Patterns of attention determine what reality feels possible to us.

Evidence

One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious. When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention—what we choose to notice and what we do not—are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines attention as the faculty through which we render reality and scope possibility — central to Odell’s whole argument.
• QUESTION: Is the claim that attention is contagious and that it shapes possibility really sufficient to ground ‘revolutionary potential’? Worth testing against the privilege critique.
• XREF: connects to: Status-seeking drives humans to comply with conventions that then reshape perception. — W. David Marx, Status and Culture: How Our Desire for…, 123