You Will Live Like a Lobotomized Pigeon If You Don’t Reclaim Your Focus
Our attention problems didn't start with smartphones
Screens are killing us. That’s not a new statement. The destruction of our attention due to increasing technology usage is one of the main topics of our age. And rightfully so.
However, discussions about the relationship between our digital consumption and our attention are still largely limited to productivity.
Children are struggling to study, entrepreneurial people are struggling to “lock in,” and employees’ efficiency is dropping. All because of the damn phones.
But what about the deeper relationship between the phones, our attention, and the essence of what it means to be human?
What if, by ignoring the attention emergency, we are ensuring the unique life within each of us remains unlived?
That’s what I want to talk about.
The Lobotomized Pigeon
William James was an American philosopher and psychologist. Even though not widely read today, he is one of the most important figures in the history of psychology.
In his monumental 1400-page Principles of Psychology, James offers an observation of striking relevance for our modern predicament. He noted that if the cerebral hemispheres of a frog or a pigeon were removed, the animal could still respond normally to all the usual stimuli, yet lost all capacity for spontaneous movement. Stimulated, it could still perform any movement. Unstimulated, it fell into lethargy.
Why is this relevant to us today?
The lobotomized pigeon perfectly represents how most people’s lives look most of the time. More precisely, it represents human life when we aren’t intentionally using our ability to focus as a tool for building a meaningful life.
What happens to the lobotomized pigeon when no stimuli are present? ‘He spends most of his time crouched on the ground with his head sunk between his shoulders as if asleep,’ James observed. He is not asleep, but his attention is vague, unfocused, scattered.
Does that sound familiar?
You might object: “But David, our struggle is the opposite. We face too much stimulation, not too little. Our attention is scattered and unfocused from the frantic overload, not from lethargy.”
And that would be a fair statement. After all, in my Substack essays and YouTube videos, I often call our age “the age of distraction and overstimulation.”
However, there is another argument worth making:
We are overstimulated because otherwise we would be understimulated. That is, we would be lethargic like the pigeon. And, naturally, we don’t want to be.
However, most people have lost the ability to stimulate and energize themselves through deep focus. Without moments of deep engagement with things that excite us, life feels hollow. Something vital is missing. We sense, in a deep way, that life was meant to be richer, more interesting.
Overstimulation from our smartphones, although unhealthy and self-destructive, is the most accessible, convenient, and therefore the most popular way to fill that inner void.
This leads to another question.
What came first:
Our lack of engagement in life, which made us more vulnerable to digital distractions and temptations?
Or getting hooked on the screen, which made us less able to focus and create moments of deep engagement and meaning.
How did the vicious cycle start?
This is where historical context matters. The history of philosophy and psychology tells us it would be a mistake to claim that our problem started with modern technology. If that were true, then thinkers like William James, Abraham Maslow, Colin Wilson, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wouldn’t have written about the importance of attention long before smartphones and social media existed.
“My experience is what I agree to attend to. Only those items which I notice shape my mind - without selective interest, experience is an utter chaos.”
-William James (Principles of Psychology, 1890)
“(Self-actualization) means an increased valuing of the ability to pay the fullest attention to the here-now situation. to be able to listen well, to be able to see well in the concrete, immediate moment before us.”
-Abraham Maslow (The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, 1971)
“In order to grasp (meanings of life), I must focus, concentrate, ‘contract my attention muscles.’ Perception is intentional, and the more energy (or effort) I put into the act of concentrating, the more meaning I grasp.”
-Colin Wilson (New Pathways in Psychology, 1972)
“Attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience.”
-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow, 1990)
All of these thinkers dedicated much of their work to those moments of deep focus and immersion, which raise life to a higher level. If regularly accessed, these moments facilitate self-actualization and a life of meaning.
However, if our ability to create engagement through focus is left underutilized, life falls into the lethargy of the lobotomized pigeon. Unfortunately, the history of the last couple of hundred years is a story of people letting this ability atrophy.
Long before we could blame Instagram and TikTok, these thinkers observed that most people spend most of their time barely scratching the surface of how interesting and fulfilling life could be. Maslow stands out as the most vocal and passionate on this topic, devoting most of his life to such a pressing yet overlooked question: Why do so few access the higher layers of human nature, even though everyone has the inherent capacity for them?
Therefore, we can conclude that the problem of our attention is an old one, made far worse by modern technology. This isn’t to minimize the devastation modern technology has caused to our attention. Rather, it gives us a deeper and more nuanced picture of the situation. Further, seeing the bigger picture helps us identify one of the most important aspects of this issue.
Intention
Regardless of the time period, it’s the passivity that makes the average human fall victim to the default state of weak attention and lethargy. On the other hand, the strength of intention is what allows one to snap out of collective hypnosis and raise life to a higher level, no matter how strong the forces of distraction are.
How intentional are you about using your attention to build an exciting, meaningful, and fulfilling life? Are you just passively existing, letting your potential go to waste? Or are you taking the reins of the immense power within you by channeling it through deep concentration? That’s what James, Maslow, Willson, and Csikszentmihalyi would ask you.
These questions are timeless. However, we have the privilege of living with history’s most stimulating entertainment devices in our pockets. Therefore, we must add some questions relevant to our digital age.
How intentional are you about reclaiming and protecting your attention so that you can harness its full power? Are you letting yourself be defeated and even humiliated by algorithms, becoming progressively less capable of controlling your inner resources? Or are you going to fight to preserve human dignity and beauty by strengthening your main line of both defense and attack – your attention?
For now, I leave you with these questions. In Part 2 of this essay, I’ll discuss how to protect and strengthen your attention by putting timeless methods into a modern, digital context.
P.S. Proof that everything written above is true: Today, I can sense life pulsing within me stronger than usual precisely because of writing this. It’s not because I’m particularly satisfied with the quality of my writing or because I’m expecting positive feedback. It is purely because of investing my attention, therefore my effort, and ultimately my life, into something interesting and worthwhile.
Really interesting piece, and looking forward to reading more. The image of the lobotomized pigeon is the most accurate description of the haze of heavy phone use I have ever read.
I'm nearly three months into an experiment going Phone Free on my commute, and as a result now have clocked up eighty hours of mental silence. Accordingly, have given this question a great deal of thought and introspection. (As have nothing else to do.)
Everyone uses the phone in the most dreary way possible on the commute. When I ask why, they say otherwise they would be bored. But I know from my first few weeks doing this that a better description would be powerful anxiety, doubt, loneliness bordering on depression, and only after four or five weeks would you begin to feel it was useful. (Beyond five weeks, it's transformative).
You are absolutely right in saying that throughout history there have been those have pointed to the enormous benefit of building focus, that we can live better if we just raise our minds a few feet from the ground. Unfortunately the phone (with its 24/7 temptations) has dug us all down, into a well from which it's near impossible to scrabble out.
Fifty years ago, an understanding of the contemplative traditions was a luxury, an option for those who wanted more from life. These days it's a necessity to even feel alive.
great writing and I agree with everything, thank you!