Reflections 8th February

What we choose to see together.

Serial moral failure stupefies. What would once have been scandal becomes Tuesday, as we grow accustomed not through approval but through exhaustion, the normalisation that occurs when outrage itself becomes too costly to maintain. In politics, business, and in other institutions we once imagined were built on something more durable than expedience, we watch the boundaries shift and wonder when we stopped being surprised.

It is easy to feel weary, bewildered and helpless in the face of this constant stream and forget that what overwhelms us is partly a matter of perspective. Henry David Thoreau reminds us it is not what we look at that matters, but what we see.

And what we see is a discipline. Disciplines are choices we make.

This matters more than it might appear; our attention has become commodity, and there is more profit to be had in threat than reward, and more engagement in division than resolution. We are around twice as sensitive to the possibility of threat as to potential gain…