§79 The Meaning of Paying Attention

In a recent podcast interview, Jordan Peterson brought attention to the problem of rationality in the existential quest to find ‘meaning’ in life. “Rationality”, he warned, “tends to fall in love with its own productions”. This, he explained, is why the ancient Egyptians (and to some extent Catholics) placed an onus on ‘attention’ being a higher virtue than ‘intelligence’.

To explain further, Peterson references the mynah birds in Aldous Huxley’s Island (1962). Huxley’s birds are trained to utter an imperative to the island’s inhabitants: “pay attention” they repeat. For Peterson, the process and practise of paying attention has been used from a clinical psychological perspective to enable his patients to realise meaning in their own lives:

“you have to watch, like you’re ignorant about yourself … and notice when you’re doing something that you’re engaged in.”

By this logic, Peterson challenges the very notion that you can find meaning in life. Rather, one must develop the proclivity to notice it. To do so, one needs to have cultivated a capacity to recognise and receive it. Meaning in life is not ‘out there’ as an external reality that must be found through rational, pragmatic or intellectual means, but rather is an experience that manifests itself at rare moments. The important thing is to pay attention and recognise when these moments arise.

The challenge for the individual then is to avoid the rationalistic impulse to go out after external things in the hope that meaning will be arrived at — such pursuits are often fads that offer only momentary distractions from meaning itself. The requirement, it seems, is to cultivate one’s capacity to receive what is of note when we pursue our everyday objectives. As Charles Bukowski put it in rather more simple terms: ‘be on the watch’:

‘The Laughing Heart’

your life is your life

don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.

be on the watch.

there are ways out.

there is light somewhere.

it may not be much light but

it beats the darkness.

be on the watch.

the gods will offer you chances.

know them.take them.

you can’t beat death but

you can beat death in life, sometimes.

and the more often you learn to do it,

the more light there will be.

your life is your life.know it while you have it.

you are marvellous

the gods wait to delight

in you.

/Pete Watt

Originally published at anowmedia.com on December 14, 2018.