Attention is learned, not innate, so it can be retrained

Evidence

To see the transformative potential of the present moment—to understand what we can change in ourselves and how we can resist what has been done to us; to get our attention off the couch and onto the pavement—we must bear in mind this simple fact: ATTENTION IS LEARNED. Always. You were taught to listen the way that you do. To look, too. And to feel. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 198

But here’s the good news: Everything that is learned can be unlearned, and relearned. Can be trained (cue Rocky theme music)! And that is the task before us. It is, in a way, to make ourselves willfully non-commodifiable in our attentional lives. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 202

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that even feeling is taught — not just listening and looking — undermines the western commonsense that attention and sensibility are natural endowments, and underwrites the whole activism program.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 198; The Friends of Attention, Attensity!: A Manifesto of the…, 202
• XREF: connects to: Contextual familiarity, not legal training, governs interpretive competence. — Henry M. Hart, Jr. and Albert M. Sacks, The Legal Process: Basic Problems in…, 894; The response to attention exploitation must be affirmative vision, not mere resistance.; Past experience shapes judgments without the actor knowing it. — Anthony G. Greenwald and Mahzarin R. Banaji, Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes,…, 3 (+2 more)