Yin and yang of attention
We marketers, and everyone else, busy ourselves scheming ways to get attention. Seth reminds us that giving attention, or giving recognition as he called it, is the flip side of the attention coin.
The dance of giving and getting attention is a fundamental part of human psychology and inter-personal relations. Attention has been the subject of investigation since ancient times, as Idries Shah tells us of the Sufi tradition in the Characteristics of Attention and Observation section from his book Learning How to Learn.
“The inability to feel when attention is extended, and also to encourage or to prevent its being called forth, makes man almost uniquely vulnerable to being influenced, especially in having ideas implanted in his brain, and being indoctrinated.
“Raising the emotional pitch is the most primitive method of increasing attention towards the instrument which increased the emotion. It is the prelude to, or accompaniment of, almost every form of indoctrination.”
See Also: ACIM Text 4.II.7