When it comes to making metaphors, our conscious minds are dullards when compared to our brilliant, creative, unconscious selves.
from Garrett, M. (2019). Psychotherapy for psychosis: Integrating cognitive-behavioral and psychodynamic treatment (1st ed.). Guilford Publications.
“In ‘How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy,’ [visual artist Jenny] Odell suggests that any theory of media must first start with a theory of attention. ‘One thing I have learned about attention is that certain forms of it are contagious,’ she writes.
When you spend enough time with someone who pays close attention to something (if you were hanging out with me, it would be birds), you inevitably start to pay attention to some of the same things. I’ve also learned that patterns of attention — what we choose to notice and what we do not — are how we render reality for ourselves, and thus have a direct bearing on what we feel is possible at any given time. These aspects, taken together, suggest to me the revolutionary potential of taking back our attention.
“I think Odell frames both the question and the stakes correctly. Attention is contagious. What forms of it, as individuals and as a society, do we want to cultivate? What kinds of mediums would that cultivation require?
“This is anything but an argument against technology, were such a thing even coherent. It’s an argument for taking technology as seriously as it deserves to be taken, for recognizing, as [media theorist Marshall] McLuhan’s friend and colleague John M. Culkin put it, ‘we shape our tools, and thereafter, they shape us.’”
— excerpted from Klein, E. (2022, August 7). I didn’t want it to be true, but the medium really is the message. The New York Times.
In the degradation of the great way come benevolence and righteousness. With the exaltation of learning and prudence comes immense hypocrisy. The disordered family is full of dutiful children and parents. The disordered society is full of loyal patriots.
— from Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A book about the Way and the power of the Way (U. K. Le Guin, trans.; First edition). (1997). Shambhala.
“Reading the Tao Te Ching today, knowing what we now know about the history of China after its creation, it is easy to overlook the fact that the Tao Te Ching came first and the Confucianism we know about, the ruling religious/political system of China, came later. The author of the Way Virtue Classic was one of a small number of men in history gifted with, or cursed with, the ability to observe the beginnings of social phenomena and know where they will lead.
“Cursed, I say, because such people are destined to be ignored, disbelieved, and belittled by those around them who have no such ability. The majority of people in any society are carried along by social trends as leaves are carried along by the current of a stream. Later, with hindsight, they can look back and see that the prophets and their prophecies were correct. But by then, it is usually too late.
“What I believe the author is saying here and there in his writing is that Master K’ung [Fu-tzū, Confucianism’s founder] chose the wrong past to emulate. There was an older past, which, paradoxically, could have been built upon to help Chinese society move forward—a past in which people had lived in harmony with nature.
“In that time, people recognized that nature’s wisdom and power were far greater than their own, so they aligned themselves with her and lived their lives accordingly, without the superimposed rules and regulations of a Confucian system. That was the time before The Great Way was abandoned.”
— from Hoff, B. (2021). The eternal Tao Te Ching: The philosophical masterwork of Taoism and its relevance today. Harry N. Abrams.
Matthew M. Sholler, Psy.D. 
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