When asked, “How are you?” how often do you say, “Tired” or maybe, “Busy” and “Stressed?” This is the life of the student at Asbury, the life of an American in the 21st century. We’re all busy. Everyone is stressed.
Our days are filled up and we hardly have time to breathe, much less be. The technological innovations we purchased promising us boundless access to the world have in fact given the world boundless access to our lives. As a result, we are drowning in noise.
In the past, most of society’s biggest problems were related to an overwhelming lack of available resources, information, ideas, and goods. As a result, to compete in the market, major corporations sought to be as efficient at production as possible.
While this may still be an issue in many of the world’s third-world countries, it is not a major issue in the United States. Rather, our problems today relate more to an overwhelming influx of resources, information, ideas, and goods. Instead of seeking domination through mass production, corporations’ success is often determined by how well they are able to win and retain an audience’s attention. We have shifted into what many economists have come to call, “the attention economy.”
The attention economy has brought many unforeseen consequences. Foremost of these is that corporations are now financially incentivized to give increasingly provocative messages with increasingly immersive mediums without being held accountable for the emotional, mental, or spiritual vitality of their audiences. These corporations thrive in a competitive attention economy by creating a society full of addicts, addicts who are dying even as they are amused, as discussed in Tristan Harris’ podcast, Your Undivided Attention.
All this to say, I am concerned. I sincerely believe that Asbury could become a spiritual safe haven against the tyranny of a madly busy world. But for this to become true we must begin asking essential questions about what our relationship with technology ought to look like.
Over the next few weeks, my essays are going to explore the ways in which our society is engaged in a battle for one of our most sacred resources: our attention. Our attention acts like the rudder of a ship – it guides our lives. If we do not learn to steward our attention and give it to that which is most worthy of us, our lives will be swallowed up by trivial and empty pursuits.
I will approach this in three different essays: the first will address how media content influences us. The second will ask how the mediums of communication form us. Finally, I will propose practical habits that can help us steward our attention, especially in terms of media technology. Through these essays I hope to demonstrate that in order to live a fulfilling life, we must begin by embracing our limitations and demonstrating to the world the lost art of moderation. For the church, such an invitation is a necessity.