What Does It Cost When You Pay Attention?
Since the advent of the agricultural revolution in the Western world, Westerners have been told to pay attention. To listen up. Each of us is seen as a microcosm in which reason is in control just as monarchs are in control of kingdoms, which is just as gods are in control of everything.
Think about one time-tested image for control in Western philosophy: Human reason has been pictured as the driver of a chariot; human emotions are the horses pulling the chariot, all too likely to get out of hand if given too much freedom.
Take, for example, Proverbs 7:24, from Hebrew scripture. Proverbs is the book that contains the advice, “He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly” (13:24) from which we get the English proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
That’s the tone of much of the advice in Proverbs. Proverbs 7:24 says:
Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth.
That’s the King James Version. The New Revised Standard Version puts it this way:
And now, my children, listen to me,
and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
And the Good News bible puts it this way:
Now then, sons, listen to me. Pay attention to what I say.
“Attend to.” “Be attentive.” “Pay attention.”
The Latin root for both “attention” and “attend” is attendere. The lesson of Proverbs is clear: listen to authority. Pay attention to those higher on the food chain. Listen up.
For Westerners, attention is something to be paid and directed.
Taoists, Hindus, and Buddhists, on the other hand, have paid considerably more attention to just what attention is. In Eastern thought, attention is a way of using the mind to explore consciousness.
In the chariot metaphor, it’s about firm control. Eastern thinkers also used a mode of transportation as metaphor for the mind: the elephant. In the elephant metaphor, it’s about management, not control. It’s about the mahout’s life-long relationship with a particular elephant. Relationship, not control.
A question: which is more useful, paying attention or cultivating attention?
It’s according to who you ask, isn’t it? For the mansplaining elder speaking in Proverbs, it’s all about being listened to. Top-down.
But for each of us, as we attempt to find ways of living with our own minds, don’t we do better to pay attention to what we pay attention to?
Because, in the end, the attention we pay is the life we spend.
Everybody wants our attention. Wants our butts in seats and our eyeballs or fingers on screens. There’s money and power in chariot driving. We are the horses.
How about insisting upon a mahout instead?
