“Not necessity, not desire – no, the love of power is the demon of men. Let them have everything – health, food, a place to live, entertainment – they are and remain unhappy and low-spirited: for the demon waits and waits and will be satisfied.”
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
One of the many things I love about my grandchildren is their love for reading. I can’t remember a time when they didn’t have at least one book in which they were deeply absorbed. Yet, according to research, students are reading less than they did 20 years ago, with a significant decline in the number of children who read for fun on a regular basis. Clearly, increased screen time and digital distractions have contributed to that decline, but I wonder how much cultural changes have played a role as well. This trend in reduced reading is more pronounced as children grow older.
Today, only 17 percent of children and young adults say they read for fun. And, less than half of U.S. adults read at least one book per year.
In a recent column in the NYT, Chris Hayes, a television anchor on MSNBC, discusses how capturing our attention has increasingly become the focus of corporate manipulation. He claims that our attention has become “a wildly valuable resource, and some of the world’s most powerful corporations extract it in increasingly sophisticated ways, leaving us feeling like bystanders to our minds.” Hayes suggests that the capitalist machine has filled our lives with entertainment and has replaced our conscious thoughts with a buzz of beeps, notifications, texts, and shows that keep us superficially engaged. We are left with no space to “simply sit and think.” Or read.
Over the past several months, I have been wondering about how the shift in attention from actively developing expertise to being passively entertained has impacted us. Research shows that the shift from skill building to internet surfing and jumping from one sound bite to another with no real depth has kept us from doing the work of developing real expertise. I believe this shift is negatively affecting our personal and global well-being.
The information age has brought forth an abundance of readily available knowledge and entertainment. Indeed, the internet grants us access to countless articles, videos, and social media posts, but that has led to a shift in attention from active skill-building to passive consumption of superficial content. Nicholas Carr’s book, “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains,” delves into the cognitive impact of excessive internet use. Carr argues that the internet’s fragmented nature encourages rapid shifts in attention, making it difficult to sustain focus and engage in deep thought. This claim is supported by a study published in the journal “Science” in 2009, which found that heavy internet users exhibited reduced activity in brain regions associated with focused attention and critical thinking. And that article was published 15 years ago when the internet was still in its infancy.
The allure of instant gratification and the constant bombardment of stimuli further contribute to the erosion of attention spans.
Social media platforms, with their short-form videos and fleeting posts, exemplify this trend. A 2019 study by Microsoft concluded that the average human attention span has decreased from 12 seconds in 2000 to just 8 seconds in 2019. This decline makes it increasingly challenging to engage in tasks that require sustained concentration, such as reading books, learning complex skills, or solving intricate problems.
The consequences of this shift are far-reaching. On a personal level, the inability to focus deeply hinders intellectual growth and skill development. The pursuit of superficial entertainment over meaningful learning limits one’s potential and restricts opportunities for personal and professional advancement. Moreover, a lack of focus can lead to decreased productivity, increased stress, and a diminished sense of accomplishment.
Globally, the trend towards passive entertainment undermines critical thinking and informed decision-making. The spread of misinformation and the proliferation of “fake news” are facilitated by a population that lacks the attention span or critical thinking skills to discern fact from fiction. This erosion of truth and reason poses a significant threat to democratic institutions and societal well-being.
In short, the shift from actively developing expertise to passively consuming entertainment has profound negative implications for individuals and society as a whole. And yet, we find ourselves up against a vast and powerful capitalistic system that relentlessly burrows its way into our psyches. There are multiple forces competing for our time and attention.
Clearly, media plays a primary role. For example (sorry, I can’t help myself), all forms of media in the information ecosystem have exploited the Trump phenomenon to distract us. For many months, I felt like practically every editorial in the New York Times had Trump in the headline. In 2016, the news media contributed to his win by giving far more unpaid news coverage to him than to Clinton. In 2024, his multiple court trials on 94 felony counts commanded far more attention than they deserved and, paradoxically, he benefitted from an “indictment effect.”
While Trump was diminishing the importance of expertise, the public became enthralled by the “entertainment.” Shunryū Suzuki, a Zen monk renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside of Asia and who wrote Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind – one of the most popular books on Buddhism in the West – said,
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
To me, that quote emphasizes the importance of expertise. Experts are able to narrow an endless variety of choices to a plausible few. Because of their expertise, they are able to make more accurate and precise discriminations based on education, evidence and experience. In a complex and chaotic world, that expertise is essential. Trump, by randomly choosing courses of action based on whim, belief, magical thinking, lies, pathological projection, or an overly-inflated opinion of himself, ignores evidence and thus threatens personal as well as national security.
In a recent article in the Atlantic, Jonathan Chait decribes Trump’s style as performative imperialism. He suggests that most of Trump’s claims (e.g. taking over Panama, Greenland, and Canada) are simply ways of entertaining his base. Sending Don Jr, who has no expertise in diplomacy, to Greenland generates a lot of attention, but there is no policy substance behind the visit or behind most of Trump’s wild and reckless rants that keep him in the spotlight.
I can’t help but wonder if the results of this last election are the ultimate outcome of this shift away from expertise to entertainment. The American public clearly chose entertainment over expertise. Trump portrayed the free-ranging cowboy, the ultimate strongman, the cult leader, the establishment outsider, the intrepid fighter. He tapped into the angst and anger of millions of people. People bought his fabrications of immigrants eating pets (false), of boys invading girl’s bathrooms (not true), of surging inflation (less than 3%) of eroding income (wages rose faster than inflation by 5%), of runaway crime (data shows a reduction in crime), of a lousy economy (strongest in the world, less than 4% unemployment, more than 16 million jobs added); and they supported his disregard for expertise: gutting institutions, appointing loyalists to key positions, appointing cronies as ambassadors, rallying behind anti-intellectual, anti-woke, anti-DEI, anti-elite movements, etc. Given the choice of entertainment or expertise, 77 million people chose entertainment. Drawing from Nietzsche in the opening quote, Trump promised MAGA zealots vicarious power AND entertainment, but all of us will pay the price. The love of power and the addiction to entertainment will turn out to be the demons that will jeopardize all of our health. The question, as we navigate the next four years, is whether or not the American public will continue to believe his fabrications and false narratives. Frank Bruni suggests that his base may continue to ignore the truth and to revel in the entertainment in spite of the facts. But back to the universal theme in this post.
The media is not the only culprit in this shift. The sports industry is another major source of distraction. It invests billions of dollars every year to ensure that every month is packed with one playoff game or another. Personally, I admit to being a guilty victim. I got hooked by Caitlin Clark. I’m an avid follower of Michigan’s sports teams. When I was living in Boston, I loved the Celtics. When I was in New York, I was a Yankees fan. In my defense, when I worked in Toronto I followed hockey, but never got seduced by the sport of curling in which players slide stones on a sheet of ice toward a target area segmented into four concentric circles. And since I haven’t lived in Britain or India, I never became absorbed by Cricket. While sports clearly represent one extreme form of expertise, it seems to me that they have also contributed greatly to a couch culture. It’s another source of entertainment that distracts us from more meaningful engagement. A friend of mine explained the results of this election as no different than people watching another sport on television. Unfortunately, this one has far greater consequences than the Lions beating the Vikings.
To compound the problem, Big Tech employs thousands of people to distract our attention and to addict us to their platforms. We have Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, You-Tube and hundreds of other applications to divert us. While many applications have educational value, I think it is fair to say that most of the consumption could be classified as entertainment diversion than as expertise development. Hey, I’m enormously thankful for GPS, AI, e-mail, texts, etc., but they come at a high cost. For every time I avoid getting lost, a hapless teen gets sucked into video games, porn, seductive scams or body shaming – to say nothing of getting fooled by fake news.
To counteract these trends, we will need to cultivate mindful media consumption habits and prioritize focused learning over superficial distractions. By reclaiming our attention and engaging in deep thought, we can foster personal growth and contribute to a more informed and engaged global community. I’m hoping my grandkids will keep consuming books and develop their expertise. I’m hoping more of us will conquer the demons of power and entertainment. I hope all of us will allocate more time to developing the expertise required to make good decisions that improve individual and global well-being. May it be so.
Also published on Medium.
Well done big guy! Thank you!
Agree but pessimistic; if only EVERYBODY could read and heed your words. RBI