"Attention" - Is it the New Status Symbol?..

The word "Status" is probably still synonymous with a centuries-old meaning around something that can be physically seen . Things like rank, title, land, or visible wealth. It comes from the Latin verb "Stare" - to Stand. It is where we much more than figuratively stood. Status was a marker of position - worn outwardly and instantly understood by all. The trappings of status were the Bentleys, the Castles and the cash..

..Our status symbols.

It's a bit quieter these days. Wealth is a little less visible and the wearing of diamonds in public, or the upkeep of vast Country Estates has become probably less desirable for "those that have", as my beloved Mother would say.

These days it seems to be about attention. Not the kind we give, but the kind we seem to be told to covet. Who is watching what we are doing or what we are eating? How many?.. How often?.. Followers, views, likes, subscribers, reach. An entirely new set of symbols. Less tangible and surely far less superficially splendid, but no less, gratingly performative.

"Sum quod edo" - I am what I post...

And here is where things begin to get fuzzy. Because this kind of attention is not simply observed by other people… it is staged. Curated. Edited. Timed and released. Moments are no longer just lived - they are positioned. Experiences are not just felt - they are filtered and framed. And somewhere in that quiet shift, something perhaps a bit sinister begins to happen. The line between living a life… and presenting one… starts to blur. And through that foggy lens..

..It becomes dangerously easy to confuse being seen with being significant.

I am not even going to pretend that I have not fallen for the cheese in the mousetrap of Social Media. When Vanessa tells me we have 79 new followers on Platform13's Instagram page, I am both thrilled and grateful. Yet why does it still just feel a bit hollow - like being "rich" in Monopoly?

I am guessing that a growing number of us have fallen under the assumption that visibility equals value and likes mean worthwhile impact. That if we get your attention - as a measurable, weekly metric - we have finally become meaningful.

But it really isn't. Being followed is not the same as being understood. Getting likes is not the same as being trusted. And being viewed is not the same as being valued. It is the absolute Groundhog Day of pointless battles for me to even attempt to wage. My war on the quicksand of social media value is like Sigourney Weaver screaming in outer-space. No-one hears it.

It is a thoroughly modern, and typically pointless crusade. Refereshing an analytics screen over and over again to see if the "open" count is now ticking higher. Second guessing the shape of a story, to better suit the readership; questioning whether an article actually mattered enough to write, simply because no-one "liked" it.

You see, these days, visibility has to be immediate, whereas significance must almost always be earned over a long time. Ask Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson or Van Gogh - who sold just one painting in his entire lifetime.. now try and buy one...And in a culture that rewards immediacy, it feels like we are getting constantly nudged towards the visible, almost entirely at the expense of the meaningful.

I sort of admire the people who live in that world and have learned how to capture attention. The good ones are really good at it. They can shape conversation. They can move markets and influentially shift consumer behaviour. They can sustain the attention, also.. shaping outcomes like really clever mind-miners.

But the people I think I admire the most, are the ones who can step back from it - people who are not even remotely owned by the one-dimensionalty of it all, and can therefore choose deliberately, where their attention rests. Because, folks, they are shaping something deeper...

Themselves.

And that, perhaps, is where the worm turns. Because while we have become - through a kind of imagined necessity - increasingly skilled at capturing attention, we seem to have become far less adept at giving it. Not outwardly, as we give plenty of that kind of attention, but more inwardly. To ourlseves. Not in the sense of "who is following me?" but more in the sense of "What am I actually paying attention to?"

You see, the same disappointing habits that have us constantly refreshing screens and tracking social engagement, actually follow us like slightly hungry dogs, into the rest of our day. We skim things, or we sort of half-listen. We second guess and we interruopt our thoughts before they are fully formed.

I am constantly reminded when wrting text for Platform 13, not to write "too much" as people's attention span is "about 10 seconds" these days. When did that happen?.. Surely that comes down to choice. I don't recall any legislation passing through Parliament or Congress limiting our attention spans. We have just decided to collectively move through moments that - with a little bit more attention paid - might have had something to offer us. I am going to just put that down to the sheer volume of crap that we oblige ourselves to wade through on a daily basis.

But in accepting that it our skimming through life is a form of self-protection against this info. overload, it might be important to also recognise that we are outsourcing something fundematally important - our sense of what matters. What is important. We are beginning to look at the substantive measure of worth, which is based on who noticed what, much rather than whether it was intrinsically meaningful.

But when we turn the lens inward, things start to behave a bit differently. We slow down. We ask better questions. We notice our daily landscapes with a longer span of attention. Flickers of curiousity become flames, rather than just sparks. This is the kind of attention we used to pay. Thoughts are given enough time to form and develop the kind of completeness that they merit. I think when we pause like that, we can move through the world with more intention and perhaps less need for constant validation.

Let's not think of it as "stepping away" from the world in any sense, or at least the current version of the world, but actually re-entering it, with our attention intact.

And perhaps that is where something like our Soulstice Immersion experience begins to make a bit more sense. Not as an escape or a performance - and certainly not as something to be seen doing. But as a deliberate pause.

A place to step out of the constant pull for that superficial form of attention, and a gentle re-you-nion. The return to self. Space to notice what has been sitting quietly in the background. Let's jolly well face it, we could all benefit from spending a little more time in our own company, without immediately reaching for distraction.

Please note, that you won't get any Likes for doing this - No audience, no reviews or performance points. But you will be rewarded by some vintage clarity. And that will be good enought.

To move from collecting attention, to directing it. From being seen, to actually seeing. Because I move, that the most valuable attention you will ever get

- is your own.