James Williams > Quotes

“It’s my firm conviction, now more than ever, that the degree to which we are able and willing to struggle for ownership of our attention is the degree to which we are free.”
― James Williams, Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

“Better than a sharp stick in the eye.”
― James Williams

“For most of human history, when you were born you inherited an off-the-shelf package of religious and cultural constraints. This was a kind of library of limits that was embedded in your social and physical environment. These limits performed certain self-regulatory tasks for you so you didn’t have to take them on yourself. The packages included habits, practices, rituals, social conventions, moral codes, and a myriad of other constraints that had typically evolved over many centuries, if not millennia, to reliably guide – or shall we say design – our lives in the direction of particular values, and to help us give attention to the things that matter most. In the twentieth century the rise of secularism and modernism in the West occasioned the collapse – if not the jettisoning – of many of these off-the-shelf packages of constraints in the cause of the liberation of the individual. In many cases, this rejection occurred on the basis of philosophical or cosmological disagreements with the old packages. This has, of course, had many great benefits. Yet by rejecting entire packages of constraint, we’ve also rejected those constraints that were actually useful for our purposes. “The left’s project of liberation,” writes the American philosopher Matthew Crawford, “led us to dismantle inherited cultural jigs that once imposed a certain coherence (for better and worse) on individual lives. This created a vacuum of cultural authority that has been filled, opportunistically, with attentional landscapes that get installed by whatever ‘choice architect’ brings the most energy to the task – usually because it sees the profit potential.” The German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, in his book You Must Change Your Life, has called for a reclamation of this particular aspect of religion – its habits and practices – which he calls “anthropotechnics.”6 When you dismantle existing boundaries in your environment, it frees you from their limitations, but it requires you to bring your own boundaries where you didn’t have to before. Sometimes, taking on this additional self-regulatory burden is totally worth it. Other times, though, the cost is too high. According to the so-called “ego-depletion” hypothesis, our self-control, our willpower, is a finite resource.7 So when the self-regulatory cost of bringing your own boundaries is high enough, it takes away willpower that could have been spent on something else.”
― James Williams, Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

“The “Spotlight” Our immediate capacities for navigating awareness and action toward tasks. Enables us to do what we want to do.

The “Starlight” Our broader capacities for navigating life “by the stars” of our higher goals and values. Enables us to be who we want to be.

The “Daylight” Our fundamental capacities – such as reflection, metacognition, reason, and intelligence – that enable us to define our
goals and values to begin with. Enables us to “want what we want to want.”

These three “lights” of attention pertain to doing, being, and knowing, respectively. When each of these “lights” gets obscured, a distinct – though not mutually exclusive – type of “distraction” results.”
― James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light

“Whether we’re using a slot machine or an app that’s designed to “hook” us, we’re doing the same thing; we’re “paying for the possibility of a surprise.”24 With slot machines, we pay with our money. With technologies in the attention economy, we pay with our attention. And, as with slot machines, the benefits we receive from these technologies – namely “free” products and services – are up front and immediate, whereas we pay the attentional costs in small denominations distributed over time. Rarely do we realize how costly our free things are.”
― James Williams, Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy

“Selection is the very keel on which our mental ship is built. And in this case of memory its utility is obvious.
If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing.”
― James Williams

“What do you pay when you pay attention? You pay with all the things you could have attended to, but didn't: all the actions you didn't take , all the possible yous you could have been, had you attended to those other things. Attention is paid in possible futures forgone. You pay for that extra Game of Thrones episode with the heart-to-heart talk you could have had with your anxious child. You pay for that extra hour on social media with the sleep you didn't get and the fresh feeling you didn't have the next morning. You pay for giving in to that outrage-inducing piece of clickbait about that politician you hate with the patience and empathy it took from you, and the anger you have at yourself for allowing yourself to take the bait in the first place.”
― James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light

“We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar.”
― James Williams

“After reliving my experiences whilst writing this I have to think that there are other forces in this world that cannot be seen by the human eye. Loosing my Mom at a young age has also changed my perspective on the after life. However I will point out I am not a religious person or have any belief system. I would like to think/hope that after we leave this world there is something more after. Where the sick are no longer in pain and are watching over us keeping us safe. My daughter asks a lot of questions as to where my Mum has gone. I like to tell her that she is in the stars looking down on us everyday. I hope I'm right.”
― James Williams, Personal Paranormal Account

“The freedom of speech is meaningless without the freedom of attention, which is both its complement and prerequisite”
― James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light

“Do we conjure up an image of a "monster" at whom to direct our blame, and take a path which, while psychologically rewarding, is likely to distract from the goal of enacting change in the real world? Or do we take the second path, and look head-on at the true nature of the system, as messy and psychologically indigestible as it seems to be?”
― James Williams, Stand Out of Our Light