A friend suggested I might enjoy Byung-Chul Han’s Speaking about God: A Dialogue with Simone Weil that has recently been translated into English. He was right. It is only a short book but I am going to take my time with this one. Here are some lines that struck me from the first ten pages.
- Perception is almost fattened with junk information and communications, with acoustic and visual waste. We are turning into consumer livestock. Perception is increasingly controlled by stimuli and addiction… Our voracious perception has no need of attention; it devours whatever it is presented with. Only the soul that fasts can look
- Contemplative attention is crucial for looking. It observes things without wanting to appropriate or absorb them… it is the imagination that constantly dreams up food in the service of the self.
- Contemplative attention is the opposite of the hunters vigilance…Digitalisation massively accelerates the total availability of reality… Today we are constantly distracted.
- Social media also draws on addictive algorithms to make people dependent, control them and guide them. The smartphone is a digital addiction machine.
- … ‘memes’ are viruses that spread in social media. The human soul serves them as a form of host for their reproduction.
- Good is indirect, even shy, whereas evil is intrusive… Good unites and reconciles while evil separates and divides.