Musings on attention as the most important feature of consciousness.
Attention — What is it? The ability to stay present at one feature of awareness for a given period of time. When i attend to something in my awareness (say a bottle) I am deciding to narrow my experience of the universe to encapsulate that sliver of reality that is “the bottle”. There are levels to attention though. I can pour more and more attention to the bottle and as I do the attention I give to other parts of my experience (my feelings, bodily sensations, thoughts, etc.) begins to drop away and I fall into a “deeper” experience of the object. This is largely true for any object of attention.
So why is attention the most important feature of consciousness? To some extent, your capacity for attention is your capacity for engaging with the world. At the most basic level, if you want to achieve anything of note in this world you must be able to pay attention to something for long enough to see the fruits of your labor come to pass (e.g. attention during the beginner stages of learning, attention to work through tedious or difficult concepts, attention to learn that which doesn’t come naturally). Attention is a prerequisite for learning. If your attention is scattered you cannot focus on one thing for long enough to get to any meaningful depth out of it. Attention is scarce and difficult to hone. Attention very naturally decays in the face of novelty and stimulation. Attention is useful but dopaminergically weak compared to novelty/stimulation. E.g. Reading a book vs. checking social media. Reading a book requires focused attention - the more attention you give it the more richly rewarding it is (immersing yourself in a world and really inhabiting it in your mind) yet it is so more easier to context switch between reading and checking your phone (understanding whats happening in the book and feeling immersed for a time, and then feeling the urge or rush to scroll a social feed).
The modern world is filled with countless sources of unending dopamine. Your reward system does not have innate defences to fight against this onslaught so it becomes a captive. It is only by becoming aware of this battle (if only for an instant at a time) that we can slowly begin to build up our defences and stand any chance of maintaining a sound epistemology. Truly rewarding things take time and effort to cultivate. But the modern world tries very hard to destroy your ability to commit focused effort and energy to one thing. It is only by becoming aware of the reality of our situation (in the modern world) that we can learn to slowly cultivate the defences we need (i.e. build our capacity for awareness).
As usual this starts with something simple like “pay attention to your breath” and transforms over time into something incredible (having greater enjoyment of and equanimity across your experiential reality). Of course there is a fractal element to it. Just as attention focused on one endeavor is required to achieve great things in that endeavor; attention focused on itself over time will result in a complete upgrade of our experiential reality. When you move from one level of attentional capability to a higher one, it makes sense that your experience of everything changes in highly meaningful ways. Attention is a super-power or perhaps you can say attention is super-substance that can be channeled into anything for radical transformation.