The Attention Economy | Healing through Jewish Wisdom

The conversation

You reach the end of the day exhausted, and you don't really know why, because you didn't do anything out of the ordinary. According to Gili, this isn't exhaustion from hard work. It's exhaustion from constantly resisting notifications and small temptations, which drain the prefrontal cortex, and that part of the brain works like a battery with a limited daily budget. Our brain is built to chase uncertainty far more than pleasure, and the way she sees it, that is exactly what the apps take advantage of with every notification. And there is a genuinely surprising family history behind the man who built the industry that does this to us.

The truth

In this episode Gili says that the brain responds more strongly to uncertainty than to pleasure, and that this is exactly the principle notifications and news feeds are built on.

She also says that the prefrontal cortex works like a battery with a limited daily budget, and that every notification and every small decision draws a little more out of it.

The exhaustion we feel at the end of the day usually isn't from hard work, it's from constantly resisting distractions.

When the prefrontal cortex is worn out we stop initiating and simply react to every stimulus, and that is exactly the state the attention economy wants us in.

Marc Randolph, a co-founder of Netflix, is the nephew of Edward Bernays, the inventor of modern advertising and political propaganda, who was himself a nephew of Freud.

Bernays ran a famous campaign that turned cigarettes into "torches of freedom" in order to persuade women to smoke, an early example of engineering consciousness on a mass scale.

Questions and answers

Why do I have to keep checking my phone all the time?

Because our brain responds more strongly to uncertainty than to pleasure. A random, unpredictable reward drives the dopamine system far harder than a steady reward does, and every notification is exactly that kind of "maybe," which is what makes us check again and again.

Why am I so tired at the end of every day even though I didn't really do anything?

The prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for planning and impulse control, works like a battery with a limited budget. Every notification, every temptation and every small decision draws from it, and by the afternoon it is simply spent. This isn't exhaustion from hard work, it's exhaustion from constantly resisting interruptions.

What's the connection between the co-founder of Netflix and Freud?

Marc Randolph, Netflix's original CEO and co-founder, is the nephew of Edward Bernays, the man who invented modern advertising and political propaganda. Bernays himself was a nephew of Sigmund Freud. Three generations in the same family, all of them working in one way or another on influencing human consciousness.

Why is it so hard for me just to put my phone down? Are there tips that actually help you wake up and get out of it?

Regulating your nervous system is the key: walk barefoot, spend time in nature and stay away from screens, so that you come out of survival mode. Gili also suggests working on limiting beliefs in the subconscious, focusing on positive emotion, because emotion is the real fuel, using your imagination, and paying attention to where your attention goes, because whatever you focus on grows.

Gili's original episode description

There's an economy flowing underneath everything we experience on the surface, and it isn't an economy of money, it's the attention economy. In this economy you aren't the customer, you're the product.

Not all human beings are at the same level of consciousness. Some say there are seven levels. At the first one you don't ask questions. You live inside the systems, you work, you consume, and you believe what the people in authority tell you. At the second you start to feel that something doesn't add up, that there are lies, that the routine feels wrong, that something keeps repeating itself and it's beginning to bother you. At the third you start to doubt. You question politics, you question religions, you question science too. Everything has a question mark on it. At the fourth you discover that there's manipulation here. You see how the systems take over consciousness through fear, through food, through health, through money. At the fifth you understand that there's no end to this, and that as long as it's all out there, it's hopeless. So you turn inward, and you understand that if the guilty parties are outside you then you're a victim, and you realize that you are the one responsible for your own reality. At the sixth you learn to manage your energy, which in plain language means learning what to react to and noticing what you're giving your attention to. At the seventh you're in gratitude, what's called being happy with your portion. You understand that there's nothing out there that can save you, because the great power, the Creator you were looking for outside yourself, is in fact you.

It's important that all of us understand our own power as human beings, and the basic right the Creator gave us: free choice. You don't have to respond to everything. Move forward, and understand that your attention is what feeds it. The world isn't on your shoulders. Your responsibility is to protect your energy. All the systems are alike, and they were created by the same people, whether that's governments, financial systems, education systems, health systems or Hollywood. It's the same stuff, the same structure, the same consciousness, the same system, and all of it is so that we'll feel helpless. Look at how much they invest in us! That only proves what powerful beings we are!