attention
The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation
from The Master and His Emissary by Iain McGilchrist
attention
Crucially for our purposes, the DMN is negatively correlated with the attention network (AN), meaning that the more it is activated, the less access we have to the power of our attention.
James Doty • Mind Magic
DMN - the default mode network
When you choose whom to follow on Twitter, you’re choosing what types of mindsets and aesthetics to expose yourself to on a regular basis. You’re choosing what types of conversations to have. You’re choosing to be reminded regularly of certain things, and not of others. This is a kind of Programmable attention.
Programmable attention
"Attention changes what kind of a thing comes into being for us: in that way, it changes the world."
– Dr. Iain McGilchrist
“Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind.”
—Epictetus
Gurwinder • Stoicism: The Ancient Remedy to the Modern Age
At heart, magic embraces the power that small solidarity networks have to change the world through changing their own perceptions of reality.
Medium • Magic, belief systems + web3
Looking closely is valuable at every scale. From looking closely at a sentence, a photograph, a building, a government. It scales and it cascades — one cognizant detail begets another and then another. Suddenly you’ve traveled very far from that first little: Huh.
I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh i... See more
I’d say that that huh is the foundational block of curiosity. To get good at the huh i... See more
Craig Mod • Looking Closely Is Everything
Attention is a bit like the air we breathe. It’s vital but largely invisible, and thus we don’t think about it very much unless, of course, it becomes scarce. If that’s the case — to extend a tortured metaphor — it feels as if our attention has become polluted. We subsist on it, but the quality has been diminished.
nytimes.com • Opinion | Michael Goldhaber, the Cassandra of the Internet Age - The New York Times
attention pollution - how to prevent it?