You’re Being Alienated From Your Own Attention
Takeaways:
In this piece, Chris Hayes argues that almost every aspect of human life is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention, making it the most important resource on earth.
In the modern age, the ability to command attention outweighs any other in terms of building a business or a platform. The market for attention has become one of the most competitive and innovative in history.
Attention is the essence of consciousness, yet it can be seized from us before we even realize it—stolen by a sudden noise or a flashing light. As competition for our focus intensifies, more aggressive tactics emerge, turning our daily environments (both in real life and in digital spaces) into overstimulating arenas akin to casino floors.
Why? Because before you can persuade, you must first capture attention. Anyone from great showmen to great salespeople, marketers, advertisers, and so many more have all used the power of attention to accrue wealth and power. Thus– In today’s world, public discourse, commerce, social life, and even parenting have become battles for attention—and we’re all feeling the fatigue.
Knowing that the world is being reshaped around the pursuit of human attention forces the question: What do we want to pay attention to? If we didn’t have all the technologies and corporations vying for our attention, if our attention wasn’t being commodified and extracted, what would we affirmatively choose to pay attention to?
Your answer to this question should be a call to action. Hayes argues that understanding and addressing the gap between the attention demanded of us and the areas we want to which we want to pay attention is massively important. If we don’t fight to direct our attention to the things we care about, there is evidence that we lose our connection to them.
“We don’t have to give in to the constant external demands for our attention,” he says. We must use every tool and strategy imaginable to wrest back our will, to create a world in which we point our attention where we want it to go.
From Chris Hayes at The Atlantic:
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