attention

the effort to draw closer to the astonishing reality of things, through those forms of pure attention that are unmixed with evaluations of utility and judgment, and free from the deforming grasp of a seizing hand (or eye or mind).

The Friends of Attention • TWELVE THESES ON ATTENTION

There are two parts of attention: grabbing it and holding it. It is easier to grab attention than to hold it. - Chris Hayes

Information and media abundance have made us cognitively impatient. We don't want to spend the time.

The implied contrast between the sixteenth-century media technology of paint and panel — a technology of “stillness” — and our own twenty-first century media technology of computer and screen — a technology of busyness — is sharp. The much-applauded interactivity of today’s media is an illusion, a trick and a trap. In pushing us to assume a... See more

Contemplation as Rebellion

As Iris Murdoch puts it, “reality” is “that which is revealed to the patient eye of love.” Or, elsewhere, “Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality.”

L. M. Sacasas • What You Get Is the World

Boredom, it seems, is the by product of a specific civilization arrangement. It's true, as I argued in the last chapter, that certain aspects of our attention are biophysical, and as such universal. The loud sudden noise of an approaching avalanche will grab the focus of any hearing human of any culture. The same goes for a charging predator. But

I can only choose within the world I can see , in the moral sense of ‘see’ which implies that clear vision is a result of moral imagination and moral effort ... One is often compelled almost automatically by what one can see. If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify... See more

What Is To Be Done? — Fragments

Attending to people and having them attend to us is our normal state of being. Social attention is like sunlight for a plant: we needed to live. It warms and nourishes us. We stretch toward its presence; we shrivel in its absence.
The Sirens Call

But if the deep roots of boredom are in a lack of meaning, rather than a shortage of stimuli, and if there is a subtle, multilayered process by which information can give rise to meaning, then the constant flow of information to which we are becoming habituated cannot deliver on such a promise. At best, it allows us to distract ourselves with the... See more