Attention patterns constitute reality and are contagious between people.

Evidence

One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention. To capitalist logic, which thrives on myopia and dissatisfaction, there may indeed be something dangerous about something as pedestrian as doing nothing: escaping laterally toward each other, we might just find that everything we wanted is already here. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames attention as reality-constituting and contagious — key to the reader’s project of defending against the withdrawal misreading.
• XREF: The contagious-attention claim connects to Deep Listening practice and to the earlier theme that collective attention shapes what feels possible. — connects to: What seems like personal perception is routed through collective circulating images and discourses. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 101
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that attention renders reality and is contagious — so taking it back is revolutionary even while ‘doing nothing’ — is dense enough to resist one-sentence summary.