Organized religion was the first great claimant on human attention.

Evidence

This is not to say that there were no regular claimants on human attention, only that commercial and political ones hadn’t yet arrived. When they did, however, they were met by one that had stood for centuries. With its combination of moral injunctions as well as daily and weekly rituals, organized religion had long taken human attention as its essential substrate. This is especially true of monotheisms, whose demands for a strict adherence to the one true God naturally promote an ideal of undivided attention. Among early Christians, for example, total attention to God implied ceaseless prayer. The early Church father Clement of Alexandria wrote of the “Perfect Christian” as one who “prays throughout his entire life, endeavoring by prayer to have fellowship with God.” Likewise the desert monastics of the fourth century took as their aim “to maintain there as near as possible a ceaseless vigil of prayer, punctuated only by the minimal interruption for food and sleep.” — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 82

Categorization

• DEFINE: Frames attention capture as a historically deeper phenomenon than advertising, with religion as its prototype — worth keeping for the reader’s thesis.
• SEED: Angle: ‘Before advertising, religion was the original attention monopoly’ — the church as the first platform for capturing waking hours.
• ADDENDUM: Rituals of undivided attention parallel the monastic ceaseless-vigil ideal and could extend the framing of devotion/sacrifice in the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece.
• XREF: connects to: Religion is historically the primary motivator of prosociality among strangers.; Prosocial religions outcompeted rival groups historically and scaled up human social organization — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 479; Religion is the most important element defining civilizations — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 110 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Pre-agricultural peoples mobilized enormous resources for religious construction. #exemplifies (0.80)
• Religion is the most important element defining civilizations #corroborates (0.75) — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 110
• Extending moral concern to anonymous strangers was originally a religious achievement. #expands (0.75) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 472
• Religion endures as a force because it fuses meaning with collective identity. #expands (0.75)
• Secular institutions achieved large-scale cooperation by usurping religion’s community-building role #corroborates (0.74)
• Religion is historically the primary motivator of prosociality among strangers. #expands (0.72)
• Prosocial religions outcompeted rival groups historically and scaled up human social organization #corroborates (0.72) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 479
• Great religions and civilizations developed the capacity to assimilate the other. #expands (0.72)
• Religion is an evolved device enabling groups to function as adaptive units #complicates (0.72)
• Prosocial religions produce large-scale cooperation and then spread culturally #corroborates (0.70) — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 56