Attention Span vs Focus

Society is now structured in such a way that every event older than a few weeks may as well have never happened, because, as they say, Stuff Keeps Happening. Stuff has always happened, we just didn't know about it as instantaneously in quite as much volume. Speedy reporting isn't new, what has changed is our ability to focus, and how the news media tries to grab our attention away from doing that.

When the Titanic sank and its survivors boarded the Carpathia, one of the first things that happened was wireless calls back to shore. We can think of the wireless as the Twitter/Telegram/Whatsapp of the time. The information coming through was fast, frantic, and often inaccurate. They even reported that the Titanic was being towed to shore (it famously was not). What ended up in the next morning's paper was a fairly brief, surprisingly detailed account of the facts as they were known. Inaccuracies abounded, including the lists of names of those who were aboard. Waiting families had three long days at minimum before they could be certain of their loved ones' fates. The difference between the information at the time and information about disasters now is, in my opinion, a matter of attention. 

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the most studied, publicized, and re-enacted disasters in history, and I genuinely think it was because the pace of journalism hadn't yet outstripped out collective ability to stay focused. It's something I think about a lot these days, given how much information we're expected to care about all at the same time. There are four genocides happening in the world right now, and the Russian war in Ukraine is ongoing. And yet, we are inundated with shock headlines about the person who allegedly killed a healthcare CEO. (They've given him terrorism charges by the way--trying to make an example of him for the rest of us uppity poors.)

Attention span persistence is a thing we can train ourselves to do so we don't lose focus on the things that matter to us. The media will keep vying for our eyeballs, and keep throwing shit at us until we cease to function. So, today's action item is to practice focus. Follow a news thread as far as it will go before moving on to another.

I'm reading articles today about what politicians are doing behind our backs while we're angry in one way or another about the hot boi assassin. Next week we'll be asked to be angry about something else while the people in the recrudescence's cabinet prepare to quietly remove our rights and protections against the rich. We just have to train our brains not to let them do that to us anymore.