We might appreciate a tree in its sublime grandeur or admire its leaves for their aesthetic impact. But if the weather’s bad, we might only perceive them as shelter from the rain. | Image: Désirée Good / 13Photo

It might be push messages, someone eating strong-smelling food on the train, or a familiar face in the corner of your eye. Our everyday life is full of stimuli that attract our attention, whether we want them to or not. What’s more, our constant exchanges on social media, combined with our accessibility on the Internet and its endless online diversions, continually distract us. It’s hardly surprising that meditation, yoga and mindfulness exercises seem more popular than ever.

“Our attention has become one of the most important currencies of our time”, says the philosopher Susanne Schmetkamp. She is running a research project at the University of Fribourg entitled ‘Aesthetics and ethics of attention’. Despite its close links to issues of consciousness, ethical action and aesthetic experience, attention research has long been neglected in contemporary philosophy. “And yet attention determines to a large extent what things we perceive consciously, what options for action we recognise, and even how we engage with others”, she says.

This neglect may also have something to do with the fact that it’s not at all easy to comprehend the phenomenon precisely, or to define it. Diego D’Angelo is researching into attention at the University of Würzburg, and he agrees. “Attention has many different facets to it”, he says. “In general terms, it is involved in structuring our experience, and it decides how we focus on something and how we comprehend contexts of meaning”.

The problem is that this does not always involve the same abilities. Paying attention “often feels very different” depending on the situation, he says. Sometimes we also switch seamlessly from one form of attention to another.

What the world of work needs

For example, paying attention can mean focusing particularly hard on something – sometimes even for hours on end. We focus on a specific thing and block out the rest. This requires effort and discipline. And it’s required in the world of work. “It seems that only those who pay attention can keep up in our mobile, flexible, achievement-oriented society”, says Schmetkamp.

But in other cases, she says, our attention tends to be “free-floating”. “It’s as if we take in many things that are around us”. This happens, for example, when we look at a landscape with an aesthetic gaze, without singling out any particular element in it. Or when we concentrate on a piece of music in all its facets. And also when we practise mindfulness.

And yet quite different skills are actually called for. “We devote ourselves to something for its own sake and don’t concentrate on its function”, says Schmetkamp. She offers an analogy: When we’re walking through a forest, we can appreciate a tree in all its sublime grandeur, its place in the overall structure of the forest, or its mere form. “But if it’s raining and we’re keen to get home dry, we might only perceive the tree in its function as a shelter from the rain”.

According to Schmetkamp, this ‘free-floating’ attention is crucial for meditative and aesthetic experiences in which we adopt a holistic perspective. “In meditation, many exercises also aim to strengthen one’s own autonomy so that one isn’t carried away by thoughts and distractions”. She also recognises here a longing for more freedom, and she understands the mindfulness trend as a countermovement.

Many people want to escape today’s constant demands for attention – those demands that come from advertisements, our fellow human beings, our work, and even our own feelings. “You can naturally be critical of these practices”, she says. But she adds in mitigation: “They are often themselves in the service of our achievement-oriented society, and aim to heighten our degree of attention in matters of focus and concentration”.