Are We Attentive Enough to Reach Salvation in Digital Culture?
The Distracted Life
Having promised us a technological utopia, our
ubiquitous and intrusive cyber-culture has instead precipitated a spiritual
crisis in which human experience has been systematically fragmented and the
coherence of the self increasingly threatened. Living in a culture of organized
distractions, our thoughts are isolated and disconnected, preventing us from
seeing and experiencing the wholeness of life. Distraction and fragmentation
have negative consequences for the organization of knowledge; they prevent us from
engaging our spiritual depth, and render us incapable of engaging the spiritual
depth of others, for having lost touch with our own personhood, we can receive
neither the personhood of our neighbor nor of God.
Beginning in 2009, the New York Times ran a
series of articles called "Driven to Distraction," reporting on
accidents and fatalities involving distracted drivers. The series expanded to
include "Distracted Doctoring," reporting on the large number of
surgeons who are placing personal calls during surgery; on medical technicians
who are texting while running cardio-pulmonary bypass machines; and
anesthesiologists who are shopping online for airline tickets...
"...The World Beyond Your Head,"
Matthew Crawford has referred to this situation as a "crisis of
self-ownership," arguing that we are now living in an "attentional
economy" in which "our attention is not simply ours to direct where
we will," making "the effort to be fully present" an intractable
struggle... According to Crawford,
we have become "agnostic" on the question of what to pay
attention to, which means we no longer know what to value. As a result, our
inner lives become "shapeless," and we become susceptible to what is
presented to us by powerful commercial forces that have taken the place of
traditional cultural authorities.
To be attentive, on
the other hand, is the first step in claiming our humanity, our agency and
self-determination as human beings. We choose what to pay attention to, and, in
a very real sense, this determines what is real for us; what is actually
present to our consciousness. By contrast, distraction and fragmentation reveal
an ethical void at the center of our existence, prompting Crawford to call for
an "ethics" and "ascetics" of attention for out time,
grounded in a realistic account of the human mind.
Being
Attentive
Without wishing to
minimize the importance of skilled craftsmanship (which the Holy Mountain has
been practicing and supporting throughout its long history), I would like to
focus on the logically prior moment of "attentiveness" itself,
independent of any (logically sequent) activity for which it might be deemed
necessary or useful. As we shall see, attentiveness offers us a profound and
effective response to our modern culture of organized distractions. To be
sure, the "ethics and ascetics of attention" that Crawford is seeking
are central to Orthodox anthropology and moral psychology, namely: the practice
of "attentiveness" (προσοχή) or "attending (or giving heed) to thyself"
(προσέχειν σεαυτώ).
This phrase - which
is only superficially related to the Socratic injunction to "know thyself"
(γνώθι σαυτόν) occurs in various forms in the New Testament, but is
in fact derived from the Book of Deuteronomy (Old Testament) 4:9: "Attend
(or Give heed) to thyself, and keep thy heart diligently" (πρόσεχε σεαυτώ και φύλαξον τήν ψυχήν σου σφόδρα), or, alternately, from Deuteronomy 15:9 "Attend
to thyself, that there be no hidden, iniquitous word in your heart" (πρόσεχε σεαυτώ μή γένηται ρήμα κρυπτόν έν τή καρδία σου ανόμημα). The phrase, which is an ethical imperative,
has a long and rich history, from which only a few examples can be cited here.
"...Although
the Life of Saint Anthony does not describe the practice of attentiveness in
any detail, Saint Basil the Great describes it at length. Far
from mere external "self-observation," and having nothing to do with
any kind of solipsistic self-absorption, "attentiveness" is
comprehensive in scope, being at once:
(1) the awakening of the rational
principles that God has placed in the soul;
(2) vigilant stewardship over the
movements of the mind, which governs the movements of the body and society as a
whole;
(3) the awareness of the mind's (or
soul's) priority over the body, and of the beauty of God over sensory pleasure;
(4) an engagement with reality and a
rejection of mental fantasies;
(5) self-examination and the refusal
to meddle in the affairs of others;
(6) and
least, the very knowledge of God, insofar as the "self" is the image
of God, a connection with which Basil concludes the entire sermon: "Give
heed, therefore, to thyself, that you may give heed to God" (πρόσεχε ούν σεαυτώ, ίνα προσέχης Θεώ").
The practice of
attending to the self, firmly established by the 4th century, remained central
to Christian anthropology and ethics. Subsequent generations of
writers and practitioners developed the concept, generally aligning
attentiveness with cognate practice such as "stillness" (ησυχία) and
"vigilance" (νήψις). In this more comprehensive form–already
suggested by Saint Basil–it was given a foundational role in Christian life,
and was ultimately considered a necessary presumption or pre-condition for
salvation.
The extraordinary
emphasis given to attentiveness is explained, not simply because the human mind
is prone to distraction, but because the disintegration of our inner life began
precisely with the fall, when humanity separated itself from God.
"Distraction," from this point of view, has rightly been called "the
original sin of the mind." (Source: Orthodox Heritage)
By Protopresbyter George D.
Konstantopoulos
Source:
http://saintandrewgoc.org/home/2018/7/30/attentiveness-and-digital-culture
