The Attention Trap

The Attention Trap. How Your Consciousness Got Monetized, Fragmented, and Boxed

Why attention is the currency of power today: it traps consciousness in loops.

In a world where cats can be influencers, your inner awareness is being auctioned offto the highest bidder… and not even invited to the meeting.

Welcome to the Attention Economy, where your mind is the product, and your consciousness is on lease to corporations, algorithms, and ideologies you’ve never met.

And it all starts with a lie:

“You are your brain.”

The Box with Wi-Fi = The Materialist Paradigm

Materialism once proudly declared:

“All that exists is matter. Your thoughts? Just brain chemistry. Your soul? Outdated firmware. Your awe at the stars? A misfiring of neurons.”

Cool story. But here’s the problem:

• You’re not in your thoughts. You’re aware of them.
• You can watch your emotions rise and fall like TikTok trends.
• You can even observe your sense of self like a character in a dream.

So who, or what, is doing the watching?

Spoiler: It’s not your prefrontal cortex logging in via Bluetooth.

The Loop? When Consciousness Forgets Itself

Let’s break it down:

1. You wake up.
2. Check your phone.
3. Scroll a bit.
4. React, compare, consume.
5. Forget you exist beyond the feed.

Rinse. Retweet. Repeat.

Welcome to the loop: the recursive, attention-fracturing hamster wheel where the self is simulated, optimized, and flattened into a data point.

Attention is no longer a beam of presence. It’s a resource to mine, a stat to boost, a trap to fall into.

Why Attention Is the Currency of Power

Because attention = energy.

Where you place your attention:

• Builds your identity.
• Shapes your reality.
• Fuels systems: economic, political, spiritual.

Look at anything long enough, and it grows:

• Ads get smarter.
• Emotions get louder.
• Ideologies get stickier.
• The self gets more tangled in its own narrative.

So if you control attention, you shape worlds. That’s why platforms, politicians, and marketers aren’t selling products anymore.

They’re selling loops… and you’re the processing unit.

But Wait. Isn’t Attention Just… Me?

Here’s the sleight of hand:

You’ve been trained to believe that your attention = your identity.

But that’s like mistaking your flashlight for the sun. Attention is just a tool. A focus mechanism. Consciousness is what’s behind the tool: the sky in which the beam appears.

That means you’re not the scroll.
Not the thought.
Not the emotion.

You’re the space in which all of that arises.

So What Now? Exit the Loop

Here are a few rebel acts against the attention heist:

• Pause. Not to “be productive,” but to just be.
• Observe your thoughts instead of merging with them.
• Notice who’s noticing… that’s the kicker.
• Reclaim boredom. It’s the gateway drug to clarity.
• Unfollow your own loops.

Attention is sacred when it’s reclaimed, not monetized.

Consciousness Unboxed

Here’s the paradox:

Consciousness has no identity, yet takes on all identities.
It is not yours, yet you are nothing but it.
It doesn’t need attention. It is attention before it gets divided, packaged, and sold.

You are not the noise, the flutter, the feed. You are the stillness that sees it.

So, the next time someone tries to “grab your attention,” pause and ask:

“Whose attention? From where?”

And just like that, the loop starts to break.

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The Philosopher’s Stone

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