attention is sacred

This isn’t the same kind of attention we give to our Instagram and TikTok feeds. It is a ritualised form of intentional presence directed to a shared sense of meaning and history. In The Disappearance of Ritual , the philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that our digital communication sacrifices this kind of deep attention and intensity with something... See more

The real question is, where does scarcity still exist? It exists where it has always existed—in the distribution layer, with the limits on human attention. Artificial intelligence can generate abundance in creation, it can even create new currencies, but it cannot convert attention into currency. Only human beings can do that. 

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Narrating and listening foster each other. The narrative community is a community of careful listeners. A particular kind of attention is inherent to careful listening. People who listen carefully are oblivious to themselves; they immerse themselves in what they hear: "The more self-forgetful the listener is, the more deeply what he listens to is

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“What I need, what I am trying to build, is — I coin this phrase by analogy to a memory palace — an attention cottage . ... When I sit down in a chair with a book in my lap, a notebook at my side, and no screens within reach or sight, I am dwelling in my attention cottage.

The great artists and thinkers cultivate a systolic/diastolic rhythm, tension

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