Individual attention selection spontaneously aligns people into shared communities of sensibility

Evidence

Even when I think I am gathering on my own, it turns out that we are gathering together: we apply criteria and favour forms which unite us in one community. In other words, our selective attention serves, in one same movement, to filter phenomena from our environment and to constitute communities of sensibility and action. From this we can draw a PRINCIPLE OF SELECTIVE COLLECTIVIZATION: attention simultaneously ensures a certain adaptation of our behaviour to our environment (by selecting in it what interests us) and a certain collective composition of individual desires (by spontaneously aligning our sensibilities and our preferences with those of others). — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 110

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘principle of selective collectivization’ — a core concept for the collective attention theory.
• XREF: Connects to Gabriel Tarde’s ‘invention-imitation’ logic and Bourdieu’s habitus as shared classificatory schemes. — connects to: Attention slowly forms through care and constitutes the social bond — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 489; Attention is more valuable when it diverges from others than when it aligns — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 526; Economic accounts of attention falsely derive the collective from individual activity — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 79 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Attentional alignment with others generates communal powers no individual could reach alone #expands (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 111
• Shared attention builds a collective rather than merely private reality #corroborates (0.80) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 121
• Attention is alignment, the same faculty on individual and collective levels #expands (0.80)
• Refocusing attention away from news and productivity reveals a more-than-human community #expands (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 427