Continuing my free series on Johann Hari’s book Stolen Focus. After this post, I am planning two more posts in this series, which will complete the overview of the book. You can find the previous post in this series here (and from it link back through all the previous posts) :
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CW: High-level discussion of child abuse
We’ve been working our way through the case that Johann Hari makes in his recent book Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention – and How to Think Deeply Again and are rapidly approaching the end of this series.
In Chapter 10, Hari introduces the eighth (of twelve) causes that underlie our struggles to pay attention – stress – and then in Chapter 11, he explores a few ways that this cause is beginning to be addressed in a few places around the globe. Although intertwined with Hari’s first and third causes (Speed, and Mental/Physical Exhaustion – Click here for my post on these causes), stress is addressed separately. Hari does however imply that speed and exhaustion are undoubtedly key contributing factors to our present stress levels.
The basic narrative that Hari offers for how stress reduces our capacity for attention is that if we are under extreme stress, we become hypervigilant about the particular stressor that is afflicting us, and in our hypervigilance become less attentive to other phenomena that present themselves to us. Hari offers the example of a young man who was being abused by someone in his life. This abuse was hidden from the young man’s mother and others who cared about his well-being. While the abuse was going on, he struggled to pay attention at school, and was given increasing doses of an ADHD medication, which had little effect on his behavior. This young man lived in dread of the next time that he would see his abuser. It is little wonder that he struggled to pay attention in school. “[His brain] was primed [to] do one thing – to detect danger. This wasn’t a failing in his brain – it was a natural and necessary response to intolerable circumstances” (175). What this young man was experiencing was hypervigilance, a heightened attention with regard to a particular stressor – in this case, his abuser. One medical researcher described hypervigilance to Hari:
(In an imagined situation where bear attacks are happening frequently,) Hypervigilance is essentially when you’re looking out for the bear around every corner. Your attention is focused on cues for potential danger, as opposed to being present with what’s going on, of the lesson you’re supposed to be learning, or doing the work you were supposed to be doing. It’s not that [people in this state are] not paying attention. It’s that they are paying attention to any cues or signs of threat or danger in their environment. That is where their focus is” (175).
In the case of the young man above, eventually his mother became aware of the abuse, and with her help and that of medical and legal professionals, he was removed from situations where he had to face his abuser, and eventually over time with continued support, both he and his mother began to find healing.
Hari also explores the effects of financial stress on our capacity for attention. What if the bear in the above scenario was some sort of financial calamity (say, losing one’s housing, or a massive medical debt)? Would one still be prone to the sort of hypervigilance that corrodes the capacity for attention? Hari offers the example of Finland’s 2017 experiment with universal basic income.This study definitively showed that a universal basic income did reduce financial stress and provided citizens with a higher degree of financial stability. He turned to two of the researchers who conducted this study, and they confirmed that their data indicated that a universal basic income helped study participants to improve their focus, and deepen their capacity for attention.
I found Hari’s basic argument in this chapter compelling – i.e., that stress causes hypervigilance, which in turn erodes one’s capacity for attention. However, this argument seems clearer in cases of extreme stress like the case of child abuse noted above. Do less acute cases of stress also erode the capacity for attention? Hari certainly implies that they do, but the evidence he offers is much less substantial.
In the next chapter “The Places that Figured Out how to Reverse the Surge in Speed and Exhaustion,” Hari follows the line of thought that he laid out in the previous chapter on stress. Namely, he offers a couple of striking stories about efforts to reduce stress and exhaustion, and the effects that these efforts had on the human capacity for attention, and on quality of life in general.
“What if I changed my entire company so that from now on, every employee worked only four days a week, for the same wages? It would free up time for them to rest, have a proper social life, and be with their families – the things they are often trying to squeeze into the cracks of their work time”
The first, and more detailed of these stories, is that of British entrepreneur Andrew Barnes, who although raised in London, eventually found himself in New Zealand, where he operated a company called Perpetual Guardian. In mid-life, Barnes had the realization how destructive overwork had been in his own life, and sought out a different, slower, pace of life. But he also realized that the benefits he experienced as a result of slowing down could also benefit his employees. He was intrigued by the question: “What if I changed my entire company so that from now on, every employee worked only four days a week, for the same wages? It would free up time for them to rest, have a proper social life, and be with their families – the things they are often trying to squeeze into the cracks of their work time” (186). Perpetual Guardian tried this 4-day work week arrangement as an experiment for two months; if the company was equally productive in a 4-day week as it was in a 5-day one, the work schedule change would be made permanent. And the experiment was indeed a success. Employees were happier, and just as productive as before the shift. Clients of the company were also happy because the employees that they worked with were less stressed and easier to work with.
Hari understandably finds this story compelling, but he bookends it with a sobering dose of reality:
At the moment, [Perpetual Guardian’s story] looks like an impossible luxury to the majority of us. Most people can’t slow down, because they fear if they do, they’ll lose their jobs or their status. Today, only 56 percent of Americans take even one week of vacation a year. This is why telling people what they need to do to improve their attention – do one thing at a time, sleep more, read more books, let your mind wander – can so easily curdle into cruel optimism. The way our society works at the moment means they can’t do those things. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our society can change (191).
Hari concludes this chapter with a brief story from France. In 2016, the French government passed a law making it illegal for businesses (with more than 50 employees) to demand that their employees be available to be contacted outside the hours of the work day. Although this legislation is still relatively new, and it was still unclear at the time of the book’s publication how well it would be enforced, it is another striking example of a structural change that enables people to slow down their lives, to be less stressed and exhausted, and to have a greater capacity for attention.
Is it possible for humanity to slow down, to be less stressed, and to recover the capacity for attention in the the interim between our present morass of inattentiveness, and the future point at which the powers that be (nation-states, corporations, etc.) recognize that it is in their best interests to follow the trajectory indicated by these recent stories that Hari highlights?
I appreciated the stories in this chapter: they demonstrate that a slower and healthier way of life is possible. However, in the face of the massive, global accelerating forces of late modern capitalism, these stories seem pitifully small in scope. Is it possible for humanity to slow down, to be less stressed, and to recover the capacity for attention in the the interim between our present morass of inattentiveness, and the future point at which the powers that be (nation-states, corporations, etc.) recognize that it is in their best interests to follow the trajectory indicated by these recent stories that Hari highlights? This is a question that will guide my reflections in a coming post on Hari’s thoughts about how we move forward? I have some thoughts related to this question that I will also offer in this forthcoming post. (But before turning to that post on how we move forward, I will write another post in two weeks that overviews Hari’s final four causes of our inability to pay attention.)
I just had a series of anxiety attacks this past week for the first time. I really appreciate this post.