Do human beings have an infinite appetite for distraction?
Huxley was writing about mass communication in his work, Brave
New World Revisited, and how the media was more interested in what is
irrelevant than what is true or false when he discussed the idea of distractions.
The new world of mass communication, in the 1950s, was challenging the
spirituality of modern western societies: hence his observation that humans
have an appetite for distractions. (All references below)
For better or for worse Huxley died in 1963, too early to
even imagine the modern era of social media, apps, mobile phones and personal
computers. He most probably would not have approved of the online information
age of today. But as Alfonso keeps reminding us during the meetings, past
philosophers did not have smart phones; so who knows, he might have loved to
have one.
More or less at the same time Huxley was writing another
philosopher was on the rise, the Canadian, Marshall McLuhan. It is claimed that McLuhan
did foresee the World Wide Web, but he is more well known for the terms, "the
medium is the message" and the “global village.” There is no doubt that today
we do live in a "global village", but I would say even global villages: twitter,
facebook, instagram, youtube, Whatsapp and so on, plus of course for many of us
Madrid in the real world.
The idea of the population being distracted is not
new, Karl Marx himself pointed out the influence of religion by describing
religion as “….the opium of the people.” Basically the idea being that religion
is both the cause of our misery and then promoted as the salvation of our
misery. This should not come as a surprise given that Marx was writing about human
conditions during one of the most oppressive and inhumane times of modern history,
the height of the industrial revolution. Both Huxley and Marx found objection
to capitalism since these distractions prevent us from concentrating on what is
important in life.
That we have an infinite appetite for distraction is not in
doubt, what is interesting is why and what for?
In English we have a saying, “The devil makes work for idle
hands” (although there are many versions of the saying) meaning that people who
are not busy can easily getting involved in mischief. The issue for us is of
course idle hands. Why should we have nothing to do? And why should busy hands
keep the devil away? After all those involved in religion and mass media keep
very busy in distracting us.
But even if we were busy all hours it does not follow that
we are not distracted from what we are doing. I would argue that distraction
has nothing to do with human weakness but rather with human boredom. If mass
media is the killer of spirituality, boredom is the killer of our intellectual
souls. The political revolutions of the 19th and 20th
century, culminating into Nazism, were not caused, I would argue, because people
were oppressed but rather being poor and oppressed is very boring. Likewise, we
are not distracted because we are weak, but boredom leads us to seek
distractions. The 9 to 5 work day, is just as boring as shift work in a
factory.
But repetition is not necessarily boring in itself, for
example, doing the morning check list before we leave for the office is very efficient
and very reassuring. Regularly ordering our favourite ice cream is not boring
if only because we anticipate the pleasure it will give us, we enjoy it when we
are eating it and at the end we are left with a pleasant experience.
A consequence of boredom is that it directly affects our
attention span. Indeed distractions like social media might physically affect
our concentration span and boredom due to the situation we are in affects our
ability to concentrate. In effect we seek distractions because we are bored and
our attention span is affected by our distractions.
It is one thing to argue that distractions take our
attention away from what is important for us, and another finding ourselves in a
world of boredom. Our attention span is a brain disposition unlike say our
value judgements that what is spiritual or religious is important.
Consider the article “What Are the Causes of a Short
Attention Span, and How Can I Improve It?” from Healthline.com. What is
important for us here is that the authors identify medical causes that could
lead to reduced attention span. Thus attention span is of great importance, but
we cannot conclude that we are solely responsible of our attention span,
whether for medical reasons or mental judgements. Some people are really just boring!
In an article in the Guardian reported, “Global attention
span is narrowing and trends don't last as long, study reveals. …… Research
combed from everything from movie tickets to social media finds more to focus
on but less time to do so”. An
interesting observation made in the article is that a Twitter trend in 2013 lasted
17.5 hours and in 2016, 11.9 hours.
Indeed today we do suffer from information overload, but we
are affected by information overload when the information is boring, irrelevant
or downright depressing. I would argue that we seek and are affected by distractions
as a consequence of disengagement and boredom. If we are not interested or engaged
in what we are doing we would welcome a distraction. Compare the boredom of a 9
to 5 job with the following headline on Fifa’s website: “More than half the
world watched record-breaking 2018 World Cup”. But what is important for my argument
is the subheading: The final was seen live by a combined 1.12 billion viewers
worldwide.
What the subheading means is that 1.12billion people were
able to concentrate for more than 90minutes all at the same time and for the same
event. I grant you that football might be the modern religion and equally
alienates the people, but what matters here is that 1.12billion people felt
engaged and certainly not bored.
My conclusion is that distractions might be sought because of
the boring state we find ourselves in. And the antidote for distractions must
surely be interesting engagement, involvement and motivation. Who, I ask you,
in their right mind would be motivated to be bored?
“In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal
literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda
might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in
fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the
development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main
neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less
totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite
appetite for distractions.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the
expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is
the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the
soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people…… Karl Marx
Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique
of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_of_the_people#cite_note-2
)
Marshall McLuhan
What Are the Causes of a Short Attention Span, and How Can I
Improve It?
Global attention span
is narrowing and trends don't last as long, study reveals
Dream McClinton in New York - Wed 17 Apr 2019 17.32 BST
More than half the world watched record-breaking 2018 World
Cup
Best Lawrence
tel: 606081813
philomadrid@gmail.com
Blog:
http://philomadrid.blogspot.com.es/
MeetUp
https://www.meetup.com/PhiloMadrid-philosophy-group/
Gran Clavel
(Café-Bar): Gran vía 11, esquina C/ Clavel, 28013—Madrid
(minor corrections made 22/09/2019)
