Thursday 31 August 2000

Pic of the day: Where, energized by your attention, I accidentally turn into a human light bulb ...

All the world's a teat

Hi again! Have you noticed this about babies? I came to remember it today, because of a book I read. It made me think back a few days, to my trip to the Oslo area and visiting old friends. One of them had a brand new baby. My partners in shopping, SuperWoman and Cutie, were of course excited with the baby. It probably helped that the baby was their nephew, but at that age they might probably have drooled over almost any baby. They are both young and single. Anyway, back to the baby. Have you noticed how, if you put your finger near its mouth, the baby will latch on? It seems to think the finger is a teat. Also, it seems to think it is hungry. Certainly this one did.

You'd think even a baby would notice something was amiss. I mean, teats don't have nails, for starters. The lack of milk should also sooner or later be a hint, when you're sucking for your life and still only get the finger. Not to mention that human teats don't really have that shape, if memory serves. (In all honesty, it's been quite a while since I've even seen human teats.) Anyway, the little sucker just went on with the procedure.

That was then. This is now. And the book is once again The Celestine Vision, by James Redfield.

***

I've written in some detail about Redfield's view of attention energy, and my thought on the same, in my Jan 12 entry. Quite a nice entry, by recent standards, if I may say so. Anyway, I've been thinking again.

I still think that we feel energized by attention, that it is important in our lives, like food and water and shelter. Unlike dolphins, we may not die in less than a week if we are cut off from attention, but it will certainly set most people on a downward slide. But I don't really think that this "energy" is locked in a closed loop among people, battling for its scarce resource, and that the only way to increase it is through some mystic experience, religious or otherwise. (Though it certainly helps.)

I think that we all produce some of this scarce resource naturally. Some people may produce more of it - they have a stronger "presence". I notice this with my friend codenamed SuperWoman. She's had this since childhood - she seems slightly more real than the rest of reality. With her, the grass seems greener, the clear sky seems bluer, life seems more alive. It's an intensity. I attribute this to the human spirit, which I believe is individual. But there is probably a more scientific way to explain it, which may be just as right. Anyway, I'm sure you know what I mean: Some people just stand out, while others are scaringly forgettable.

But even though we normally produce some of this attention, and even if we normally exchange some of it socially, it is rarely quite enough. There is a craving for more. And so people engage in various control drama to gain more of it. And this is where my thoughts went to the baby and its view of various objects as potential teats. Like the baby, these people automatically try to suck energy from anyone that look a possible candidate.

When you are a baby, things tend to look like teats.

***

Pieces of the puzzle fall into place. I read some months ago in some serious publication that attention is the valuta of the Internet. It is the thing people compete for. (For the more practically minded people, there is also the point that the attention valuta can be exchanged into ordinary cash, though advertising.) Perhaps, as Andy Warhol (?) put it, "in the future everyone will be famous for 15 minutes". But most of us have not been famous yet, and so the fight for online attention goes on.

Attention certainly need not be physical to be felt. I can get pretty energized from a single e-mail. And I am not holding the record here: There are other journal writers who are watching their "hit counts", that is, how often people visit their web pages. There are even elaborate programs that detail where the visitors come from (what domain, not the individual user name), and what link or search phrase they used to get there. The self-proclaimed "hit sluts" may check their counters several times a day, hoping for new "hits".

So I need to confront myself and ask: Do I do this to get more attention? Or to pay attention to others? I think both of these are sort of correct. The attention I give here is sort of diffuse, but I don't do it all for myself. For instance, I can read a book written by some stranger, and still feel that I "meet" someone, who is "speaking to me". I hope you can get something similar out of this.

On that note, thank you for your attention.