Everyday communal practices of attention are living alternatives to attention extraction.

Evidence

The Friends of Attention use the language of “schools” in this spirit. Wherever people gather and practice ways of being together—there, world-building is underway. There, STUDY is happening. Consider churches. Mosques and synagogues and Zendos. Dance groups. Chess clubs. Jazz bands. Knitting circles. Surf groups. Tai chi in the park. Bachata in the street. Shakespeare in nursing homes. Fishing at the pier. These are communities of attention. They sustain, each in its own humble way, LIVABLE ALTERNATIVES to the ways of being that the attention frackers are continuously pumping—which make us unwell and strip us of the capacity to be with each other, ourselves, and the world. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 294

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘school’/‘STUDY’ in the movement sense — the specific institutional form of study the manifesto proposes as one of its three program pillars.
• ADDENDUM: The sanctuaries pillar of the three-part program maps onto these ‘LIVABLE ALTERNATIVES’; useful to hold alongside the trees-as-infrastructure reading of living alternatives.
• XREF: connects to: Shared attentional practices are the movement’s only real resource