The Compartmentalization of Attention

Thanks to the attention-span-killing Internet, it becomes harder to pay anything the attention it deserves. This works well for those who exploit it. What was earthshattering news last week can barely be recalled today. We more easily forget and, to a certain extent, forgive.

Power hungry governors overstepped their bounds, made laws (not their jobs), locked us in our homes, destroyed small businesses, and muzzled most of us!

Well, yes, that is unfortunate, but—look over there! A black man was killed by a white police officer. Quick! We need to tear this country apart!

It’s almost too easy. Distracted by the ever-changing landscape on the screens in front of us, it becomes difficult to see any overriding big picture, except, perhaps, for the narrative that we are meant to see, the narrative that is constantly reinforced, in one way or another, by one source or another. Specifics change, but these methods for controlling the masses have been around for a very long time, indeed. Whether it’s “masks work” vs “masks are useless,” or black against white, division is desired, because division thins the ranks, and nothing divides quite like mimetic desire, a force that tears apart the even the closest circles of friends or family. Co-workers, church parishes, civic organizations: sure, you name it, mimetic desire will creep in, mediators will rise to the top, and everyone else will fight to become him, or at least, have whatever it is that he has deemed valuable.

In Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, René Girard analyzes some of the great works of literature for evidence of metaphysical (mimetic) desire in the characters and even in the novelists themselves. I read the book last fall and feel like I would have gotten more out of it if I had ever read the works of Stendahl and Proust. As it stands, I am familiar with Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Don Quixote, most of Tolstoy’s novels, and some of Dostoevsky’s works (all analyzed to one extent or another by Girard). Therefore, I see Deceit, Desire, and the Novel—not just notes on it in my reading journals—coming back into my life again, once I’ve read and reread more literature. Nevertheless, Girard explains his theories and supports them well enough that a reader is not completely lost. In at least a roundabout way here, Girard deals with the compartmentalization of attention, and it illumines what most of are dealing with now (yes, by design):

Stendahl and Flaubert never really needed the future or the past, since these characters were as yet neither divided within themselves nor split into several successive selves. … Sudden conversions are not the exception but the rule in Proust’s characters. …  The duration of these Selves is long enough, the transitions are gradual enough for the subject himself to be the first to be deceived. He thinks he is eternally faithful to his principles and as stable as a rock. His own about-faces remain hidden from him by the protective mechanisms that work so well. … If one were to draw the attention of those involved to these reversals in their ideas they would answer gravely, “that is not the same thing.”

We are nearly a year into a “pandemic” that has or has not (depending on how you define any number of parameters) killed hundreds of thousands of people, but overall, has turned out to be close to 100 percent survivable. At any point in time during 2019, citizens from all over the United States would have claimed to be lovers of freedom, appreciators of freedom, or even warriors for freedom. Now, though, many of these folks are thankful that officials elected to serve them are letting them take off their masks and open their businesses. Did this abandoning of stable principles happen overnight? No, it took about a year of relentless propaganda, the overstepping of law, and millions of instances of self-delusion to get us here. Now, the question is: when do we wake up and hold these petty tyrants responsible for their evil actions? When do we say, No more and never again?