It was scary and depressing and really jolted me into an awareness I thought I had, but was clearly lacking. It seems like a lot of us are on similar wavelengths. Thank you for this piece. A lot to think about.
Certainly addition of attention strengthening pastimes is beneficial, but I don't believe it is the solution. A pantry full of health food won't do much to help a morbidly obese person lose weight. A pantry devoid of junk food will. Short of the mental equivalent of a gastric bypass, I think that removal is the best option. If only we could make "good" activities more addictive than the "bad" ones without compromising flow states and critical thinking. An impossible task we haven't really achieved with health food yet either. Instant gratification is a bug being abused by attention merchants, perhaps the patch involves fostering deeper connections online? Those with strong social supports are less likely to fall into addictive habits. Maybe platforms that exploit our longing for deep social bonds over our penchant for novelty could help us become indifferent to fleeting content.
As a child I would, as the adults would say: "Waste away a beautiful day reading." This ended, as you can guess, with internet. It still is there in some sort of hibernating state - the urge to read. Overgrown with technological ivy it meets resistance every time I think of reading a real paper book. Reading your text today I fought with years and years of rewired brain connections that have built networks that block. But I have always maintained a pipeline (like a straw one can breathe through under water) to the top, where the sunshine is. If I focus hard enough I can still access it, the flow of reading. When I focus it comes back to me. I firmly believe it is an important part of being human. Sometimes I wonder if this is what it one day will feel like to lose one's memory. Thank you for handing us little straws so we can breathe under water.
Perfectly put Tom. I will probably tackle my own addiction and that of my loved ones untill the end of our lives. The successes are cyclical. Some days you beat it, some days you get beaten, hard.
But one day I hope the peace I feel whenever I use my phone less than 1 hour/day will be perenial. Doesn't even seem to be a large goal, but as you said, if everyone would be sleeping one hour earlier this very day as I write this whole systems would collapse.
The point about “flow” here is the be all and end all for me. I feel anxious if I don’t get that feeling at least once a day. I don’t think it’s good for us on any level to be perpetually distracted and unable to concentrate.
I suspect an uptick in anxiety disorders have directly resulted from our shot attention spans.
The comment box limited me from making my third point. So read the first two remarks before reading this one.
3. I suggest that when reading Johann Hari that you put it to the test. In his article "Are Screens Robbing Us of Our Capacity to for Deep Reading?" (Jan. 2022), we have a good example of "knowledge statement without fact." He cites the conclusions of Anne Mangen as truths but gives no details of the study that her conclusion is based on. I can say with certainty that I do not read a PDF version of "Reuse of Egyptian Spolia" from a screen in a different way than I read it from a book (or try this with a Montaigne essay). Reading hundreds of things on the internet and on screens has not impaired my ability to concentrate. The problem is not the screen.
Feb 28, 2022·edited Feb 28, 2022Liked by Thomas J Bevan
I want to focus on a comment that you made in section III: “All inputs now seemingly exist on the level of mere information because to internally transmogrify them into knowledge, let alone wisdom takes a level of sustained attention and reflection that the lure of said endless information has largely robbed us of.”
1. For most of my life, I have put “fact-knowledge-wisdom” on a continuum with “fact” being the least valued and “wisdom” the most. In the past couple years, I have reversed the order. The informational content of the internet, which often purports to be knowledge, is slim on facts. In academic writing, if you transmogrify the information you have collected into knowledge, you must also supply the facts on which you base your “knowledge statement.” That way, the readers can decide for themselves if your interpretation is sound, and they can also come up with their own transmogrification of the facts. My objection to what I read on the internet is that the “information” is really “knowledge statements without fact.” This is the reason it goes through our heads and leaves no trace. We need the facts (or let us say, highly specific details) to anchor the information in our minds. There is nothing wrong with my ability to focus—the problem is in the writing not in the reader.
2. If someone were to ask me, “Without looking at his book of essays, which essay by Bevan comes first to your mind?” I would say, “The one where he is sitting on a park bench doing nothing and reporting what he observed.” When Mary Oliver writes “To pay attention, that is our endless and proper work,” she was talking about more than just “focusing.” All of her poetry and essays are grounded in the observation of specific facts (the spider in the doorway). She is a keen observer of world. Her poetry is a record of the observations that she made while actually walking in nature, not an abstraction that she created out of memories of “what nature is like” while sitting in front of a computer.
As follow up this is precisely why I (admittedly sporadically) participate in the STSC- you are surrounded by people sincerely looking for "flow" and also trying to remove things that impede "flow". But to people discouraged don't worry, Silicon Valley will soon offer us escape in the Metaverse...problem solved:)..insert sarcasm. Never forget the greatest commodity of the 21st century is not oil or gold, but your attention span. Sadly it once was not relegated to being an interchangeable commodity. WW
I think the bit about addition you have at the end is crucial. Simply "quitting" a habit is dangerous, because you create a void in yourself that must be filled. If you don't fill it with something good, something worse will come along to take the place of what you removed. It might be a more extreme version of the old habit, or you might go from smoking cigarettes to shooting heroin.
With behavioral addictions, I think a lot of this occurs through spiritual growth. We can recognizing that satisfying our emotional needs through an addictive behavior isn't good, but creating or finding new ways to satisfy those needs is difficult, because it involves self-transformation. Sacrifice, death and rebirth, etc. You can't rewrite the rules of your own way of being just by thinking about it really hard (as much as I wish I could). A spiritual journey is necessary to undergo such transformation.
This essay is a good attention lengthening exercise in itself.
Personally, I'm trying to provide an off-ramp for people via Deprocrastination. It warms my heart to think of the people who I've talked to that have reduced their use of social media, and spent more time creating things or being present with others as a result. This makes the work meaningful.
I'm curious to see what happens next in the next few years. All of the books you mention are a part of the cultural immune response, but is that enough? It might take time, like in the case of smoking. We'll see.
Thomas,
A friend just passed this article along after reading my recent piece about how being on the phone trying to help my wife with something made me lose track of my daughter at the playground: https://alexanderhellene.substack.com/p/the-worst-feeling-in-the-world
It was scary and depressing and really jolted me into an awareness I thought I had, but was clearly lacking. It seems like a lot of us are on similar wavelengths. Thank you for this piece. A lot to think about.
Certainly addition of attention strengthening pastimes is beneficial, but I don't believe it is the solution. A pantry full of health food won't do much to help a morbidly obese person lose weight. A pantry devoid of junk food will. Short of the mental equivalent of a gastric bypass, I think that removal is the best option. If only we could make "good" activities more addictive than the "bad" ones without compromising flow states and critical thinking. An impossible task we haven't really achieved with health food yet either. Instant gratification is a bug being abused by attention merchants, perhaps the patch involves fostering deeper connections online? Those with strong social supports are less likely to fall into addictive habits. Maybe platforms that exploit our longing for deep social bonds over our penchant for novelty could help us become indifferent to fleeting content.
As a child I would, as the adults would say: "Waste away a beautiful day reading." This ended, as you can guess, with internet. It still is there in some sort of hibernating state - the urge to read. Overgrown with technological ivy it meets resistance every time I think of reading a real paper book. Reading your text today I fought with years and years of rewired brain connections that have built networks that block. But I have always maintained a pipeline (like a straw one can breathe through under water) to the top, where the sunshine is. If I focus hard enough I can still access it, the flow of reading. When I focus it comes back to me. I firmly believe it is an important part of being human. Sometimes I wonder if this is what it one day will feel like to lose one's memory. Thank you for handing us little straws so we can breathe under water.
Perfectly put Tom. I will probably tackle my own addiction and that of my loved ones untill the end of our lives. The successes are cyclical. Some days you beat it, some days you get beaten, hard.
But one day I hope the peace I feel whenever I use my phone less than 1 hour/day will be perenial. Doesn't even seem to be a large goal, but as you said, if everyone would be sleeping one hour earlier this very day as I write this whole systems would collapse.
Hope must be held up.
Thanks for writing.
I wonder if it is possible to read beyond the words to the unarticulated thoughts behind the writing. And how exactly would one do that?
Excellent as always.
The point about “flow” here is the be all and end all for me. I feel anxious if I don’t get that feeling at least once a day. I don’t think it’s good for us on any level to be perpetually distracted and unable to concentrate.
I suspect an uptick in anxiety disorders have directly resulted from our shot attention spans.
Protect it at all costs.
The comment box limited me from making my third point. So read the first two remarks before reading this one.
3. I suggest that when reading Johann Hari that you put it to the test. In his article "Are Screens Robbing Us of Our Capacity to for Deep Reading?" (Jan. 2022), we have a good example of "knowledge statement without fact." He cites the conclusions of Anne Mangen as truths but gives no details of the study that her conclusion is based on. I can say with certainty that I do not read a PDF version of "Reuse of Egyptian Spolia" from a screen in a different way than I read it from a book (or try this with a Montaigne essay). Reading hundreds of things on the internet and on screens has not impaired my ability to concentrate. The problem is not the screen.
I want to focus on a comment that you made in section III: “All inputs now seemingly exist on the level of mere information because to internally transmogrify them into knowledge, let alone wisdom takes a level of sustained attention and reflection that the lure of said endless information has largely robbed us of.”
1. For most of my life, I have put “fact-knowledge-wisdom” on a continuum with “fact” being the least valued and “wisdom” the most. In the past couple years, I have reversed the order. The informational content of the internet, which often purports to be knowledge, is slim on facts. In academic writing, if you transmogrify the information you have collected into knowledge, you must also supply the facts on which you base your “knowledge statement.” That way, the readers can decide for themselves if your interpretation is sound, and they can also come up with their own transmogrification of the facts. My objection to what I read on the internet is that the “information” is really “knowledge statements without fact.” This is the reason it goes through our heads and leaves no trace. We need the facts (or let us say, highly specific details) to anchor the information in our minds. There is nothing wrong with my ability to focus—the problem is in the writing not in the reader.
2. If someone were to ask me, “Without looking at his book of essays, which essay by Bevan comes first to your mind?” I would say, “The one where he is sitting on a park bench doing nothing and reporting what he observed.” When Mary Oliver writes “To pay attention, that is our endless and proper work,” she was talking about more than just “focusing.” All of her poetry and essays are grounded in the observation of specific facts (the spider in the doorway). She is a keen observer of world. Her poetry is a record of the observations that she made while actually walking in nature, not an abstraction that she created out of memories of “what nature is like” while sitting in front of a computer.
Where is the opening picture/drawing from?
As follow up this is precisely why I (admittedly sporadically) participate in the STSC- you are surrounded by people sincerely looking for "flow" and also trying to remove things that impede "flow". But to people discouraged don't worry, Silicon Valley will soon offer us escape in the Metaverse...problem solved:)..insert sarcasm. Never forget the greatest commodity of the 21st century is not oil or gold, but your attention span. Sadly it once was not relegated to being an interchangeable commodity. WW
I think the bit about addition you have at the end is crucial. Simply "quitting" a habit is dangerous, because you create a void in yourself that must be filled. If you don't fill it with something good, something worse will come along to take the place of what you removed. It might be a more extreme version of the old habit, or you might go from smoking cigarettes to shooting heroin.
With behavioral addictions, I think a lot of this occurs through spiritual growth. We can recognizing that satisfying our emotional needs through an addictive behavior isn't good, but creating or finding new ways to satisfy those needs is difficult, because it involves self-transformation. Sacrifice, death and rebirth, etc. You can't rewrite the rules of your own way of being just by thinking about it really hard (as much as I wish I could). A spiritual journey is necessary to undergo such transformation.
This essay is a good attention lengthening exercise in itself.
Personally, I'm trying to provide an off-ramp for people via Deprocrastination. It warms my heart to think of the people who I've talked to that have reduced their use of social media, and spent more time creating things or being present with others as a result. This makes the work meaningful.
I'm curious to see what happens next in the next few years. All of the books you mention are a part of the cultural immune response, but is that enough? It might take time, like in the case of smoking. We'll see.