Attention is etymologically a stretching toward that resists collapsing others into instrumental categories

Evidence

In the discomfort and unnaturalness of the moment in which Collin and Miles stare at each other, you can feel the “stretching toward” (ad tendere) in attention. They do not just have their eyes directed toward each other; they are seeing each other. It was this scene that made clear for me the connection between attention, perception, bias, and will. In effect, the opposite of a racist view is Buber’s “I-Thou” perception, which assiduously refuses to let the other collapse into any one instrumental category. Recall that Buber refuses to see the tree as image, species, or relationship of numbers. Instead “thou” has the same depth as I. Seeing this way means foregoing all of the many easier and more habitual ways to “see,” and as such, it is a fragile state requiring the discipline to continue. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 419

Categorization

• DEFINE: Gives the etymology ad tendere (stretching toward) that grounds Odell’s whole project of attention as an active, disciplined posture rather than passive capture.
• XREF: Buber’s I-Thou is an old philosophical reference point; ties to the reader’s defense against the title’s withdrawal misreading — attention here is encounter, not retreat. — connects to: Attention commodification reduces human beings and relationships to quantifiable, saleable things.