What happens when we consume everything but question nothing?
A couple of years ago, I woke up with a rather strange thought running through my head: “When you live like zombies in the woods, you become a zombie in the woods.”
What the hell does that mean? Seriously, I had no idea. I’m not a zombie-movie person. I don’t watch horror films or read horror fiction, so there was absolutely no reason for zombies to be wandering around in my head. But there they were, and for some reason, that particular thought wouldn’t leave me alone.
I spent the better part of a week contemplating it, talking it through with a good friend, and trying to figure out what, if anything, it was telling me. Eventually, two ideas began to emerge: mindless consumption and the little worlds we build around ourselves. The more I thought about them, the more I realized they might be connected.
The Hungry Zombie
Think about those old-school movie zombies for a moment. Their entire existence seems to revolve around one thing: brains. They’re singularly focused, relentlessly pursuing their next meal, simply following the urge to consume, regardless of the consequences.
When I started looking at that behavior through the lens of modern life, I couldn’t help noticing a few similarities. We spend an extraordinary amount of time consuming information, entertainment, opinions, and other people’s experiences. From the moment we wake up until we finally put our devices down at night, there’s a nearly endless supply of material competing for our attention.
Some of what we encounter is useful, educational, entertaining, or genuinely inspiring. Other things leave us frustrated, anxious, angry, or mentally exhausted. Yet we often continue consuming without giving much consideration to what we’re taking in or how it’s affecting us. We scroll because we’re bored, check notifications out of habit, and sometimes spend an hour absorbing information we weren’t particularly interested in to begin with.
We generally understand that what we put into our bodies influences our physical well-being, even if we don’t always make the best choices. But how often do we give that same consideration to what we’re feeding our minds? The information we consume can influence our emotions, shape our perceptions, reinforce our assumptions, and affect how we experience the world around us.
I began wondering how much of what we consume is actually nourishing us and how much we’re taking in simply because it’s available. Are we choosing information that helps us learn, grow, and understand ourselves and others, or are we wandering around looking for the next brain?
The Woods We Build Around Ourselves
The second part of that strange thought was the woods, and initially, I associated them with isolation. I imagined someone wandering deeper into the forest, gradually separating themselves from the larger world until their surroundings became all they knew.
Of course, you don’t have to live in the actual woods to isolate yourself. You can live in the middle of a busy city, interact with hundreds of people online, and have access to more information than previous generations could have imagined while still experiencing the world through a remarkably narrow perspective.
As human beings, we naturally gravitate toward people who share our values, interests, and experiences. We enjoy conversations with people who understand us, and there’s comfort in being part of a community where we feel accepted. There’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that. Connection and belonging are important parts of our lives.
The difficulty begins when those familiar perspectives become the only ones we’re willing to entertain. We may gradually surround ourselves with people who reinforce our existing beliefs, follow sources that consistently confirm what we already think, and dismiss information that challenges our understanding. Sometimes we do this deliberately, but often it happens so gradually that we don’t even notice.
Our world can become smaller without us ever physically going anywhere.
What makes this especially interesting is that the internet gives us unprecedented access to different cultures, experiences, ideas, and perspectives. In theory, we have more opportunities than ever to broaden our understanding of the world. Yet we can use that same technology to create an environment where nearly everything we encounter reflects what we already believe.
The woods, I realized, aren’t necessarily a place. They’re the boundaries we establish around our thinking, particularly when we stop being curious about what might exist beyond them.
Connected to Everything, Questioning Nothing
The connection between the zombies and the woods became clearer as I continued thinking about it. We can consume enormous amounts of information while exposing ourselves to very little that challenges or expands our understanding.
Someone can spend hours reading articles, watching videos, scrolling through social media, and listening to podcasts while encountering essentially the same messages presented by different voices. The information may feel new because the presentation changes, but the underlying perspective remains familiar.
Over time, repeated exposure can make certain ideas feel increasingly obvious or unquestionably true, even when we haven’t taken the time to examine them. We may find ourselves repeating statements we’ve heard dozens of times without remembering where they originated or whether we’ve ever considered the evidence behind them.
It’s an interesting contradiction. We have access to more information than ever before, but access to information doesn’t automatically translate into knowledge, understanding, or independent thought.
I think this is where discernment becomes particularly important. Discernment is our ability to consider information thoughtfully rather than simply accepting or rejecting it based on familiarity, emotional reactions, or personal preference. It asks us to remain curious enough to examine what we’re hearing and honest enough to acknowledge that our understanding might be incomplete.
Without that willingness, we can gradually become more attached to familiar beliefs than interested in discovering something new. We may still feel informed because we’re constantly consuming information, but much of what we’re doing is reinforcing what we already think.
And that’s when I started to understand what my strange little zombie statement might be getting at. When we consume without discernment and isolate ourselves within familiar perspectives, we risk allowing our thinking to be shaped by whatever we’re repeatedly exposed to, rather than consciously participating in the process ourselves.
Thinking for Yourself Doesn’t Mean Disagreeing with Everyone
There’s an important distinction I want to make here because independent thinking is sometimes confused with automatically questioning or rejecting anything that comes from another person.
Thinking for yourself doesn’t mean you have to disagree with everyone, distrust every source, or become suspicious of everything you encounter. It also doesn’t mean your personal opinion is automatically as informed or reliable as someone else’s expertise.
In fact, genuine discernment requires us to recognize the limits of our own knowledge. Sometimes thinking independently means acknowledging that someone else understands a subject far better than we do and being willing to learn from them.
What matters is our willingness to engage with the information rather than simply absorb it. We can ask where an idea originated, consider whether the source is credible, look for supporting evidence, and explore perspectives that differ from our own. We can also pay attention to our emotional reactions, particularly when a piece of information makes us immediately angry, frightened, defensive, or unusually eager to agree.
None of this requires us to turn every conversation into an investigation or spend hours researching every passing thought. It simply means maintaining an awareness that what we encounter isn’t necessarily accurate, complete, or beneficial just because someone has presented it to us.
Sometimes a little curiosity and a willingness to pause are enough to change how we experience information.
Being More Intentional About What We Consume
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate about this entire idea is that it isn’t really an argument against technology, social media, or entertainment. Those things aren’t inherently bad, and I certainly don’t believe we need to disconnect from modern life to think clearly or live well.
For me, the bigger issue is whether we’re making conscious choices about how we spend our attention and what we allow to influence us.
We can choose to step away from conversations that seem more interested in provoking reactions than encouraging understanding. We can decide that we don’t need to participate in every controversy or keep up with every piece of news. We can recognize when scrolling has stopped being enjoyable and has become something we’re doing automatically.
We can also make room for experiences that expand our perspectives rather than simply reinforcing them. That might mean reading something outside our usual interests, listening to someone whose experiences differ from ours, or asking a genuine question instead of immediately offering an opinion.
And sometimes it means doing absolutely nothing for a little while.
We live in a world where nearly every quiet moment can be filled with someone else’s words, music, opinions, or entertainment. There is always another video to watch, another article to read, or another conversation happening somewhere. With so much available to us, it can be surprisingly easy to go through an entire day without spending much time with our own thoughts.
I wonder how many of us would benefit from creating a little more space to actually process what we’re consuming, rather than constantly adding something new to the pile.
So, Are We Zombies in the Woods?
When that strange thought first appeared in my head back in May 2024, I didn’t have a clear explanation for it. Even after spending a week contemplating it, I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, which is why I recorded a short video and asked other people to share their interpretations.
Revisiting it now, I find that the underlying message feels even more relevant, although I still don’t believe there’s only one correct way to interpret it.
For me, Zombies in the Woods has become a reminder to pay attention to what I’m consuming and to remain curious about the world beyond my own familiar experiences. It’s about recognizing that our thoughts and beliefs are influenced by what we repeatedly encounter, whether we’re conscious of that influence or not.
It’s also a reminder that being informed and thinking independently aren’t necessarily the same thing. We can know a great deal about a particular subject and still benefit from questioning our assumptions, exploring different perspectives, and remaining open to the possibility that we have more to learn.
Ultimately, I think the point is to be an active participant in our own lives rather than moving through them on autopilot. We don’t have to reject technology or stop enjoying the things we love. We simply need to remember that we have choices about what we consume, how we engage with it, and how much influence we allow it to have.
So I’ll leave you with the same thought that started this entire conversation: “When you live like zombies in the woods, you become a zombie in the woods.”
I’m still curious about what those words mean to other people, and I’d genuinely love to hear your interpretation. Do you see the same connections between mindless consumption, isolation, and independent thinking, or does the statement bring something entirely different to mind?
And perhaps there’s another question worth considering as well: Are you consciously choosing what feeds your mind, or is what you’re feeding your mind quietly shaping who you become?
Originally inspired by a personal reflection recorded in May 2024.
S. L. Foxmere | Four Directions Alchemy