As a teenager I joined the Surf Life Rescue squad for a trial day. It was a lot of fun to jump off moving boats as we practiced rapid deployment to rescue drowning people. Their highlight was to provide first aid support for a racing regatta once a year. On race day it was all systems go in neoprene suits and all action stations.
As the training day wore on, one of the instructors talked me through a typical engagement for the squid and he explained that they basically just hung around waiting for an accident to happen. His theory was that most people just watch races for the crashes.
Our attention is fixated on not missing that one critical moment when something goes horribly wrong.
As we learn more and more about cognition his basic thesis is proven ever truer. As humans we are constantly predicting the future. Our brains are not only wired to be supreme pattern recognisers, but we are also evolving and extrapolating these patterns and rewarded with our home-made drug dopamine when the predictions prove to be true.
This reward system is the fundamental mechanism for learning and memory.
One theory holds that our perception of reality is always just slightly behind actual reality because of the complex processes required to decode and make sense of what is going on around us.
In a sense we are always living slightly ahead of our conscious awareness, operating on autopilot and saving the expensive and special focussed attention for exceptional and out of the ordinary phenomena.
That’s why crashes and accidents fascinate us. Our brains analyse and unpick every minute detail to understand where the prediction machine went wrong. The bigger the catastrophe, the more focussed we become on the event, aligning our cognitive investment with the risk that is posed.
Commercial broken
I’ve been a big fan of the movement Tristan Harris started. First called “time well spent” it later became the broader and more directional “Centre for Humane Technology.” After years of creating software programs to program human dopamine cycles for profit, he has shifted his focus to building a technological future in service of wellbeing.
They view the existing systems of social media and marketing as extractive and destructive processes, preying on the very instincts that make us human.
A key feature of these systems is to use ever greater division, sensationalism, and emotional violence to sustain engagement.
In taking a deep dive on the space that shapes our consciousness, Tristan has come to an interesting conclusion: Human attention is not only the most valuable scarce resource on the planet, it is sacred.
This makes sense if you think about it. Our creative force stems from our attention. There is an old yogic wisdom that states: energy flows where attention goes. Every idea that has ever gone from fantasy or dream to reality, has come about because someBODY committed their attention to the idea. Filling it with energy, bringing it to life.
You pay with attention.
This creative power inherent to our attention is profound, which is why marketers and technology companies are so fixated on capturing and owning it. Yet they harness it not for generative and expansive creativity, they simply sustain cashflow through the casino of dopamine rewards.
At root a fear based, reductionist view of other people and ourselves. We are locked into the detention of highjacked attention.
And at the heart of attention, stands tension.
The gap between what is and what could be. The unexpected punching holes in the landscape of predictability. Like an elastic band that has been stretched, the potential energy created by the tension expresses itself as our ATtension. The bigger the gap, the bigger the tension.
A couple of years ago I was consulting on a project that was using trans-dermal stimulation to heighten attention. It is quite poetic that scientists would use electric current (tension) to stimulate attention.
The technology was first used by DARPA on drone pilots. You can imagine how mind numbingly boring this job must be. Staring at a screen for hours on end, waiting for a tiny movement or an object to appear out of the ordinary. (there is a reason commanders always call their soldiers to ATTENTION!)
When we are working on a repetitive task, the attention of our mind runs through countless cycles of repeated evaluation, reorientation, contemplation. At some point, the challenge loses its tension as our mind gets used to plodding down the known paths of predictable discovery.
The DARPA trans dermal inducers were worn as a helmet to maintain the tension required for vigilant pattern breaking surveillance. They had to keep feeding the neural tension in order to sustain attention.
Which brings me to Ukraine.
The past month has seen the global attention stretched by Putin’s willingness to go beyond anything modern Europe thought possible. The gap between what should be and what is.
In the words of Tristan Harris, this is an extractive exploitation of our attention. Sucking the global creative force into a spiral of fear that has trapped and paralyzed so much focus.
Yet, this tension has also liberated a creative force that has transcended the expectations of everyone. The distributed, empowered will of a nation to manifest freedom and hope. Early on a desperate Russian soldier tried to force the attention of the Ukrainians towards his attempt at authority. Raising two hand grenades above his head he tried to punch through their will, to subjugate and dominate their attention.
It did not work. In that moment the weakness of the aggressor’s system was exposed. If you can only gain attention through destruction, you will run out of things to destroy. Like the mind-numbing monotony of the drone pilot’s screen, the downward spiral of war cannot sustain itself.
This tension must resolve in life, not death.
The movement of wind through leaves can capture our attention for hours. We never bore of watching the waves break and smash over the rocks. Life sustains attention and regenerates our energy.
Is there a way for us, collectively, to tune out the attempt to suck our attention into a fear based negative spiral. Can we flip the switch on Putin to deliver Charlotte Keys’ vision: “Suppose they gave a war and nobody came?” Can we valorise the human will that breaks through all attempts to silence it, and release the tension for life affirming creativity?
Let’s take that leap!
Three key take-outs:
1. Stretch
What triggers your attention? How big is the noticeable difference that draws your attention in? Are you selective about this process or trapped in a dopamine cycle?
2. Flex
Can you see the potential space between what is and what should be or are you fixated on the two endpoints? How might you tap into the desire to unite these points, to feel the flex?
3. Release
Is your instinct to shore up and valorise the one or other event, are can you release the tension created by the gap as a transformative, life affirming new idea?