Attention as a First Principle and First Value – Part 2

About this episode: In the first part of this dialogue, we heard the radical claim that attention is a First Principle and First Value of the universe. Now, we explore the devastating consequences of disowning that truth. Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein diagnose our current meta-crisis as a “Planetary Attention Disorder”—a global intimacy disorder where our inability to connect is rooted in the fundamental dysregulation of our attention. How did we get here? The conversation traces a fascinating history of communication media and where humanity has placed its collective attention—from the pre-premodern, pre-modern, to modern, and in the postmodern era driven by our current technologies. Note on Source Material and Citation: The material covered in this podcast is drawn from two forthcoming volumes published by the World Philosophy and Religion Press: * Attention: First Principle, First Value, and Human Right * Reconstructing Value & Preserving Human Freedom in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Exit the Silicon Maze, Vol. 1 If you deploy any material from this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, October 2025, Episode: “Attention as a First Principle and First Value — Part 2.” About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a community-driven publication. You can subscribe for free to receive updates. To support our work, consider becoming a paid subscriber for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:50 — David’s Request & Context 1:37 — The Relationship Between the Collapse of Attention and the Meta-Crisis 3:10 — Attention in the Eros Equation 6:26 — Attention in the Intimacy Equation 7:49 — Attention in the Uniqueness Equation 9:43 — Attention as a First Order, First Principle and First Value 11:56 — Synchronous vs Asynchronous Attention at the Root of the Mental Health Crisis 16:37 — Attentional Dynamics Perpetuating the Global Intimacy Disorder 18:55 — About First Principles and First Values 19:51 — Introduction to Pre-Premodern, Premodern, Modern, Postmodern Attention 23:15 — Attention in Premodernity, Modernity and Postmodernity 26:43 — Attention in Pre-Premodernity 28:44 — The Evolution of Attention in Relationship with Communication Media Episode Transcript: Zak: Yeah. David canceled again. Marc: David didn’t make it? Zak: He does not make it again. He’s not going to make it. Marc: Wow! Okay. Zak: So we’ll just do it. Marc: I got a note from him. He wants us to do those essays on the First Principles and First Values one on each one, but he pointed out that there’s this implicit value that is mentioned in the uniqueness interior science equation in the First Principles and First Values book, but it’s not differentiated as its own First Principle and First Value. And that’s attention. Zak: Ah, yeah. Marc: It’s a little bit of a pain in the ass, but he actually asked us to just get him some material because he wants to actually write an essay on attention. Zak: On attention, it’s necessary. You’re saying it’s woven into all of the other First Principles and First Values, or at least an important subset. Marc: Yeah, it is. Zak: He was like, “Maybe attention is a First Principle and First Value. Discuss.” Marc: Yeah. So let me try and do a couple of riffs and then you do a couple of riffs. We’ll at least get something in here. Let’s just see if we can split it into two. 1) Let’s look at where attention actually shows up in the First Principles and First Values as they exist now in the First Principles and First Values book. 2) Let’s look at attention in a kind of premodern, modern, postmodern sense and see what’s the post-post-modern or vision of attention and why that matters so much. The Relationship Between the Collapse of Attention and the Meta-Crisis Marc: In a certain sense, you could say, “Why the f**k are we talking about attention when we’re in the middle of a meta-crisis?” No, actually, it’s the collapse of attention which in some sense is one of the primary causes for the meta-crisis. That’s our frame. Tell me if this works for you and we go back and forth, but I’ll do like a first riff on the equations, flip it over to you, then we’ll do a second riff on the premodern, modern, postmodern, flip it to you. Zak: Yeah. But if I will, just a gloss on what you just said, which is: we’ve characterized the meta-crisis as a global intimacy disorder, and you’re saying root to any intimacy disorder is actually some type of dysregulation of attention. Marc: Yes. I mean, that is exactly right. That’s actually the perfect way in. So, well, let’s start from there. We’ll look at three equations. Okay? Let’s start. Attention in the Eros Equation Marc: I’m going to start with the Eros equation. If you all haven’t been hanging with us, first off, it’s only our second one of these little conversations. So hanging would just be one podcast. But if you haven’t been hanging in the CosmoErotic Humanism conversation for the last few years, just to know that there’s a book called First Principles and First Values where these equations are listed. The Eros equation, and by Eros we mean not love as in ordinary love but Love as in the cosmic principle, not love as ordinary human sentiment, but as the heart of existence itself. And we would call that Eros or we would call it Evolutionary Love or we’d call it Outrageous Love, but all terms for the same. Our equation is, and I’m not going to do the equation precisely, but just approximately: Eros equals the experience of radical aliveness, desiring, big word “desiring”, ever deeper contact, and ever greater wholes or ever greater wholeness. In that equation is Eros and ethos, number one, and attention because ethics is about the nature of our contact with each other. We want deeper contact. Deeper contact requires greater ethics. And deeper contact means at its core deeper attention. The desire for deeper contact, which is a desire of Cosmos, lives all the way down and all the way up. In other words, desire is the nature of Reality and we give it different names. For example, we call it allurement, the allurement that animates the four forces. And we understand that allurement, which is another word again for Eros, Eros whose expression is desire, Eros or love is the precise right nature of the contact. So it’s not why you fused all the way. Well, that’s not right contact. It’s not that you were totally autonomous. That would be dissociation. Fusion and dissociation wouldn’t be love. Love would actually be all the way down, protons, electrons, neutrons and Marc and Zak at their best. It would be the exact right calibration of contact, which is exactly the right level of attention. And then that then creates larger wholeness. And larger holes, I mean, parts, creating a greater whole is essentially parts placing attention on each other. And in that placing of attention, something is actually created. We’ll get maybe next week until how attention shows up as a First Principle and First Value. And what does that mean that attention is creative, that it blooms Reality? But you already see it here. It’s that Eros, which is the creative movement, animated by attention, and attention is creative. Attention blooms Reality. Attention is generative by its nature. That’s one. And I’m going to resist the temptation to go down the road of attention being generative and start to talk about differentiation and attachment theory. That’s a separate conversation. Attention in the Intimacy Equation Marc: Two is the intimacy equation. The intimacy equation and the Eros equation, these two interior science equations that are foundational to CosmoErotic Humanism, we know are kind of mirrors of each other. Intimacy equals shared identity, but it can’t just be shared identity because you have to place attention on each other. So it’s got to be shared identity in the context of otherness, again, the precise balance of autonomy and communion. So intimacy equals shared identity in the context of otherness, meaning we’re placing just the right amount of attention on each other to be both part of a larger whole and to be distinct. So intimacy equals shared identity in the context of relative otherness, and then it goes times mutuality of recognition, which is pure attention, times mutuality of pathos—we feel each other, which is attention—times mutuality of value, meaning we’re in a shared Field of Value, which actually is the prism through which our attention moves, times mutuality of purpose, which means we have a shared attention on a future. We have a shared desire. We have a purpose. We have a telos. We have a shared telos. Telos, which is another dimension of shared attention. And so you can’t even think about the intimacy equation without it being lined with this notion of attention. Attention in the Uniqueness Equation Marc: Then finally three, just to get this on the table, three is the uniqueness equation itself. In the uniqueness equation, I’m flipping open the book here, but the uniqueness equation is basically, at its core, is that uniqueness is the differentiation of the field. In other words, there’s a Field of Eros. There’s a Field of Desire, of Intimacy. And uniqueness is the differentiation of that field. So uniqueness is the emergent distinction from the field. That’s the emergent distinction from the field, which generates new value, new capacity. And what we say in this equation is, I’ll actually read it just for a second. It’s fun to read it. Okay? It’s first time we’ve ever read from this book. This is fun. Uniqueness equals emergent distinction from the Field of Reality, universal Reality, times radically new value because that emergent distinction is radically new value. And that radically new value is a new quality. It’s new consciousness. Zak: You’re not reading. Marc: Right. Good point. Times new capacity. And new capacity is (in parentheses, attention plus Eros, plus function, plus integration). Uniqueness equals emergent distinction from the Field of Reality times radically new value, times new capacity. So just to say that simply for those of you not following that equation, uniqueness means two things. One is: uniqueness comes from the differentiation of attention. I differentiate, I say, “Ah! Ah!” I see that. So the seeing, the placing of attention generates the uniqueness, and then the uniqueness itself is a new quality of that, which is attended to. But it also has a new capacity for placing attention. That’s what uniqueness is. So Zak’s attention to say it simply, Reality being Zak is a particular quality of attention that is completely different than Reality being Marc. If I called up your dad and said, “Hi, I’m Zak,” he’d be quite disappointed. Because it’s different attention field. So, yay! That just kind of sets in play what’s already in play. To you, sir. Attention as a First Order, First Principle and First Value Zak: I’ll say something which may or may not be true, but we have the first and the second order First Principles. Marc: We do. Zak: It may be that attention is a first order, First Principle and First Value. Marc: That’s interesting. Zak: It’s not listed because the way you’re describing it here is that you can’t get most of the equations off the ground without attention. You also can’t get them off the ground without the other first order First Principles. That’s one of the reasons they’re first order. So temporality, you don’t have the dynamic equations unfolding over anything, but time. Right? So you need that. And I think we’re saying here the hidden and the revealed is another one which again the equations express what is hidden and it becomes revealed. So some gloss perhaps on one of the first order principles, turn it more towards attention or that attention itself needs to be considered. Marc: You know what? It could be. That’s really interesting. Just for 10 seconds, and I’m cheating because I have the book in front of me, just to say. Zak: It’s not cheating. Marc: Yeah, we like books. So the First Principles and First Values, the first order principles are: the three perspectives—first, second and third person—time and eternity, the hidden and the revealed, polarity and paradox, interiors and exteriors, value… And I intentionally changed the order and I’m reading this one last, although it wasn’t last, because this could be where attention comes in: wholes and parts. Zak: Interesting. Marc: Because wholes and parts, Reality is composed of holons. There’s no part that’s not itself a whole and no whole that’s not itself a part. And as such, holarchies emerge. So that’s just interesting because when parts come together to create wholes, they’re placing attention on each other. But the truth is actually first second and third person are also quality… Yeah, I think it’s all the way through. You’re right. Zak: Irrespective of where it fits, it’s deep in the cosmic architecture that attention… as we unfolded last time that it unfolds over all of the chains of the great chain of being. Marc: Yeah. It could be a first order. Zak: I think it may be. Marc: It might be a first order. That’s interesting, brother. Zak: Yeah. And it’s deep. Marc: It’s deep. Zak: And to give you a sense of some of the sociology, one of the things that occurred to me… Marc: We should send it to David and see what he thinks. Zak: We should propose it as a first order. Marc: You think we should? Zak: I think so. Marc: Okay. I think so. Okay. Zak: I think so. We’ll see what David says. Marc: All right. Get the book: In 2024 David J. Temple published a book called: “First Principles and First Values: 42 propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis and the World to Come”. It’s the go-to place to dive deep into many of the themes being explored in this podcast. In forty-two propositions, David takes on the challenge of articulating a new grammar of value—a core set of frameworks that provide a new source code for the future of planetary culture. Rooted in eternal, yet evolving First Principles and First Values, this grammar is broad enough to provide a context for our diversity and deep enough to address our most pressing existential risks. Join us in articulating a new, shared vision that can act as a bridge to enable global coherence and coordination. Synchronous vs Asynchronous Attention at the Root of the Mental Health Crisis Zak: So, this notion that attention is a need of the Cosmos would also imply that it’s a human need. Both to be able to have discretion over what you give your attention to and to be the receiver of the appropriate kinds of attention. One of the things that’s been up lately, just because of what’s going on in society and the recent Senate hearing on protecting kids from social media is this question of the correlation between social media use and adolescent mental health. And I had, for the first time, the thought that yes, it is the case that the kids are attending to the phone, therefore their attention is disrupted by the phone. But it’s also the case that everybody else is looking at their phone, which means no one’s paying attention to the kid. Marc: Right. Zak: So the root of the mental health crisis may not just be the fact that the kids getting dysregulated by the phone. It may actually be more fundamentally the fact that he is not on the receiving end of any basic attention, the kind of attention that you could take for granted as a human before, which is just that you wake up in the morning, you sit down and your mom’s there and she pays attention to you over breakfast. That may or may not happen now in a much more profound way. And it may not even appear to be neglect because it is just normal. So it’s not even sociologically seen as bad that adolescents actually don’t pay attention to each other anymore. And what’s even weirder is that if you are an influencer or someone who gets paid attention to a lot online, you’re actually paid attention to asynchronously. Meaning like: we are recording this right now, but it’s just you paying attention to me. No one else is actually paying attention to us technically speaking. They will pay attention to a representation of us asynchronously in another time. If you’re an adolescent and you record a video of yourself for TikTok and it gets a thousand views or whatever… Marc: You don’t have an embodied experience of a neurochemical transformation and an interior transformation. Zak: Right. And yet, you’ve been massively paid attention to, more than any adolescent could have been, like thousands of people watching this thing. Marc: Right. Zak: There’s this very strange kind of almost paradox here. We’re paying more attention, like, kids are able to pay more attention to each other than ever. And yet, they are not, in a very simple way, holding basic attention with each other. Marc: They’re not having an actual direct experience of being bloomed by attention directly. Zak: Precisely. Marc: That’s right. Zak: So the notion of how you understand the mental health crisis… It is actually, I think, more fundamentally that second absence of the right kind of attention paid. Marc: What is the name of such a beautiful boy that Kristina introduced me to on a plane on the way to one of our mystery schools, who committed suicide, who did that beautiful song, Hey Brother. I apologize, everyone. He was one of those DJs who kind of synchronizes, synthesizes, and creates kind of new music. What was the name? Avicii. Avicii. He was just stunningly beautiful. And KK ran me through just both his music and these unimaginable crowds of people, this unimaginable attention on him, and he commits suicide. It’s the point that you’re making in a different way. Although that’s not asynchronous, but it’s not dissimilar from it. When someone is placing attention on you directly, the two of you are talking and love, of course, is the placing of attention, then your life is self-evidently good. It’s self-evident. You are in life. You’re not exiting life. And paradoxically, that level of attention is both enlivening in the moment and yet deadening in some fundamental way because it’s fundamentally not personal. Attention is the discretion of infinity through a person to a person. In other words, infinity is moving through me uniquely and then intimately and uniquely placing attention on you. So attention by its nature has a dimension of uniqueness, which is why attention shows up in the uniqueness equation. Zak: And discretion. Marc: And discretion. Zak: A whole bunch of subtle characteristics that make the difference between the types of attention that are beneficial to people and the types of attention that actually are alienating and uncomfortable. The last time I think we talked about surveillance, as an example of a kind of attention you don’t want. And yet, the notion that God is aware of every hair in your head and that like the mothering one who wouldn’t be smothering, but would somehow know so much about exactly what you need is also reassuring. So there’s the sense of like both wanting to be seen in some context and another context not wanting attention. Marc: Yeah. Attentional Dynamics Perpetuating the Global Intimacy Disorder Zak: And so that notion of the intimacy disorder at a planetary scale, being fundamentally rooted in an attentional deficit disorder. Marc: An imbalance of attention in a certain sense that moves in two directions. One is excessive attention, which is why the European Parliament, whatever, it’s not exactly European Parliament, but the European structures are trying to create this right to be forgotten. And the fundamental breakdown of attention, which is exacerbated by all the structures of modernism and talked about appropriately by a number of thinkers. So is this a good place to jump in? Zak: One more thing. Marc: Please, please, please. Zak: Because you brought up like the celebrity status and I brought up the kind of YouTube or TikTok. Marc: Asynchronous attention. Zak: Asynchronous attention. And then also “the many watching the few” as the model of the celebrity attention dynamic. “The many who watch the few” goes way back in human history when you think about the king and the aristocracy. They actually put themselves on display, on purpose. So there’s the many who watch the few is one model. And there’s another model where “the few watch the many”. And this is the panopticon or the surveillance. Marc: The surveillance model. Zak: And then with the internet, the many who watch the few is the classic broadcast celebrity. And the few who watch the many is the classic surveillance panopticon. But the many watching the many is the postmodern digital thing, where the 15 minutes of fame for every person is possible. Marc: Right, but it’s a chaotic. Zak: It’s chaotic. Marc: Many watching the many without the underlying structure of order under chaos that chaos theory is trying to point to. Zak: Correct. Marc: It’s chaos theory without the chaotic orchestration. Zak: It’s also a kind of surveillance where everybody is up in everyone’s business in a completely different way, and a kind of narcissism that makes everyone believe they’re a celebrity or somehow asymmetrically talented to deserve the 15 minutes. So it’s a complex perspectival and attentional situation. And then when you add on the asynchronous dimension, it’s very hard… Marc: Asynchronous placing of attention. Zak: Exactly. Then it’s really hard to locate yourself. It’s only through attention that you literally locate yourself. Marc: So it’s the inability to locate the self. That’s great. Introduction to Pre-Premodern, Premodern, Modern, Postmodern Attention Marc: Let’s think for a second. Let’s see if we can step back and in the second part that we chat a little bit here, we just point to the nature of attention, but with the following intention, if you will, which is: what we really want to do, and maybe we’ll talk about that next week, is we really want to trace the history of attention. We want to look at premodern attention, in a word, the attention on God. And the premodern monks. You place attention in order to create union with God. They knew exactly what attention was for in that model. The movement of attention in modernity, and we’ll talk much more about it next week, but the movement of attention from kind of God to man, science, psychology, and yet also the emergence of new oppressive forms of attention, kind of Taylorism factories. So that’s kind of the modern notion of attention we can get to next week. And then postmodern attention, which is: there’s actually nothing to pay attention. Zak: Because everything is equally worth paying attention to. Marc: Because everything is equally worth paying attention, or worthless in other words. Zak: Or worth ignoring. Marc: That’s right, kind of Spinoza’s comment that the most polite form of atheism is pantheism, which was not completely accurate, but not entirely inaccurate. Meaning there actually is no hierarchy because there is no quality. So nothing is better than anything else and nothing is worse than anything else. And so there’s nothing to pay attention to. Zak: Yeah. So that’s great. If I would say reconstructing that history. Marc: And I think David, it’s weird. He was like on a new app. So I think he said he wants us to talk about that. And I think he wants to even write about that this week. Zak: I’d be happy to do that. The best way to do that would be to talk about McLuhan. You can’t really do that reconstruction of the history of attention without looking at the history of media specifically. Because before the premodern is the pre-premodern, which McLuhan gets into because you start with oral. You don’t start with text and you don’t start with monks and god and agrarian societies. You start with the oral cultures, then you get the text-based cultures. Marc: Right, which is this very dramatic history of attention. Zak: Very dramatic history of attention, tied into the history of technologies, communication technologies. Marc: Right. So the whole thing. The history of attention and the history of communication technologies are deeply interwoven with each other. Zak: Yeah. And what’s crazy is the pre-human. Marc: Let’s actually each do a take on this. Because I was going to go into the nature of attention itself, but I’m going to bracket that and put one thing on the table that we can get to next week, which is… There’s this whole realization that the collapse of attention is the cause of all forms of evil, which is not wrong, and placing attention on that is critical. We need to value attention. But as we’ve talked about so many times together in the last years, you can’t value attention unless attention is a First Principle and First Value. So what we’re moving towards is to actually locate in this post-postmodern moment, in this new moment, in this New Story of Value, attention as a First Principle and First Value. So I’m saying let’s bracket that conversation. And maybe if we can each do five minutes on premodern, modern, and postmodern, maybe you hit the McLuhan stuff a little bit. I’ll do a little bit of a deeper take premodern, modern, postmodern, at least so we’ll have that on the table because I think he wants to start writing. So at least we’ll do that for him. Is that fair? Zak: Sure. Marc: Okay. So let me just recapitulate in my mind. Attention in Premodernity, Modernity and Postmodernity Marc: So premodern, we’re not going back to the oral for a second. Let’s go into classical premodern: last couple thousand years. We’re already in the written word. In the premodern world, you’re paying attention—I grew up in a premodern tradition, which I still actively practice within a larger context. And I would do a particular prayer, which has about 30 words, which one does not fulfill one’s kind of sacred obligation, if you will, for that prayer without actually having attention on every word of the prayer. Meaning on the “you”—I’m in prayer to the “you”—and on the meaning of the prayer. That’s the first blessing in the 18 benedictions that are kind of this daily prayer. So in most of the prayer, there’s kind of a general intention on you’re before the “you”, before the second person. But in these, the first blessing, which is again about 30 words, there’s actually a kind of ritual, legal requirement to have attention on every word and to know the meaning of every word. So I would, a couple hours in the morning, keep trying to do it again. In other words, the practice was for many years to keep placing attention on every word—and that really captures the best of premodernity, which is your attention is on the Field of the Divine. It’s acosmic. It’s all God. And therefore, you place attention, you’re always placing attention on the Divine. You’re always placing attention on God. Every place you’re placing attention is to reveal the God in it and to reveal the inherent divinity that’s always there, but that’s where the attention goes. It’s towards that revelation and towards the union with that, towards participation in that. So that’s one. The modern, as we already noted, has this shift towards three things. I’ll just say them and it won’t even indulge in them. One is romantic love. It’s attention on each other romantically. In other words, not love of God, it’s love of each other, whether that’s romantic, man, woman in the classical sense. Or it’s Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers, all for one and one for all. But it’s not really all for France or all for the church. Those are kind of mocked. It’s really fraternity. It’s placing attention on each other again. And it’s placing attention on this world. It’s kind of Michalengelo’s David. He’s not obeisant to the Divine. He’s this emergent, shining figure who clearly has dignity and who has Eros. * It’s attention on humanity. * It’s attention on interior psychology. * It’s attention on science in terms of its inherent laws of nature and not to reveal the Divine in it. That’s modernity. And it just kind of assumes the value of things without actually establishing it, which we’ve talked about at great length about that assumption. Then finally, it’s in postmodernity that all breaks down. There’s this realization: “Wow! Wow! There is no real Story of Value. The value actually is not real.” That implication of modernity breaks out in postmodernity. Therefore there’s no place that ultimately deserves our attention. That’s the postmodern mind. And then the internet becomes the exteriorization of the postmodern mind. Our attention is pulled in a thousand different directions. There’s nothing wrong with stealing attention because there’s nothing to place attention on. “Attention is not a value, so what’s the problem?” Boom! So we’re trying to get to the fourth, which we get to next week, which is: “okay, what’s our reclaiming of attention?” So put that aside. And I would love to, in the five minutes we have left, hear some McLuhan. Attention in Pre-Premodernity Zak: Yeah. And McLuhan is really about the history of the transformations of attention. Even just the idea that the media of communication are extensions of the senses and powers of the human. A little bit before you get the kind of like pre-premodern, you get biosemiotics. You get the communication technologies of the biological world—chemical, vision, and all of this stuff. Marc: And before biosemiotics, you’ve got the interior communication between protons, neutrons, electrons, etc. Zak: Exactly. So we won’t get into kind of like pansemiotic evolutionary theory, but that’s where it goes. Marc: Right, but that pansemiotic evolutionary theory is key here. Zak: And then that blends into looking at the history of attention through this transformation of basically communication technologies, starting with language and innovations in language being… Marc: Oral to language. Zak: Well, oral being language. And like before language, which specifically would be propositionally differentiated speech, we paid attention to each other’s vocalizations in a different way. So animals pay attention to each other’s vocalizations. Marc: That’s what I meant by oral to language. Zak: Exactly. Marc: The oral is grunt. Zak: Grunt. And then, but the beginning of it really is what we would think of as language when humans first get propositionally differentiated speech and they start sitting around the fire and they start telling complex stories to each other. story, language. Marc: So oral to language to story is the semiotic thread. Zak: Right. The language allowing story and specifically the oral cultures being continuous with the biosemiotic attention to nature that the early humans must have had to spend. So they were communicating with nature and attending to nature in a way that we probably can’t even really understand. So there was before the attention to God, as it were in the premodern, with the great traditions, you had what they would say is paganism, which is paying attention to the forces of nature. Marc: Kind of the Garden of Eden before God speaks. Zak: Correct. Marc: I mean, that’s beautiful. The Evolution of Attention in Relationship with Communication Media Zak: And there’s a huge transformation in the history of attention with the emergence of the written word. So you don’t get anything that resembles what we think of as civilization—which Mumford characterized as the mega-machine—you don’t get any of that without the ability to have written word because you need to keep records. You need to have written laws. You need to give exact instructions to people who are thousands of miles away with a runner and all of these things that characterize the early civilizations. The focus on the written word gives us a whole bunch of crazy things occurring, including things that we think of as schools, scholarly and priestly casts, libraries, and specifically history in a written form. Marc: Which is a new form of placing attention on the story. Zak: Correct. And so now we can, at great distance from one another, very precisely attend to exactly the same thing. And we can now integrate. Marc: It creates a shared attention space in humanity. Zak: Exactly. So then you get the printed word. So it starts with papyrus and clay tablets and stuff. But then when you get the printing press, the so-called Gutenberg revolution, that is, again, a radical transformation because now you don’t have a small number of people dealing with a written word and allowing for this kind of like early premodern organization. You get the kind of high premodern organization, which is where you get the Protestant revolution and this massive move towards the democratization of access to text. And that births modernity. Marc: And modernity is, in a word, this is a beautiful way to say it. Modernity is: “Oh, now the ordinary human’s attention on politics and economics is possible and wanted and desired.” Zak: Yeah. Marc: There’s no reason for premodern ordinary humans to place their attention on that. It had nothing to do with them. Zak: Yeah, totally. And the idea that the text mediates the relationship between you and God individually, which is part of the Protestant revolution, which just comes from the fact that you could translate the Bible into the native languages and print them. Marc: So it’s actually the sacralization of the attention of the individual human who’s not part of the elite. That attention is the nature of modernity. Zak: Totally. And the idea of a human sitting alone with a book is weird, from like the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years before the printing press. Humans sat and they talked to each other. You know what I mean? But the idea that now you’re going to be alone with a text and be communicating with an author who died a hundred years ago or a thousand years ago. So the possibilities for identity formation and what you have the discretion to pay your attention to expands drastically. You’re an aristocrat in the middle ages with a library? That’s like some radical, crazy identity formation material that just wasn’t available to attend to before that. We got to wrap now, but then you get the electric, which gives us radio and television. And that again, as you can see with the effect of television, fundamentally transforms the dynamic away from text back to the oral in a certain way. The radio revives the fireside chat as Roosevelt described his communications to the country for the first time. Through the radio, you sit and huddle around the radio as if it’s a campfire and you listen. You don’t read it, you listen. So you move through the electric to the digital and then you return to the text, in a sense, but also have available all the other prior modalities. The digital recapitulates a return, in a sense, to a type of premodern. We can talk about that next time. Marc: Let’s pick up exactly here. There’s so much to say, but we’ll pick up exactly here. Zak: Yeah. Marc: Yay! Mentioned People: * KK (Kristina Kincaid) * Avicii (1989-2018) * Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) * Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980) * Lewis Mumford (1895-1990) Go Deeper: If you’re enjoying these deep dive conversations with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein, then we have an epic opportunity for you to deepen your learning process and bring these teachings into your daily life! In the World Philosophy and Religion Academy, we’re building an evolutionary community in response to the great calling of this moment of meta-crisis. We bring together daily practice, weekly study sessions with Dr. Marc Gafni, exclusive courses and more. Join us in this movement and transformation into being and becoming Homo Amor. Get full access to Center for World Philosophy and Religion at worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com/subscribe