Cultural Achievement Undermines Contemplative Attention

Excessive positivity also expresses itself as an excess of stimuli, information, and impulses. It radically changes the structure and economy of attention. Perception becomes fragmented and scattered. Moreover, the mounting burden of work makes it necessary to adopt particular dispositions toward time and attention [Zeitund Aufmerksamkeitstechnik]; this in turn affects the structure of attention and cognition. The attitude toward time and environment known as “multitasking” does not repre...

 Learn to See, to Think, and to Speak and Write

The vita contemplativa presupposes instruction in a particular way of seeing. In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche formulates three tasks for which pedagogues are necessary. One needs to learn to see, to think, and to speak and write. The goal of education, according to Nietzsche, is “noble culture.” Learning to see means “getting your eyes used to calm, to patience, to letting things come to you”— that is, making yourself capable of deep and contemplative attention, casting a long a...

 The Infection Metaphor

Every age has its signature afflictions. Thus, a bacterial age existed; at the latest, it ended with the discovery of antibiotics. Despite widespread fear of an influenza epidemic, we are not living in a viral age. Thanks to immunological technology, we have already left it behind. From a pathological standpoint, the incipient twenty-first century is determined neither by bacteria nor by viruses, but by neurons. Neurological illnesses such as depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disord...