Attention can ruin both thinking and pleasure which is why most people avoid it.
This sentence points to something people usually miss. Attention is not a booster. It is a destabilizer.
When attention is weak or diffused, thinking runs on rails. Associations flow automatically, narratives complete themselves, opinions feel solid. This is why people feel “smart” when they’re half-distracted. Strong attention interrupts that. It exposes gaps, contradictions, unfinished inferences. Thinking slows down, becomes effortful, sometimes uncomfortable. You notice that you don’t actually know what you thought you knew. So attention ruins fluent thinking by removing its illusions of coherence.
The same with pleasure.
Passive pleasure depends on forgetting itself. You enjoy a movie because you stop noticing that you are watching. You enjoy food because you stop noticing the mechanics of chewing, swallowing, satiety. Strong attention breaks the spell. The taste becomes specific, then repetitive, then finite. Pleasure collapses faster because attention reveals its structure and its limits. What felt immersive becomes ordinary, then boring. So attention ruins pleasure by stripping away fantasy and momentum.
This creates a double avoidance. People avoid attention because it undermines both of their main coping strategies which are narrative thinking (which props up identity) and passive enjoyment (which anesthetizes discomfort).
Attention does not give you better experiences. It gives you truer ones. And truth is rarely entertaining. That’s why attention feels “dry,” “sterile,” or “too much work.” It refuses to lie on your behalf. It neither amplifies pleasure nor accelerates thought. It slows both down until only what actually holds remains. Attention is corrosive because it dissolves what survives only by speed and forgetfulness.
