The Attention Wars
Why the Battle for Human Focus Determines Everything Else
We are living through the attention wars—a battle for control of human cognitive resources that determines everything from individual agency to collective reasoning. The stakes transcend politics: this is about whether conscious beings can maintain the sustained focus necessary for meaningful choice, authentic relationship, and democratic deliberation—or whether we will surrender those capacities to algorithmic systems designed to optimize us for extraction rather than flourishing.
The forces arrayed against human attention understand exactly what they’re doing. They’ve weaponized cognitive science, exploited psychological vulnerabilities, and built economic infrastructures that profit from fragmenting the very mental processes that make democratic citizenship possible. Meanwhile, those who should be defending cognitive freedom remain trapped in frameworks that not only fail to address the threat but actively enable it.
It’s time to understand what we’re actually fighting and why everything depends on winning.
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