What you allow your milieu to feed into your mind is what you will be processing. It is what will carve the pathways of your brain. This is perhaps well-understood, in theory if not in practice.
But it is equally important to consider who and what you are sending output to.
Books you read are sending you input. Your friends modeling behaviors for you. Newspapers. Tools. People you follow on Twitter. The architecture of a Gothic church beaming serenity into you—that is input too.
At the same time, you are also sending output to other nodes. Now, I am sending these ideas into my pocket notebook, which will send them to m... See more
Your milieu is not the same as your sister’s. It is an ever-shifting, individual configuration of information flows. The Twitter feed you have curated is a milieu. Your friend group (which is not the same as the friend groups of the other people in that group!) is a milieu.
It is by changing your milieu that you change yourself.