Static pinpoint focus is not attention but stultification

Evidence

One of the very greatest philosophers of attention, the American psychologist William James, specialized in just that kind of fearless and expansive thinking. His work involved a live-minded preoccupation with the actual “phenomenology” of attention (the study of the experiences of perception, cognition, and “being” itself). And in pursuing that project, he came up with a lovely way of theorizing the “deep distraction” part of an attentive mind. In his telling, the pinpoint focus that locks statically on an object cannot really be called “attention” at all! For him, it’s really a kind of inert stultification. Imagine, for instance, the dead-eyed, glassy, vacant gaze of a human being going fully vegetative while scrolling on the phone. Is that “attention”? — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 500

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘dead-eyed vacant gaze while scrolling’ directly echoes the reader’s recorded interest in small acts of decorum toward bodies and the degradation of attention.