Attention and Confluence: Takeovers, Taxes, and Prisons

On a walk I—or was it my dog—noticed that this little colony of rodent condos I’d previously observed had been taken over by something larger, perhaps coyote given the tracks, but I can’t confirm that (yet). Just the day before the bank was full of small caverns like those on the left.

A confluence of several thought streams formed for me when I observed this.

One stream flowed from deep reading Emerson’s essay titled “Compensation.” In one section he addresses the ‘give and take’ of assets, assistance, and favors, and advocates extreme caution especially around whatever is offered under the guise of being free. He believes everything has a tax and that whatever you take into your purview eventually will demand payment of this tax. You will need to compensate the universe. He further cautions against acquisition: “If you are wise you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with more.” He has in mind, I think, the injustice that arises when one accrues more than needed, an excess that tips the scale and demands, eventually, restitution or working to set the scales right again. Again, you make compensation somehow. The universe will get its tax payment. “Beware of too much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt and worm worms.” I’m not sure what “worm worms” means, but I take his point. He goes on to apply this same principle to labor and virtue, but my mind leapt to a similar caution from Thoreau: the things you own end up owning you. Next time you pay your insurance bill or when the sewer backs up in your basement, you might consider these ideas. 

I thought of them upon seeing the rodent condo takeover because I now have a house. I was very happy in my 16’ Scamp trailer, but in the effort to find land where I might park it and not be bothered by stay limits or neighbor complaints or county regulations, my need for housing quickly escalated into something bigger, something more akin to a want than a need. This pattern repeated itself in sneaky ways, where a small need grew inexplicably and all the trappings of modern life—everything I’d worked so diligently and intentionally to eliminate from my life—took over. Something bigger, better, more efficient, hell, even just something newer comes along and creates this false need that grows into a want that reasserts itself, falsely, as a need. 

Another stream at the confluence: in Emerson’s essay “Self-Reliance,” he’s addressing the allegiances made to tradition or certain forms of knowledge and draws a rather unforgettable analogy with the children’s game, blindman’s bluff. He says these ideological commitments we hold are how we bind our eyes with one or another handkerchief. And then, as we do this to ourselves, “nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression.” Damn, Emerson, you really nailed me with this one. Why do I put myself in these self-chosen, self-created prisons? Why do I so readily give over my freedom? I did this overtly once with religion and, boy, did I go all the way on that one before somehow extracting myself (no small jailbreak there!). But I think the scarier versions of this pattern, for me at least, are the prisons I fall into unthinkingly: my awareness or intentionality falters and suddenly I’m spending money on whatever lifehack my current cultural or social interest suggests I can’t live without. I need it, I want it, I need it. “This is the right way to live or be.”  A prison of my own making.

Which made for a short swim to third stream: I just finished reading Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All Stars. This dystopian novel concerns America’s consumption of and fascination with violence and our ever-escalating incarceration of our citizens (and those who would like to be citizens) in often dehumanizing and brutal conditions. The novel is disturbing on many levels as the author weaves, via footnotes, facts and research on incarceration, torture, suicide, prison population census data, and so forth into the story he’s telling about prisoners who instead of continuing to live in these horrific conditions for the full extent of their sentences choose the blood sport option—to kill or be killed in three years of matches—to either free themselves through death or, if they survive the blood sport, be released back into society. The criminals are simultaneously dehumanized and raised to celebrity thanks to the marriage of the for-profit prison and entertainment industries. 

I’m sure this book will haunt my thoughts (and hopefully my actions) often this year, but here I’ll just mention this thought about the spectators for those blood sport events: without giving any spoilers (and I hope you do read this book), I see those spectators as a mirror of what happens when I let my guard down. I used to love watching boxing so when mixed martial arts came along, I tuned in. Fighters enter the cage and with bodies as their weapons, just about anything goes (except hitting an opponent on the back of head). Blood gushes, tendons tear, bones break, and knockouts are frequent. When this sport first came out, many asked if it wasn’t a little too violent, a little too much like the Roman coliseum, but those objections faded. In the news I hear about the violence in Gaza or Ukraine or yet another mass shooting in America and I barely blink. I just watched the movie John Wick and was distraught about the puppy and fully supported John Wick’s subsequent murderous rampage of like a hundred people. Obviously, without thinking, I’ve become desensitized. The stupid television (through which I consume all sorts of movies and sporting events that are violent), as a technology somehow designed to nurture my passivity and uncritical acceptance of the inputs has succeeded. I and my outputs (actions, thoughts, being in the world) are less human, an internalized or self-dehumanization that spills out into dehumanization of others. 

Yep, all this came from noticing that something bigger took over the homes of littler things here in the desert. My attention elicited reflection and thought, and my mind had the space to let ideas flow, merge, inform, and enlighten. This is just what I wanted from this attention practice. I don’t want to be desensitized, dehumanized, imprisoned, enslaved. To feel again, to have my awareness heightened and quickened, to learn to throw my attention at the right targets, this is the practice. To the disappointment of some I’m sure, I’m not jumping into a frenzy of activism, trying to right all the wrongs in the world. I won’t do that, I can’t. What I do want is a jailbreak from this prison I’ve made for myself and see if I can’t live my remaining life both free and fully human.