This title, also given to an interview series with Iain McGilchrist – a ground-breaking neuroscientist and philosopher – on the Perspectiva YouTube channel, seems overly bold in its simplicity. But, as we will discover, the assertion proves to be both incredibly sensible and amazingly profound – particularly for those who desire to think in a Christian way.
Our intention in this short series of articles is to prove the soundness of the proposition, and then push further into the importance of attention for Christian thinking and life. As a jumping off point, we will begin with the definitions and rudimentary meanings of “attention” and “moral.”
Attention
APA Dictionary of Psychology (2024)– a state in which cognitive resources are focused on certain aspects of the environment rather than on others.
Britannica (n.d.) – the concentration of awareness on some phenomenon to the exclusion of other stimuli.
Merriam-Webster (n.d.) – the act or state of applying the mind to something.
Early every morning, I walk into my office and sit in a particular chair to pray and study. To do so, I must give attention to that chair over any other place I might sit in my office. In fact, I must give attention to my office over any other room in my house. Moreover, so as not to fall, and therefore never make it to my office, I must give attention to each step of the stairs leading down to the basement of my house.
Assuming I give attention to each stair, the room that is my office, and the chair I intend to sit in, I will then need to give attention to my tumbler of tea, my journal and its pen, my Bible, and whatever devotion I have determined to study. As I read my Bible, I must give attention to the singular and collective meaning of the text.
The act of reading is a great example of the dynamic hierarchy present in the attention of which humans are capable. Case in point: My wife is teaching our two-year old granddaughter the letters of the alphabet. This requires all the attention our granddaughter can muster, as well as a significant amount of patient attention on the part of my wife.
Soon, our granddaughter will begin giving attention to the way letters can be formed into words – words that she learned to say, months prior, by giving attention to others mouthing the syllables and pointing to the objects those words represent (another act of attention). Attention to the collection of words into sensible sentence structures will eventually lead to a necessary leap in attention capability: the meaning of sentences, paragraphs, and story.
For our granddaughter to attend to these higher levels of meaning, attention to letters, words, and even sentence structure must transition “down” into her subconscious and unconscious (or auto-conscious) thinking. This transition is more difficult for some than for others, such as those affected by dyslexia. The placement of attention affects ability to learn and make sense of reality. We will delve deeper into this in a future article.
The point here is that attention functions at the conscious, subconscious, and unconscious levels of our mind. Indeed, most of our attention happens in our unconscious mind and the lowest levels of our subconscious mind (e.g., walking down stairs, and the rudiments of reading). Otherwise, my head – to house the brain required to process all the potential sensory inputs – would be too big to fit through the doorway of my office.
The function and power of our brain and mind are astounding creations of God. That He designed them to operate at the subconscious and unconscious levels is (no pun intended) a mind-blowing blessing, in that it allows us to give attention to more important matters.
Indeed, many of the things requiring our attention are best attended to by our conscious mind. Failing to do so can lead to uncomfortable or disastrous consequences. Failing to give attention to your spouse is a good example of the former; giving poor attention to your driving, the latter. When we say, “The most important things in life should be given most of our attention,” what we mean is we should give our conscious attention to the most important things.
So, attention is clearly an important act; in fact, an act we cannot live without. But why is it moral?
Moral
Britannica (n.d.) – concerning or relating to what is right and wrong in human behavior.
Cambridge Dictionary – relating to the standards of good or bad behavior, fairness, honesty, etc. that each person believes in, rather than to laws.
Merriam-Webster (n.d.) – of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior; conforming to a standard of right behavior.
While I suspect Iain McGilchrist could explain in scientific and philosophical terms how unconscious attention can be good or bad, we will, for the purposes of our understanding, focus on the conscious and near-conscious subjects of our attention: those related to what is right or wrong in everyday human behavior – particularly in our relationships with other persons, including God.
As Christians, we recognize the reality and necessity of moral judgment and behavior. In fact, such a statement seems almost unnecessary, except for the effects of our conformity with the world (Romans 12:2) – a world which has blurred (some would say obliterated) the difference between good and evil. Except also for the suppression of our attention to important matters, down into our subconscious mind – a suppression necessitated by the flood of sensory input brought to our mind through ever busier lives and the technologies that support them.
Now, before I get ahead of myself, let me offer two simple examples of the moral consequences of our attention:
- Giving attention to pornography or a Francis Chan sermon.
- Giving undivided attention to our driving or the text conversation blowing up on our phone.
- Giving attention to either our physical or spiritual health.
In these and a hundred other examples, attention is a moral choice. Unless your world has turned totally grey with subjective relativism, you will have engaged in many occurrences of moral attention-giving in the past twenty-four hours. Indeed, the moral measure of your day is very much determined by your attention to God and the world.
How we attend to something, whether we attend to it, even within the world of physics – never mind in the world of philosophy and psychology – makes a difference to what we are experiencing; and it’s a moral act because it means that we are not simply observers in this universe; we are creators in this universe. We co-create along with the universe and along with that divine Logos (Perspectiva, 2023).
We will explore the what, how, and attitudes of attention in our next article. The good Lord willing, we will look at some deeper aspects in subsequent articles. In the meantime, we invite your comments and questions; and encourage you to start thinking about the way you invest your attention into this world and the chaotic season in which we find ourselves.
God bless you with wisdom and spiritual understanding in the exercise of your attention.
Humbly yours and forever His,
Rob
#iamjustthepen
American Psychological Association. (2024). Attention. In APA Dictionary of Psychology. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://dictionary.apa.org/attention
Cambridge Dictionary. (n.d.). Moral. In Cambridge.org dictionary. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/moral
Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Attention. In Britannica.com dictionary. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/science/attention
Encyclopædia Britannica. (n.d.). Moral. In Britannica.com dictionary. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://www.britannica.com/science/moral
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Attention. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/attention
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Moral. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved March 20, 2024, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/moral
Perspectiva. (2023, March 6). Attention as a moral Act: Iain McGilchrist & Jonathan Rowson in Conversation [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHUGuUhB1c4