Attention

Field Notes IV.XI: A thought piece on how we value our attention

Welcome to Field Notes!

I sat down at my desk to write. In between adventures, I didn’t have a ready story to tell. This was to be a writing exercise, free form and almost stream of conscious, scratching onto the page with a pen to see what ideas would surface. It’s practice. But then a notification flashed across my phone screen. The urge to check it was too great, so I did. And just like that, my attention was snatched away.

On a thru hike of the Foothills Trail in the wilds of South Carolina is where I first became truly aware of my attention, or lack of it. It was five days of backpacking. I allowed myself no stimulus in the form of music, podcasts, social media, or anything else. My mind wandered desperately in the beginning. Songs from my memory played on repeat in my mind, conversations were re-hashed, I daydreamed. Day three is when it all settled. The voices became quiet and I discovered that I could remain focused in the present. My attention was restored.

All of this has me thinking about attention as a human ability and why it might be important. The common imperative is that we should ‘pay attention.’ Perhaps before we do we should answer for ourselves- how much is our attention worth?

I have a notion that humans are on a trajectory of dwindling, or maybe fracturing, attention. This fracturing is accelerating in the modern era, but it is not a new phenomenon. Prior to the invention of writing humanity thrived on oral traditions of relaying history, legends, and myths. It is believed that people had an incredible capacity to remember these stories, perhaps even on the first telling. This ability was diminished when we started committing words to wet clay and papyrus. Could that be due to the fact that we were required to pay less attention when others spoke?

Now consider the act of writing. The physical act of scrawling meaning onto a page in the form of lines and squiggles. Doing this requires a sustained level of focused attention. Is that same level asked of us when we type on a keyboard? Characters appear with the press of a button. Mistakes can be deleted entirely. Sentences, paragraphs, or entire pages can be altered or moved instantly. Does this ease of application and correction suggest that we pay less attention as we write? Has human attention been diminished by typing?

Today we are seeing a dramatic acceleration in the curve of the attention decline trajectory. Enter the ‘smart’ phone and with it social media. The devices are ubiquitous, in our pockets everywhere we go. The apps keep us scrolling with short form content. Images, clips, memes, all rewarding us with brief hits of dopamine in the brain. Our scrolling is by design. The platforms are crafted specifically to keep us going. For, you see, in the modern world our attention has become the currency with which we pay for stimulus, our fix of dopamine.

It is the ads that drive the dollars and the ads need our eyes. Content must be short and explosive to catch the attention, spike the emotion, reward with the dopamine. And if one dares to turn away those small red notifications on the icon on the phone screen arise, quietly alerting that something has been missed. Something needs to be checked. The algorithm is hungry for our attention. The app draws us back in.

And it is not just social media that plays this game. Any news source. Any political stunt. The headlines are there to grab our attention, to focus us on the bright and shiny thing over there that they say we should be concerned about. And in the meantime we forget that last overreach, wrongdoing, or outrage. Or we are intentionally distracted, blinded, from the ulterior motive accomplished in the shadows. It is the art of harnessing attention for manipulation.

The brain rot from all of this scrolling, headline surfing, and slavery to the phone is real. We are complicit in being manipulated and exploited. We freely hand over our focus, and thus are the agents of the destruction of our own capacity for holding attention. Is that because we don’t see the value in retaining it?

Where is humanity headed? The pace of technological development is breathtakingly fast. Perhaps what we are seeing regarding shortening attention spans is humans adapting to their conditions. Evolving, in a way, to what is demanded of them. Maybe a computer-centric world requires multi-tasking and quick thinking, something that is best accomplished by a mind accustomed to skipping from topic to topic, lightly handling information before scanning for the next stimulus. Could this be the fittest mind for the future?

I think of the future often now. AI is already here. Its consequences are anyone’s guess. Those looking at its positive potential implore us to adopt it, learn it, harness it. Leveraging its capability will allow us to build generational wealth they say. Perhaps so, but I worry that outsourcing reasoning and sustained creative efforts will be another assault on attention. I’ve been thinking and writing this essay over the course of two or three days. With a few prompts, AI could deliver an equivalent in mere seconds. How long before the patience to create our own works vanishes?

These are real developments over the past week or two- autonomous humanoid robots are being tested on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine, the company that makes Claude AI, Anthropic, believes there is a chance that Claude has become conscious, computers are being built running on human brain cells rather than silicon chips and one of these has learned to play the video game Doom. Welcome to the horrific dystopian present. And, by the way, those brain cells in the machine are rewarded for their correct actions with hits of dopamine. Yes, the same that we receive by sacrificing our attention to the social media algorithms.

This is not the future. It is happening now, and it is not going away. But what happens if I choose not to give it my assent? What if I value my attention and want to maintain or even strengthen it? You’ll get left behind, they say. The future economy is fully online, in the realm of AI, and without embracing it you will become obsolete, they tell me.

But what if I am ok with that?

Attention is the new currency and we spend it freely, perhaps because we feel like we’ve lost nothing when we do so. So what exactly is the value of attention and why would we benefit by keeping it?

The truth is, I can’t exactly define its value. Will an undivided attention make us wealthy? Help us get the cars, pay off the mortgage, retire early? Will it make us fit? Hansom (or beautiful)? Help us get the promotion, the credit we deserve, get the girl (or guy)? Maybe, but maybe not.

I see something more fundamental involved with attention and it has to do with authenticity. How long can you sit with yourself without distraction? Can you write for an hour with nothing to say, just to see what ideas develop? Or hike for three days with no entertainment stimulus? When I do these things I begin to pay attention to the narrator in my skull. I become familiar with him and start to really see who he is.

This may be the inception of presence. Of being the person who turns heads with their energy just by stepping into the room. That’s not to say we should value other people’s attention. What I suggest is that one can be so focused, so attentive to the moment, that their attuned state of being is instantly recognizable. Could we become that person by giving full attention to all that we do? I would like to think so, but I’m certain it won’t develop if we look to our phones more than to the world around us.

Being present in the world and understanding our authentic selves are foundational steps for our development towards our highest attainment as humans. Only on that basis can we reliably choose what we value, rationally frame how we interpret events, and decide how to act. This all relies on our attention. It is critical in formulating who we are as autonomous and free individuals.

After all, you’re the one who knows himself, which is to say you know how much you’re worth to yourself and at what price you sell yourself. The price differs for different people.
-Epictetus Discourses I.II.11

If our mastery of our own attention is pivotal to developing who we are, then when we ‘pay attention’ to whoever asks for it we are essentially selling ourselves. Epictetus urges us to not sell ourselves cheaply. So, where would we find ourselves in the not too distant future as the rare few who have retained our attention spans in a society that has traded theirs for algorithm dopamine? Scarcity of a desired thing translates into value.

With this in mind, our attention could be one of our most priceless possessions.

I fail at mastering my attention daily. I check alerts on my phone. I sometimes scroll social media. I use AI to remove sensor dust spots from my photos. I have obviously typed this essay at some point. But I try to make these conscious choices.

And yet, I push back in the opposite direction. I read physical books- Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov demands a lot of my attention right now, write with pen and paper, sit or walk for periods of time without distractions. Maybe by saying no to the phone, to the headlines, to the screens, I’ll be able to retain what is left of my attention span. And with it I’ll be able to just sit for a while, watching birds flit through the under story of the forest as wind sighs through the canopy above, and content if progress leaves me here to fade into the mist.

I won’t tell you I’m doing things right, just that I’m trying. It is a good fight!

What do you think? Is attention all that I’ve made it into in this essay? How much do you value yours and what steps are you taking to hold onto it?

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