@CTmagazine @jeff_bilbro 2/ Admonitory claims that "we become what we see" and "we become what we hate" are ancient, as are universal, interdisciplinary injunctions that where and how we direct our attention mimetically shapes character and destiny.
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Copy of tweet here: I am asked on retreats/quiet days, what is the difference that makes a 'saint' and I respond the focus and quality of what you choose to pay attention to. This is an excellent 'secular' riff on the same theme taking its starting point Iain McGilchrist's The Matter with Things In this light, Buddha's admonition to "place a sentinel at the doors of perception", not unwise. McLuhan, as a correlative, with regard to media: "The successor to politics will be propaganda." Dark genius, seducing the attention span: ravenous wolves, enslaving the private soul. Why stop at Twitter? With the fusion of military and corporate functions in a single, conjoined mediasphere, vast computing resources - increasingly, at a machine level - aimed at dominating perception of reality itself, define planetary war at the level of total consciousness.
@jamespoulos Placing a sentinel at the doors of perception, a course, not unwise. We begin, perhaps, by hallowing the attention span. It is the vehicle of experience, after all.
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