What is happening to attention in the age of digital distraction? What are the consequences of viewing attention as a monetized and commodified resource? And how are habits of attention entangled with spiritual life and practice? This course explores these questions by considering attention as one part of a broader way of inhabiting the world. Major topics covered include the phenomenology of attention, the impact of digital technologies on attention, socio-political implications of living in an attention economy, and the cultivation of contemplative forms of attention. A key component of this course is an opportunity for students to consider their own habits of attention. Alongside weekly readings, students will engage spiritual practices that aim to cultivate contemplative forms attention (broadly construed) and resist negative forms of fragmentation and distraction of digital life—silence, stillness, digital fasting, time in nature, slow reading, ethical listening, engaging the arts, hospitality, and more.
