Attention constitutes reality and remaking it remakes the self

Evidence

If it’s attention (deciding what to pay attention to) that makes our reality, regaining control of it can also mean the discovery of new worlds and new ways of moving through them. As I’ll show in the next chapter, this process enriches not only our capacity to resist, but even more simply, our access to the one life we are given. It can open doors where we didn’t see any, creating landscapes in new dimensions that we can eventually inhabit with others. In so doing, we not only remake the world but are ourselves remade. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 347

Categorization

• DEFINE: State the attention-constitutes-world thesis plainly; key definition for articulating what Odell means against her title’s misreading.
• QUESTION: The claim that attention ‘makes our reality’ begs the privilege question — do materially constrained people have this world-constituting latitude?