Expansions of attention from knowing neighbors are irreversible once felt

Evidence

When we arrived back to our apartment, it felt different to me—less like the center of things. Instead the street was full of such “centers,” and each one contained other lives, other rooms, other people turning in for the night and worrying their own worries for the next day. Of course I had already accepted all of this in an abstract sense, but it wasn’t felt. And as silly as this story may sound to anyone who is used to knowing their neighbors, I find it worthwhile to recount because it bears out what I’ve experienced with other expansions of attention: they’re hard to reverse. When something goes from being an idea to a reality, you can’t easily force your perception back into the narrow container it came from. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 464

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Entering a neighbor’s home transforms an abstract view into palpable reality — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 463; Outward attention gains extend inward to self-knowledge — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 73; Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526 (+1 more)
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Entering a neighbor’s home transforms an abstract view into palpable reality — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 463; Outward attention gains extend inward to self-knowledge — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 73; Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns #complicates (0.76) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526