How to Live · ages 9–12
What is attention for?
Something is talking to you and you are looking at a screen. What are you giving away, and to whom?
The shapeliest sentence in this library is Simone Weil’s: attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. She meant something more specific than politeness. Looking at a person fully, without working out what you want from them, while they speak — almost nobody can do it for long, and everyone knows instantly when they are being looked at that way.
William James had already told us why it is so hard. The world arriving at your senses is not a tidy picture; it is a flood of signals, and experience is what you agree to attend to. Attention is the mechanism that turns noise into a place with objects and people in it. So the thing you never attend to is not simply unexamined — for you, it is barely happening.
Which is why the modern conditions of attention are a philosophical subject rather than a technophobe’s complaint. If you can be interrupted at will, and something out there is paid to interrupt you as often as possible, then the scarce thing being taken is not time. Time is visible: you notice it pass. Attention is taken invisibly, and it leaves the item on your list and the empty afternoon.
The test that comes out of this is small and nasty and useful. When somebody is speaking to you and your phone is in your hand, what are you actually saying to them, and would you say it out loud? That is not a question about devices. It is a question about the difference between being present and being close by.
Try it
For ten minutes, give one thing your full attention and note every time you drift. Tally the drifts. The number is the most honest thing you will learn about yourself today.
What do you think?
Do you think there is a right answer to this question?
Talk about it
- Is attention something you own?
- Why is being ignored worse than being argued with?
- Can you choose what to notice?
Yes, but… — the arguments people actually make
Multitasking gets more done.
You are switching, not doing both, and each switch costs something. What improves is speed of switching; what suffers is anything needing depth.
Attention is just a resource. Being distracted isn't an ethics problem.
Then consider what it means when somebody talks to you while scrolling: the message is about how much they value the words. That is an ethics problem wearing a technology costume.
Why worry? It's not like attention runs out.
It does, daily, and it is the thing you have least of. You get roughly the same amount as everyone you will ever meet, including the people you most want to be like.
What other philosophers think
- Simone WeilCalled attention the rarest and purest form of generosity — the act of looking at someone without wanting anything from them.
- William JamesSaid your experience is what you agree to attend to, and that attention is the mechanism by which a mind chooses a world out of a flood of signals.
- DogenArgued that attention is not preparation for the important thing later; the paying of attention is the thing itself.
- Nicholas CarrWarned that reading in the shape of a screen trains a kind of skimming attention that makes sustained thought harder.
If you want to go further
- The Principles of Psychology — William James1890. The chapter on attention, which is where modern treatment of the topic starts.
- Gravity and Grace — Simone WeilShort, fragmentary notes, including the passages on attention as generosity.
- The Shallows — Nicholas Carr2010. The case that the medium you read in changes how you think.
Most of these were written for adults, which is why it is worth reading them with someone older.