Your Attention, Please

Actually the “please” part has pretty much been dropped. According to journalist Chris Hayes, we live in an “attention economy,” where our attention is constantly demanded. Moreover, our attention itself is now a commodity, something that has a price on it. Attention, says Ezra Klein, is more valuable than money. “Attention, not money, is now the fuel of American politics.”

One way to think about the early days of this new Trump administration is that they are doing everything they can to get, demand, and control our attention. Whether you call it “flooding the zone,” or “throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks,” it’s one thing after another. Actually, it’s multiple things simultaneously coming at us, not only trying to get our attention but to overwhelm it.

What I am thinking about here is how we steward our attention in 1) the new attention economy and 2) the constant barrage of recent headlines aimed to provoke fear or elation. Politics aside, it’s been an unprecedentedly busy news week. Do we just tune out and shut down? Or do we stay constantly glued to news reports, text updates, and alerts from those seeking to enlist our praise or outrage (and our dollars)? Chicken little, “The sky is falling”?

I don’t have any magic answers, but I do think it worth being aware, with Hayes and Klein, that we live in a competitive attentional economy and giving some thought to how we, if not manage that, then cope with it. Here’s an excerpt from a recent article, “You’re Being Alienated from Your Own Attention,” by Hayes in the Atlantic.

The battle to control what we pay attention to at any given instant structures our inner life—who and what we listen to, how and when we are present to those we love—and our collective public lives: which pressing matters of social concern are debated and legislated, which are neglected; which deaths are loudly mourned, which are quietly forgotten. Every single aspect of human life across the broadest categories of human organization is being reoriented around the pursuit of attention. It is now the defining resource of our age.

Attention is the stuff of consciousness itself, where we choose to place our mind’s focus at any given moment. And yet it can always be wrenched from us seemingly against our will by the wail of the siren, the bark of a dog, or the flash of a prurient image on our phone. The more competitive an attention market it is, the more it will select for involuntary methods of capturing attention. Think of Times Square with its blinding lights, or a supermarket checkout counter. More and more, our entire lives have come to resemble those spaces.

Public discourse is now a war of all against all for attention. Commerce is a war for attention. Social life is a war for attention. Parenting is a war for attention. And we are all feeling battle weary … You hear complaints about the gap between what we want to pay attention to and what we end up paying attention to all the time in the attention age.

Ponder that last line about the conflict between what we want, or say we want, to pay attention to and what we end up paying attention to. Ever find yourself with an online diet or binge that you know is the internet equivalent of junk food? “Who doesn’t?” may be the real question.

If the attention economy is new, the inner conflict between what we should do and what we actually do is very old. As old as Scripture. As old as St. Paul crying out, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do the thing I want, but the very thing I hate” (Rom 7:15). There’s something bigger going on here than “making good choices” or “sticking to a sound media diet.” We don’t just need will power, we need a Higher Power.

That doesn’t mean we don’t try to make good choices about where to direct our attention. For sure, put your phone away and on mute when you are with your kids (or grandkids). Go for a walk in the park and leave your phone at home. Read an actual book instead of doom scrolling. Choose a couple of trusted news sources that aren’t screaming “outrage,” “carnage,” and “end of the known world” at you, and let the rest go. For sure, do all these things but know that we are up against something bigger, a demonic power. No wonder so many now speak of “addiction” when they talk of media and social media.

So when you find your attention grabbed and seduced and do get lost in scrolling an hour away or going down some rabbit hole or are overwhelmed by anxiety, don’t condemn yourself. Trust, as Paul writes later in that same chapter, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Beating up on ourselves for failures to only attend to what is good and edifying won’t get us where we want to go. Our hearts and lives are never changed by “shoulds,” but only by grace.

Pray for mercy, grace, and strength to attend, in this present time and dispensation, more readily to the alternate world and promises of the gospel. I say “alternate” because the twenty-four-hour news cycle looms very large, and not by accident. Faith denies this conceit — the oppressive hegemony of now and of the present powers that be — those who claim that this present world and its order are the be-all and end-all.

In this vein, I am finding it important to be in church on Sunday mornings, there to be reminded of a different order and of realities unseen, of promises that negate the oppression of now. That said, I would advise avoiding those churches that only amplify outrage and fear, whether on the left or the right.

Also, consider the ancient practice of praying the Scriptures as a way of challenging the hegemony of the present. Take a (not long) passage, pray its words over slowly several times, and see where it leads you, what it evokes within you. What words or images draw your attention? Why? Listen for what God may be saying to you in the passage you are praying. Here are a couple to try: Isaiah 43:1–3 (inserting your name when there is a name like “Jacob” or “Israel”), John 15:1–8, Mark 8:14–21, or 1 Corinthians 13:1–8.

Long ago — way before “the attention economy” — Paul, though imprisoned at the time (as in some sense we are as well), wrote in his letter to the Philippians about that to which we are to give our attention, those things that are honorable, pure, and worthy of praise: the active agency and faithfulness of God. Because at a time when everything and everyone is demanding to be heard now, I find it necessary to bend my ear to that which is eternally true. To be reminded of the power of God at work and to be strong in the Lord (Eph 6:10), or of Christ who lives in me after I have died to this world (Gal 3:20). These and so many more restore us to our right minds when the attention economy’s hegemony of the now and its rulers and powers give us a hard case of theological amnesia.