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Demons of Distraction
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Shortly before I broke up with a girlfriend from long ago, we bought a pair of cute mixed-breed puppies. As a way to save a relationship – if, indeed, that was what we were trying to do – this remedy proved ineffective, although thankfully not as consequential as it might have been had she gotten pregnant for the same reason. Neither of us had been raised with dogs. The apartment where we kept them was too small. And the puppies, cute as they were, were incorrigible. I have vivid memories – amusing only in retrospect – of trying to train them to a leash, both at once. The puppies, of course, had no sense that they were supposed to trot along beside me down the sidewalk. They were off in all directions, although never in the same direction at the same time. No sooner did I rein in one of them than the other had wrapped his leash around my legs, threatening to send me sprawling.
I sometimes think about my puppies when I ponder the vagaries of the human mind. Our thoughts are a lot like those adorable little mutts, wandering off in all directions. They seem to have no sense that they are supposed to keep to a path, and efforts to rein them in only result in further entanglements. There are ancient spiritual disciplines that train the mind the way you would train a puppy to a leash. As much as we complain about the mass distractions of our electronic age, the problem is hardly new. Jesus faced distractions in the wilderness. St. Anthony sealed himself up in a tomb and still couldn’t get away from them. Martin Luther complained that the devil sent flies to torment him while he was trying to read.
What is it about the mind that it always wants to be elsewhere? Electronic devices may not be the cause of the mind’s waywardness, but they have certainly exacerbated the problem. This is no accident. Much of the media are controlled by entities that want to sell us things, and to do this they must first get our attention. The term of art here is “share of mind.” The aim is to “position” a brand so it is “top of mind” in any given product category. This is done primarily through advertising. Given that every brand manager of every conceivable product category is trying to do the same thing, the hapless consumer is bombarded
With only so much space between our ears, there are limits to how much product positioning we can absorb, just as there are limits to where we can focus our attention at any given moment. Consider the thousands upon thousands of TV channels, radio stations, print outlets, Web sites and social media that are all competing for our eyeballs and eardrums. Getting anyone’s attention can be a distinctly hit-or-miss proposition. However, technology now makes it possible for advertisers to track our every move online so they can pounce when we are most susceptible. This was driven home to me some years ago when I was researching new cars on Google and suddenly found myself pursued across the Internet by banner ads touting the latest models. When dealing with a puppy on a leash, it turns out, the name of the game is to plant as many squirrels as possible along its path.
We have become so habituated to the encroachments of advertising and ad-driven pop culture that we do not even recognize the peril. Once distraction becomes permanent it is no longer technically a distraction, since it hasn’t drawn us away from anything. We are engulfed in what the English critic Wynham Lewis once tartly described as the “moronic inferno.” Sound bites, factoids and tweets become the narrative. Rational discourse or sustained argument of any kind is next to impossible because of shrunken attention spans. Democratic institutions are undermined, and deeper cultural elements atrophy. Church fathers may have had a point in blaming distraction on the devil. Whether or not you believe in literal demons of distraction, the results are the same. Certainly you will never find God if you can’t pay attention.
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