The attention-versus-distraction pairing has deep roots in patriarchy and Christian devotion.

Evidence

On the face of things, distraction is precisely the opposite of “attention”—at least that’s the way the standard denunciations set things up. Attention good; distraction bad. Indeed, this Manichean pairing can be traced all the way back through the key moments in a long history of fretful concerns around personhood, social order, and right living. Patriarchal denunciations of flighty, fashion-addled society women in the late nineteenth century never failed to decry the wandering eye, wandering mind, and general inconstancy of “la distraite.” Even more grave, distraction featured as a soul-snatching ruse of the devil across nearly a millennium of Christian devotion. Monks, priests, and the faithful laity, all of whom shared a sense that righteous living required a continuous focus on God, together saw distractibility as a perpetual peril to properly prayerful contemplation. — The Friends of Attention, Attensity!, 492

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ — moral panics over distracted women and the devil’s soul-snatching repeat across eras, as dress panics did.
• SEED: The ‘distraction as moral failing’ genealogy is ripe for an essay pairing the teacher’s rebuke with this 900-year devotional lineage.