attention is sacred
exploring the sacred nature of "attention"
sari and
attention is sacred
If you want to change your life, change what you pay attention to.
Austin Kleon • Keep Going: a book by Austin Kleon
There comes a moment in life, often in the quietest of hours, when one realizes that the world will continue on its wayward course, indifferent to our desires or frustrations. And it is then, perhaps, that a subtle truth begins to emerge: the only thing we truly possess, the only thing we might, with enough care, exert some mastery over, is our min... See more
Bill Wear • The Quiet Art of Attention
If I wake up and touch my phone, I’ve already lost hours. Not because I’m browsing social media for hours, but because the mind has already been agitated, made unquiet, and the context switch back into thoughtfulness can take the whole morning. In other words, the addict part of my brain takes over and contaminates my ability to be contemplative. I... See more
Craig Mod • Offscreen Magazine Interview
If Your World Is Not Enchanted, You're Not Paying Attention
L. M. Sacasastheconvivialsociety.substack.com
The fastest growing sector of the culture economy is distraction . Or call it scrolling or swiping or wasting time or whatever you want. But it’s not art or entertainment, just ceaseless activity.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
The key is that each stimulus only lasts a few seconds, and must be repeated.
Ted Gioia • The State of the Culture, 2024
Instead of movies, users get served up an endless sequence of 15-second videos. Instead of symphonies, listeners hear bite-sized melodies, usually accompanied by one of these tiny videos—just enough for a dopamine hit, and no more.
This is the new culture. And its most striking feature is the absence of Culture (with a capital C) or even mindless entertainment—both get replaced by compulsive activity.
Normally, when we pay attention to someone or something, we undertake what Weil calls a “muscular effort”: our eyes lock on another’s eyes, our expressions reflect the proper response, and our bodies shift in relation to the object to which we are paying attention. This kind of attention flourishes in therapists’ offices, business schools, and fune... See more
Simone Weil’s Radical Conception of Attention
muscular effort vs reflective attention
An attention ecology goes against the idea of an attention economy, in which one’s attention is directly monetized and pitted against other things that are also meant to co-opt your attention.
Within the architecture of a project, whether it’s a printed piece or a website or something else, we’re always trying to deeply consider how one’s atte
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Again, I can’t speak for anyone else, but when I spend too much time on the socials, my focus erodes to a point that I have trouble reading anything , much less keeping a page of Morrison straight in my head. Morrison didn’t write for the Elon Musk shattermind; she wrote for the Slow Zone. Anyone can read Toni Morrison, but I would argue that unles... See more