Attention! #075

Aldous Huxley's Island

Aldous Huxley's "Island" and the Power of Attention

Aldous Huxley, a writer of the mid-20th century, once wrote a book called "Island." In this book, it tells the story of a person who is shipwrecked on an island. But this island is not abandoned; it is the opposite—it is a utopian island. It is an island where people live a really good life, and he tries to see the secret behind their lives. What he finds, among other things, is that the leaders of this island, the King, have put a lot of effort on attention.

The Importance of Attention

I will read you one sentence about attention and how the people on this island deal with attention. "I'd suggest that you listen to that bird," the doctor said. He waved a hand in the direction of the dead tree where the myna had returned. "Attention," the bird was calling. "Attention." "Attention to what?" I asked in the hope of eliciting a more enlightening answer than the one I had recently received. "To attention," said Dr. MacPhail. "Attention to attention, of course," the myna chanted in ironical confirmation. "Do you have many of these talking birds?" "There must be at least a thousand," he said, "flying about the island." "It was the old raja's idea. He thought it would do people good. Maybe it does, though it seems rather unfair to the poor mynas."

So what happens there is that they have these birds flying around, a thousand of them, calling people to attention. And this is part of what makes the society so happy.

The Attention Economy in Our Society

I think today, perhaps we need to look at this as a good idea in our society where the attention economy is doing the opposite to us. It is stealing our attention; it is taking it away. It is channeling it into, you know, shorts like the one you're watching just now, ironically. And instead, we should learn to return our attention to the world around us, to look at it, to perceive it, to give it time to show itself to us, and also for us, time to comprehend our place in it.

See you next time.

Photo by Karl Callwood on Unsplash