Attention as a Blessing
I want to say more about last week’s post on living in interesting times. The post resonated with many readers, but also seems to have rubbed several the wrong way. Some of those reasons, like the idea that I was absolving the Mormon Church of historical wrongdoings, are simply wrong. Others, like the idea that I was encouraging people to become Mormon, are simply preposterous. Other things I was accused of that I did not say?
That I think Mormon doctrine will change if Mormons work shoulder to shoulder with queer people (I consider this to be completely in the air and that the idea that one should only pursue things they have zero doubts about misunderstands how life works)
That I think such change would take place overnight (as a general rule, I accept Isaiah Berlin’s maxim that “politics is a strong and slow boring of hard boards”)
That I think queer people should pretend not to be queer and should set aside their own boundaries and needs for respect as part of allying with historical antagonists (I think no such thing, and at no point said anything akin to this)
What is notable about all of these accusations is that they are ideas that were filled in to the blanks in my writing. In places where I did not go out of my way to excoriate something, or explain myself in painful detail, or cover every single caveat, people filled in the least generous interpretation and/or those interpretations that attempted to pre-anticipate ways that what I was saying would be dangers. I understand that many times such games of playing “spot the danger” arise out of long histories and experiences of trauma, but I want to think about the ways that these practices do not serve us because they direct our attention away from the tasks that need doing and the opportunities that present themselves for generating change. Attention, like all forms of magic, can be used to bless those things on which it is paid. It can also be used to curse them.
If, as I have said, writing is magic, then it is also true that reading is magic. Writing cannot do its work by itself. That would be like saying that leading a horse to water is the same thing as making it drink. These two things are, I hope we can all agree, not the same. Authors put what they mean into the world, but it is up to the reader to meet them halfway. And after they have been met halfway, the reader makes a choice about what to drink and what not to drink. A more academic and less mystical way to put this is to say that reading is an act of political judgment. The first step of political judgment is asking and understanding “What stands before me?” And the second step is asking and deciding “What now?” Both have far more possibilities inherent in them than most people generally recognize. Is it water in front of you? Poison? Tequila? Are you gazing at a reflecting pool? Step two is deciding what to do with it. Drink it? Ignore it? Take a bath? Tump over the trough? Splash your friend? Splash your enemy? Water some plants? Water some plants magnificently? Will you water them magnificently now? Or tomorrow? Will you simply stand there dumbly and regret that the water is not the water you wanted it to be, despite the fact that you are dying of thirst in the desert? There are as many answers to the questions as there are combinations of verbs, nouns, adjectives, and gerunds.
When you decide what is in front of you, your conclusion is at least partially dependent on the attention you have paid the situation. What you have chosen to notice, and what you have chosen to ignore. What you think matters, and what you do not think matters. And when you decide what to do about it, you are deciding where to put your attention going forward. Such decisions are built up from a messy mixture of our personal histories, our education, our interests and desires, our culture, our practical experience, and our minds. To decide what matters, and why, is not a given. It is something we do ourselves.
Dr. Turner’s Notebooks are a reader-supported publication. Although all our posts are free, blessing them with support makes this possible.
Why does it matter that we read carefully in this moment and with an eye towards where we want to go? Attention, tending, attending, attendant. All these roots share an etymology that means “to stretch towards, to direct energy to, to expect.” Further back, in the older root “ten-,” you get that “stretch towards” in words like tendril, intention, tendon, tense, obtain, contend, tenor, tonic, and tone. It is to reach towards something in the hopes of binding and moving together. Underneath, an intent. A desire.
When performing spells, there are purifying steps that come before intention setting for a reason. We begin with a request for protection in order to set aside fears that would undermine the task at hand, and we follow it up with purifying rites, to rid ourselves of negative energies like biases, anger, selfishness, hatred, disappointment, or other emotions that would change the tenor (see what I did there?) of the spell. These are the same steps that long time, seasoned activists engage in before setting out to do their work. They recognize the emotions that act as side-desires to distract or undermine their goals and, having acknowledged and honored those emotions with that attention, proceed to set them aside. And only once they have done this kind of internal gut check and self-work do they set their intentions. Having swept away the detritus that will only serve to muddy their action, they can then be clear about why they are there and what they are working towards, and they can proceed to devise the steps necessary to get there. They can say out loud the things they wish to do, and the spell they wish to manifest in the world. And then, having said clearly where they want to go, they can leave the room and proceed to do the things in the world that would make it manifest.
We are confronted with a moment of reckoning that demands skills and practices from us that we have gotten unused to. The world we live in is constructed to take our attention from where it belongs, hijack it by focusing it narrowly on two or three things, and turn it flabby by offering us the prepackaged response to those two or three things. The world that has been built for us by those who would take advantage is one in which our abilities to attend to one another — and not just attend to those who wish to take advantage — have been attenuated. But there is still time to learn, to practice, and to build them back up. First, by asking ourselves what world we really want. Then, by moving backwards to identify the emotions, biases, fears, and experiences that stand in the way of us acting such to attain that world and learning how to release them so we can write more successful spells. And from there, to attend to the rest of the world with our eyes, ears, and hearts open, ready to spot and take advantage of opportunities to implement that as they arise. This is what it means to bless the world, not with our naivete, nor with our cynical distrust, but with a clear-eyed commitment to both existing reality and better possible futures that we have no choice but to strive to reach together.
Dr. Turner’s Notebooks are a reader-supported publication. Although all our posts are free, your generous support makes this possible.
