there’s no breaking free anymore. And when you consider that it all starts with thoughts and words, you might think differently about religion and the many rituals designed to bring even the worst characters back into spiritual balance.

Researcher: Back to the question about 30-second texts and videos, which was raised before the dessert. It seems to me, in analogy to sugar and shorts, that our philosopher believes we shouldn’t want to read texts or watch videos that last about 30 seconds, give or take?

Philosopher: You know me too well. We want a healthy soul, so we should take some time when reading. It doesn’t have to be hours, but just as the body needs to eat, so does the soul, and it’s good to take time with meals. You don’t want to eat physical food too quickly either. I mean, people today prefer the term “psyche,” but we know “psyche” is just the ancient Greek word for soul. The thing with our soul is that we forget everything we read, whether short or long, because reading nourishes not our consciousness but primarily our subconscious. And just as the body gets hungry again, so does the soul. Of course, you can treat yourself to something sweet now and then, for both the soul and the body.

Researcher: We do forget a lot. I can hardly remember a single short video or the short texts from Twitter and the like, and I’ve read and seen thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of them. But they’re not gone—exactly, they go into the subconscious, and when I come across one I’ve seen before, I remember it. Sometimes I don’t, though.

Atheist: That’s my experience too. The analogy to nourishment is really interesting. It’s as if we feed our soul with information, but also with emotions, with the love of those around us—which, in the end, is also a kind of information. It makes sense to enjoy fewer, longer meals instead of many short ones, but it also makes sense to have short meals occasionally.

Theist: God bless you, we Christians have known this for a long time. That’s what prayers are for, among other things—they can be long or very short. But we also know that nothing else can satisfy and calm the soul in its deepest depths like God’s love.

Philosopher: I agree with that. God’s love deserves an entire series of conversations. Well, we’ll surely revisit it and other topics soon.

Atheist: I’m curious, though I think this love is just something we’ve invented ourselves. But it’s interesting to explore whether we can truly nourish ourselves through it or if it’s a kind of spiritual self-cannibalism. Besides, short videos and texts are fun, and yes, we’re increasingly programmed to have only a short attention span, so, for better or worse, our future will probably demand that everything be shorter and shorter.

Philosopher: That won’t be my future—you can shape yours however you want. And others, according to their own discretion. To each their own. I think what makes us human, and not pigs, is the fact that we can, with more or less effort, shape our own habits. And I tell you, I love long, good meals—both for the soul and the body—and I take special care to avoid spiritual self-cannibalism, which I see as one of the first signs of a sick soul. I noticed it in Nietzsche for the first time, and even back then, as a student, I understood that something was off. But God’s love is not autosarcophagy, nor are prayers.

Researcher: Spiritual self-cannibalism, or soul autosarcophagy. Fascinating. In the sense that our brains produce and consume their own nourishment? I think I know what you mean with Nietzsche, who wrote very long texts and produced a large number of aphorisms, in other words, projecting vast amounts of his soul’s content. I recall he wrote how much he enjoyed reading his own texts and aphorisms and stated that others’ were hardly “palatable” to him—he praised Montaigne, but otherwise had little good to say about almost anyone. He probably used different words than “palatable,” I’m paraphrasing now from memory and in the context of our conversation, but we all know Nietzsche went mad. So, I agree with the idea that he might have been engaging in spiritual self-cannibalism and, in essence, consumed himself like an Ouroboros. Of course, one could say that prayers are spiritual self-cannibalism, as one speaks and consumes a prayer, so I think it’s important to differentiate more clearly what we’re talking about here. I certainly see organized religion as more than just prayers, as it has its worldview, rituals, ceremonies, and communities. But even prayer alone is something different from what Nietzsche did—one doesn’t revel in oneself but prays to a higher power, God, so there’s a relationship with something outside the self. However, if one says that God is a product of human imagination and exists within us, then of course it could be said that the creation of the idea of God or the projection of God by a suffering soul, followed by praying to that God, is a form of autosarcophagy. Yet, we know from physics that there are other dimensions of reality that we cannot consciously perceive, and there are speculations that our brains might have the ability to tap into these dimensions. It’s equally possible, then, that some brains don’t create God but, in spirit, penetrate a sphere of reality where they discover or see God, or something so different from everyday life that they interpret it as such. In that case, prayers aren’t directed at that sphere of reality but are used to maintain that breakthrough of the soul, that neural network connected to another sphere of this reality, in a functional state. In this context, it’s possible that prayers ground us by reinforcing certain postulates we choose to believe as truths. Likewise, it’s possible that in the chaotic workings of the brain, especially when considering trauma and other mental illnesses, prayers have a grounding and stabilizing effect. In fact, all world religions have developed prayers, many of them independently of one another—that fact alone is interesting. But now I’ve spoken too long…

Theist: Religion is much more, thank you. And you haven’t spoken too long, but I think we’ve talked enough about heavy topics for today. Perhaps we now want to spend some time with lighthearted conversations among friends. That does the soul good too.

With nods, the friends clink their glasses heartily once more, laugh, and enjoy the rest of the evening in humorous companionship.