In these edgy and ominous days, anyone suggesting that it might be wise to pay a bit less attention to the dramas of presidential politics is likely to receive a tongue lashing. Even to contemplate the idea exudes an unrealistic escapism; maybe some can afford not to care too much about the outcome, but surely most can’t. Besides, it just feels impossible: We’re transfixed — whichever candidate you intend to vote for — by the potential for catastrophe, like rabbits caught in headlights.

Would it make any difference if I told you that learning to steward your attention — and even to withdraw it from urgent matters like politics that seem to cry out for it — is the truly hardheaded, non-escapist approach required at this moment? And that doing so might even be your civic responsibility?

I’m certainly not suggesting you refrain from voting or election volunteering or discussing politics. Nor am I endorsing a certain kind of self-help guru who recommends disconnecting from the news entirely, on the grounds that it doesn’t affect your life. What I’m arguing, having written two books exploring the benefits of embracing our built-in human limitations, is that it’s permissible — indeed, essential — to carve out space in our days for other vital things, both for the sake of our inner equilibrium and for the health of democracy.

An old anecdote tells of the French philosopher Raymond Aron, strolling through Paris on a glorious day with his wife and newborn daughter when suddenly, amid the happy crowds soaking up the sunlight in the Jardin du Luxembourg, he spots his fellow scholar Simone Weil, visibly distraught. Aron asks what’s wrong. “There is a strike in Shanghai,” Weil responds, “and the troops fired on the workers.”

It isn’t to gainsay Weil’s awe-inspiring openness to every current event and its emotional impact to observe that few of us could function this way. Attention is a finite resource, and our sanity depends on not struggling to care about everything. We must protect a zone of focus for the local and personal — the feeling of the sun on your skin, a conversation with friends over pasta or an exchange of terrible jokes with your 7-year-old.

In an attention economy, the truly valuable commodity isn’t the news itself but your eyeballs. Even the most responsible media organization, activist group or political campaign is incentivized to present each story or cause as even more alarming than the next, in an effort to win the attentional arms race. It’s easy to find yourself, metaphorically speaking, living inside the news cycle — treating the latest campaign developments or polling data as somehow more real than your home, career, neighborhood or friends. It’s a grim irony that many people thus mesmerized by the news feel themselves to be fighting for democracy’s survival, when the total colonization of inner life by politics is a traditional hallmark of totalitarianism.

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