Outward attention gains extend inward to self-knowledge

Evidence

This got me thinking that perhaps the granularity of attention we achieve outward also extends inward, so that as the perceptual details of our environment unfold in surprising ways, so too do our own intricacies and contradictions. My dad said that leaving the confined context of a job made him understand himself not in relation to that world, but just to the world, and forever after that, things that happened at work only seemed like one small part of something much larger. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 73

Categorization

• XREF: The inward/outward granularity parallel is structurally similar to the Deep Listening move between vast sonic totality and targeted focus — connecting the bioregional and listening threads the reader wants to assess. — connects to: Reflexive meta-attention on one’s own habits is what makes attention genuinely individuating. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 496; Mindful bidirectional attention produces the critical consciousness Freire described.