Intentional Creation of a Healthy World Through Attention There is a concern about the lack of intentional creation of a healthy world regarding attention habits for individuals and children. The existing discourse on attention is seen as not rigorous enough to capture the true essence of the experience. The search continues for innovative ways to study, talk about, and teach attention. D Graham Burnett, a historian of science, is working on a book about laboratory attention studies and co-founded the Scrother School of Radical Attention. Burnett suggests that our attention is being ‘fracked’, drawing a parallel to petroleum extraction, emphasizing the urgency to understand and protect our attention resources. Transcript: Speaker 2 And I worry about this for my own mental habits, for my kids, for everybody’s kids. I don’t think we’re creating an intentionally healthy world here. And so I keep looking for episodes we can do on this. And I keep feeling like we’re getting near it, but not quite there because the way we talk about attention, it just doesn’t feel rigorous enough to me. It doesn’t feel like it is getting at the experience of it well. And so I keep looking for episodes we can do on this. People who found a better way to study attention or talk about it or teach it. When I was reading this piece on attention in The New Yorker by Nathan Heller, and I came across a D Graham Burnett who’s doing all three. He’s a historian of science at Princeton University. He’s working on a book about the laboratory study of attention. And he’s a co-founder of the Scrother School of Radical Attention, which is a kind of grassroots artistic effort to create a curriculum around attention. And yeah, that got my attention. As always, my email as recline show at nytimes.com. Speaker 5 D Graham Burnett, welcome to the show. Speaker 1 Oh, it’s such a pleasure to be here. Thanks. Speaker 2 So you’ve written that our attention is getting fracked. What do you mean by that? Speaker 1 Fracking. I suspect most of your listeners have heard that term. Fracking’s mostly associated with this idea of getting petroleum resources out of the earth. (Time 0:02:12)
Balancing intentional focus and open awareness The concept of attention involves a balance between intentional focus and open awareness. While focusing on perfecting one’s attention as a worker is valuable, a more open form of awareness, such as deepening connections with others, is also important. Trying to control attention too tightly can limit one’s ability to notice valuable insights that may arise unexpectedly. The term ‘attention’ encompasses two distinct projects - intentional focus and open awareness - which can sometimes conflict with each other. By overly instrumentalizing attention, individuals may miss out on the true depth and richness of the world around them. Transcript: Speaker 2 Then at the same time, that discourse, it points somewhere I’d like to go, but not the only place I’d like to go. I don’t imagine the good life is being a life where I have the intentional capacity of the perfect worker. A lot of what I’m interested in and the theory of attention is a more open form of awareness, an ability to see other people more deeply. I’m a meditator. One thing I notice a lot over time is that what I think I should be paying attention to and then what appears to come up with great value to me are not the same thing. Too much agency over my attention, too much control is a way of not hearing other things in the world too. Speaker 1 You put your finger on really the heart of the matter. I want to suggest that part of what makes the conversation around attention right now both so difficult and so important is that secreted within that term are in fact two very different Projects bumping up against each other. In a laboratory you use instruments as it turns out if you use instruments to get at a thing called attention you end up finding an instrumentalized form of attention. Speaker 4 Is that form of attention real? Speaker 3 Absolutely. In fact, the technologies for making it real are powerful. (Time 0:12:48)
The Historical Emergence of Attention as a Modern Construct Attention, as we conceive it today, is viewed as a modern construct according to Jonathan Crary, an art historian. Crary suggests that discussions and concerns about attention did not prominently exist before the late 19th century. He highlights that a significant shift in the perception of personhood during this time period led to a newfound emphasis on attention and its study, coinciding with the rise of laboratory-based scientific research. Transcript: Speaker 2 You’ve talked about how attention is, or at least the way we think about it now, is a modern construct. Can you talk a bit about that? Speaker 1 Let me give you one of the most amazing arguments about attention that’s ever been made by anybody by my distinguished colleague, Jonathan Crary. Speaker 3 Jonathan Crary is an art historian at Columbia University in a book called Suspensions of Perception published around 2000. Speaker 1 He made a super challenging argument about where that language of attention comes from and why in the late 19th century, the same time that the scientists start studying at laboratories, Everybody starts getting worried about it and talking about it in a very particular way. Crary argues that you don’t see a lot of discussions about attention in the 1780s, 1790s, even 1820. Speaker 3 It’s not a thing. Speaker 1 He says that worry about attention comes into being across the second half of the 19th century in a very particular way because of a very specific set of transformations in the experience Of personhood. (Time 0:21:36)
The Impact of Money Value on Society The displacement of other languages of value by money value has been a significant trend over the last 150 to 200 years. This displacement has led us to be more separated from each other than ever before in human history, despite feeling interconnected through new and powerful means. Acknowledging this trend is crucial for understanding the current state of society. Transcript: Speaker 3 Well, where even to begin, home, my heavens, I mean, those who have worried that things were getting worse have been essential to our being clear-eyed about our condition again and Again. Speaker 1 The process by which money value has displaced other languages of value, big picture, that’s one of the enormous secular trends. One can discern over the last 150, 200 years. And I would say many of the things you just invoked are in effect explicable out of that dynamic. Speaker 3 I don’t want to sound reactionary when I say that. Speaker 1 And I also don’t wish to kind of invoke some fantasy utopia of the past. But we are more severed from each other now than at any time in human history, even as we have this kind of ersatz experience of our being aggregated in new and powerful ways. (Time 0:35:13)
The Power of Defining Attention The discourse on attention lacks a clear definition, leading to challenges in creating a positive vision for it. Many people know what they don’t want in terms of attention, like the fractured and irritated feeling from social media. However, there is a struggle to define a positive vision due to the diverse human experiences and desires. This raises questions about authority and prescription in determining what is best for attention. Education, as described by Kattari Spivak, is defined as the non-coercive rearranging of desire, highlighting the transformative power of guiding attention without force. Transcript: Speaker 2 One thing that has, again, bothered me about a lot of the discourse on attention is I think because we don’t have a good definition of it itself. We don’t think about it very clearly. We know what we often don’t want. A lot of us don’t want the feeling, the fractured, irritated, outraged feeling we have on social media or online. We don’t like learning and noticing in ourselves that the amount of time we spend on an illegal task on the computer has dropped and dropped and dropped. A lot of us have this experience of fracture. So kind of we know what we don’t want this. I don’t think we have a very good positive vision. How do you think about the creation of a positive vision of attention given the extraordinary diversity of human experience and wants? Speaker 3 Yeah, it’s a very hard question. Speaker 1 In a sense, you’re asking both a question about authority and also asking a question about prescription. We’re going to prescribe for people this versus that and who will prescribe. I think of the extraordinary definition of education that Kattari Spivak offers, which is the non-coercive rearranging of desire. What’s education? The non-coercive rearranging of desire. (Time 0:36:48)
Balancing Coercion and Paternalism in Parenting The speaker reflects on the concept of non-coercion in education, acknowledging the necessity of some level of coercion in guiding children. They express concerns about the lack of proper coercion in parenting today, particularly related to technological influences like smartphones and social media. The speaker worries about the challenges of balancing children’s autonomy with the need for parental guidance and rules to address issues like the impact of technology on mental health. Transcript: Speaker 2 Let me hold on this idea of non-coercion. So first, for me, education was coercive. I did not want to spend eight hours a day sitting in these small classrooms being lectured at. Just didn’t. I had to. Which I don’t think is a bad thing. I am not really one of these people who thinks that childhood should be up to the whims of the child. I don’t think I would have made good decisions as a kid. I’m not sure all the decisions made for me were great decisions either, but but nevertheless. And something that has been on my mind has been how bad I think parents at least of certain classes right now have gotten at coercion. And it worries me because my kids are young, so it’s kind of easy right now, but I know it’s going to get harder. And I see all these parents who know that they don’t think their kids should have a smartphone when they’re 11 and they fall because the other kids do. And I see in this debate that we’re having right now about smartphones and kids, what I would describe as a real discomfort with how to be paternalistic when paternalism is actually Needed. So John Heit writes this book, The Anxious Generation, part of the book’s thesis is that smartphones and social media have kicked off a mental health crisis and our children. (Time 0:40:03)
The Power of Books in Cultivating Attention and Concerns About Education Books have a unique ability to immerse individuals in others’ stories while allowing for personal reflection. The speaker values attention over traditional subjects in education and is concerned about the lack of focus on teaching attention in public schools. The conversation highlights the impact of capitalism on education, prioritizing financial gains over the well-being and development of individuals. Transcript: Speaker 2 If I’m being honest as a parent, right, and I’m not saying I would legislate this, I anchor it in my own experience of attention. I think books are remarkable and specific in their ability to simultaneously allow for a deep immersion in somebody else, right, another human being’s story or thoughts or mind, and Also create a lot of space for your own mind wandering. And I will say, and it’s one of the reasons I want to invite you on the show, we’ll talk about the school of attention that you’re part of in a bit, I will say that my biggest concern and the Concern that nobody really has an answer to for me, because I do want to send my kids to public school, is that I care less about how they are taught subjects and how they are taught attention, What kind of attention they’re able to bring to the things they will want to know. But again, the thing that worries me is that I see so little discourse like that. Speaker 4 I’m enormously moved by what you’re saying. Speaker 3 The dynamics that you’re describing are not unfolding in empty space. They’re unfolding in relation to a basically unbridled dynamic of financial optimization. Like we just can’t leave capitalism out of this. Speaker 1 The system in which we operate is centrally driven by return on investment, not by human flourishing. (Time 0:43:18)
Essential Adversary The dynamics of our society are deeply intertwined with a relentless pursuit of financial optimization driven by capitalism. The system prioritizes return on investment over human flourishing. It is crucial to acknowledge that corporations are not aligned with individual interests. The monetization of not just labor but also personal passions poses a significant threat to our ability to preserve our humanity. Transcript: Speaker 3 The dynamics that you’re describing are not unfolding in empty space. They’re unfolding in relation to a basically unbridled dynamic of financial optimization. Like we just can’t leave capitalism out of this. Speaker 1 The system in which we operate is centrally driven by return on investment, not by human flourishing. And there may be no other way to organize large modern, complex societies, but we would be insane, not continuously to hold before us the essential adversary here. The corporations are not on our sides. And the fact that a major split of our contemporary economy has figured out how to monetize not just our labor, but our actual ability to give ourselves to what we care about is extremely Bad for our ability to continue to be non inhuman beings. (Time 0:44:20)
Challenging the Dominance of Market Logic The dominant system prioritizes return on investment over human flourishing, leading to corporations not working in favor of individuals. The monetization of not just labor but the ability to pursue one’s passions is detrimental to our humanity. Criticizing choice and the prevalence of market logic in the neoliberal age are crucial as it restricts our ability to think beyond market-driven norms. Transcript: Speaker 1 The system in which we operate is centrally driven by return on investment, not by human flourishing. And there may be no other way to organize large modern, complex societies, but we would be insane, not continuously to hold before us the essential adversary here. The corporations are not on our sides. And the fact that a major split of our contemporary economy has figured out how to monetize not just our labor, but our actual ability to give ourselves to what we care about is extremely Bad for our ability to continue to be non inhuman beings. Speaker 2 I think I’m getting at something similar when I talk about my discomfort with how hard we find it to criticize choice. People mean a lot of things when they talk about neoliberalism. I don’t love the term one because I think it annoys people and shuts them down. But the other is because it’s imprecise. But the thing I mean when I talk about neoliberalism and the neoliberal age is a period in which the logic of markets became the logic. Absolutely. And I think it has become very difficult to think outside of market logic. (Time 0:44:46)
The Duplex Nature of Attention Attention can be seen as a broad concept, similar to health, comprising various subcategories like cardiovascular fitness and mental health. The discourse around attention is dual in nature, encompassing both a general awareness aspect and specific focuses like cardiovascular fitness. It is essential to have a rich conversation about attention to highlight it as a collective concern. Emphasizing the importance of attention and raising awareness around it is crucial for cultivating a deeper understanding and discussions on the topic. Transcript: Speaker 2 Is it tension the category of the thing we want or a subcategory of the thing that we want? Sometimes I wonder if a tension is a word like health. If I told you health is important, you nod your head. You’re nodding your head, in fact, right now. If I said, I’m really trying to work on my health. On the one hand, you would get what I meant by that on some level. I don’t want to die soon and young for a preventable reason. But also, I wouldn’t really tell you anything. There are so many subcategories to health. You go to doctors for different parts of the body, and there’s mental health, and fitness, and different kinds of fitness, and cardiovascular, and strength. Sometimes when we talk about attention, it feels to me like we are talking about a thing like health. The entire basket of different forms of awareness and experience we use when we are moving through the world. Sometimes it feels like we are talking about something very specific, right? Cardiovascular fitness, not health, right? And then alongside that, there are all these other things you might want to cultivate and be concerned about. Which one is it for you? Speaker 1 I think you put your finger exactly on that duplex nature of our discourse around attention. Speaker 3 Both those notions are in the language of attention that we use. Speaker 1 I would argue that what’s important now is that we have the richest conversation about attention to surface it as our collective concern in the way that this podcast and all the podcasts You’ve done on this and the wide range of authors like Jenny Odell and James Williams and Tim Wu, all these folks of fitness, we need more of all of that. And here’s where your language of health is exactly, right? What we need is a kind of almost revolutionary rising of our awareness around the importance of this stuff. I’m old enough to remember a period back when nobody went running. (Time 0:49:25)
Revolutionary Rising of Awareness Collective awareness of attention and wellness is crucial. Just like the emergence of fitness consciousness in the past 40 years, there will be a similar significant shift towards collective recognition of wellness in the next 40 years. Transcript: Speaker 1 I would argue that what’s important now is that we have the richest conversation about attention to surface it as our collective concern in the way that this podcast and all the podcasts You’ve done on this and the wide range of authors like Jenny Odell and James Williams and Tim Wu, all these folks of fitness, we need more of all of that. And here’s where your language of health is exactly, right? What we need is a kind of almost revolutionary rising of our awareness around the importance of this stuff. I’m old enough to remember a period back when nobody went running. James F. Fix, right? He wrote the book Running in what was it, 77? Before that, regular people didn’t go jogging, they didn’t go running. Who ran where people who were sort of athletes or people in sort of school because they were doing collective sports. Also, there weren’t gyms that regular people went to, right? There were places like Gold’s Gym where you could go if you were a power lifter or a boxer. Speaker 3 I’m talking 1974 or 75. Speaker 1 The whole idea that ordinary people would sort of concern themselves with their fitness is something that’s emerged over the last 40 years. It’s staggering to consider the scale of the collective awareness of our physical well-being. Speaker 3 Now, does that mean that health itself is a new idea? No. People have been worried about their health since forever. But the specific activation of fitness, that’s relatively new thing. And it’s really changed in our lifetimes. Speaker 1 And I’m proposing to you that that’s going to happen again. Speaker 3 For the next 40 years, a collective recognition that our wellness in our (Time 0:50:40)