The Ethics of Attention

The person you already are, doing what you're already doing, but more so.

Probably the core theme of my posts here so far has been to try to demonstrate how all of existence is both a singular whole and at the same time composed of particular things, including human beings. I’ve touched a bit on the consequences of failing to grasp this mutually essential duality, namely that we undermine the conditions of our own existence by thinking of them as in some sense “other” than our own selves. In short, I’ve argued that it is the belief in the essential separateness of things, which excludes the equal truth of the essential connectedness of things, that has allowed us to act in such an environmentally and spiritually destructive way.

Today, however, I want to begin to talk about what an alternative ethical system might look like, one which is based on the understanding that part and whole are as mutually essential as a body and its organs. When we grasp separateness and wholeness as two modes of the same thing, the ethical and political practices that result are radically different from the ones that dominate our thought today. In contrast to our current ethical systems which function in terms of notions like blame, consequences, actions, and intentions, all of which I refer to as the ethics of intention, I want to propose an ethics of attention.

As I’ve said, the ethics of intention are the natural result of a worldview in which an actor is fundamentally separate from the world they act on. It is essential to this worldview that the actor is in some way entirely undetermined by the world around them; this is what is meant by “free will” as the term is typically used. This free will is often taken to be the thing that makes a person who they are, and without which they would be a soulless automaton. The notion that everything is connected as part of a whole denies the possibility that anything could be entirely undetermined in the way necessary for free will, because within such a whole everything determines everything else. Considered in such a way, the universe is not a mass of billiard balls “freely” careening off one another, but rather a sheet in which every thread is bound to every other one, either directly or indirectly. That’s why this mutual connectedness, this determinism, is so deeply troubling to most people: it becomes difficult for them to see how they or anyone else could be a “person” if this is the case. However, this would just be to adopt the opposite of their current position; instead of believing that the whole is nothing but the parts, they fear that the parts are nothing but the whole.

But as I’ve tried to show over and over, the truth is not one or the other but both. Each person and thing determines itself against everything else, but that means that it simultaneously needs everything else in order to be itself. Each thing points to the other, which points back to it; everything is the other of the other. This relationship is what I’ve called either mutual essence or self-difference. If we understand each person and thing in this way, what we see is not the annihilation of what it means to be a person, but rather its radical expansion. Each of us is no longer merely an individual, we are the manifestation of the universe in individual form. Just so, what we mean by freedom radically expands. If we are merely individuals, even if we have free will as it’s usually understood, we’re still bound on all sides by the people and things who aren’t us. When we understand ourselves as the entire universe incarnate, there is nothing to hold us back. Indeed, to the extent that we learn to identify ourselves with all things, there is nothing that can happen contrary to our will. This is the true meaning of the prayer “Thy will be done”: in willing wholeheartedly for the universe to be what it is, and ourselves along with it, we set ourselves free.

Now, this is the time to point out that what I’m saying does not mean that it doesn’t matter what we do, that nothing matters, or that the universe has no room for improvement. This again would be to miss the trees for the forest, just as claiming that our problems are caused by evil people misses the forest for the trees. We have to understand ethics in the context of mutual essence just as we had to understand individual people in that context. We have to understand that, on the one hand, every action is an expression of the whole universe while, on the other hand, the way the universe acts is as individuals deliberating and making choices. If you only see the first part, you’re a nihilist, but if you only see the second part, you’re a moralist. Once again, the truth is both, in a relationship of mutual essence.

What does this mean in practice? It means that, on the one hand, actions are fully determined. Every situation has an infinite history, as does every person in that situation, and what happens next flows directly from what happened before. Furthermore, every person in every situation will always, always, act in their own self interest, because action is the outward expression of the actor’s understanding of what is good for them. Now, this does not mean that actors will never take others’ wellbeing into account when they make their judgments, only that it is impossible to act against one’s interests. To do so would be to succeed at failing—a contradiction. So, just as there is no such thing as free will in the way we normally talk about it, so too is there no such thing as altruism in the way we normally talk about it.

But then how are we to understand all the actions that seem like they’re altruistic, such as self-sacrifice? This proves something stronger than just the fact that someone else’s good can be good for me since, in the case of self-sacrifice, I appear to be giving up what’s good for me for the sake of what’s good for someone else. If I just tried to show that all action is always in the self-interest of the actor, what’s going on here? It means that my self-interest, indeed my self, has extended beyond my individuality. Real altruism isn’t self-lessness, but rather self-fullness.

What I’m talking about, of course, is love.

And this is the other side of an ethics built on mutual essence. To the degree that I identify myself with other people and equate my interests with theirs, I am no longer pretending that my actions are either self-serving or altruistic, rather, I am making self-service and altruism the same thing, in just the same way that my individual self and the whole universe are the same thing. If we understand ourselves as an expression of the universe, and I mean really feel ourselves to be that (which requires lifelong effort), our actions will not only be in our own ultimate self-interest (because we have acted from a complete understanding of our nature) but will also be in everyone else’s best interest as well, because we know that all people and things are nothing but our own self.

The heart of the ethics of attention, therefore, is learning our own true universal nature. This is in contrast to the ethics of intention, which concerns itself with the particular actions of fictional disconnected individuals. It might seem at first that this shift in focus would produce a profound, contemplative passivity, and while it may well result in less observable activity, the activity it does produce will be more effective for two reasons. The first is the reason I just gave, which is that a truer understanding of our nature will educate us about which objects and actions will actually serve our ultimate interests. Rather than chase things that either don’t matter or may even hurt us, the ethics of attention instructs us to use our time reflecting on what we are and what would be good for us.

The second reason has to do with the fundamental nature of action, that it flows directly from the actor’s self interest. As I tried to briefly demonstrate, whatever we may tell ourselves about the motivations behind our actions, there is an absolutely unbroken chain between an actor’s self-concept, their understanding of their interests, and the action they calculate to best achieve those interests. Regardless of how much you’re told that doing such and such is morally correct, and of how much you are punished when you fail to do so, you will not do it until you have been convinced that it is in your best interest. Sadly, for most people, it is precisely the avoidance of punishment that constitutes their reason for acting or not acting. But once we understand this ironclad relationship between self-concept and action, we are in a position to consciously influence our own actions in the only way possible: not by somehow spontaneously acting differently, but by deepening our understanding of who we, the actor, really are and what we want.

And we do this not through any particular action (because, again, the actions flow automatically from our self-concept), but rather just by paying attention to ourselves and our actions. This is also just what we’re already doing all the time. Just as we will always act in our best interests, we will always react to the outcome of those actions and adjust accordingly. What is different about what I’m describing is the need to perform this reflection consciously. In addition to the feedback loop that’s always in place between our self-interest and our reality, I’m talking about taking a step back to consciously consider that feedback loop, in essence creating another, higher, feedback loop between your individual self in the world and something else—your universal self beyond the world. Just as the results of past actions will change our approach to future actions, placing our attention on our individual self and its actions will change that self, along with the actions that flow from it. Hence, the ethics of attention: to become fully, in our own awareness, the kind of being we already are.

So, sure, there are particular practices I could tell you to do that would almost certainly be beneficial to this process. Meditation is the obvious one, and I hope what I’ve written here will help explain why meditation works. But if you pay attention to your experiences and feelings, and if you take them seriously and explore them, you’ll find your own way. You already are. So just pay attention.