Attention and Focus

What do we attend to? What do we focus on? In a brilliant little book called The Sovereignty of Good, philosopher Iris Murdoch reflected on the way attention and focus weaves the fabric of our moral lives every day. She suggested that when the moment comes to make an ethical choice, in most cases it's already been made by the way we've focused our attention throughout our days, as a way of both reflecting and forming our values.

I just read a remarkable and little known essay by Henry David Thoreau, "Life Without Principle," which was published posthumously. Here are two short passages. He's talking about what attracts our interest and then flows through our minds, and he says something very relevant to social media in our day:

<<If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.>> (764)

<<We should treat our minds, that is, ourselves, as innocent and ingenuous children, whose guardians we are, and be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on their attention.>> (764)

Amen? Click for the book. From Walden and Other Writings