How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy

In this chapter, Odell focuses on the ecology or ecosystem of an area and the necessity of strangers within it. She begins with an anecdote of once helping a stranger on the street who had a seizure. Afterward, it made her previous plans of food shopping somewhat scattered, as she couldn’t get her mind off it. Shopping in a grocery store also figures in a commencement address by writer David Foster Wallace. He depicts a scene of food shopping after a tiring day of work and slogging through traffic. Most of us would feel peevish, like everyone else is in our way, but Wallace turns that on its head. What if we’re in other people’s way? He envisions a scenario where maybe the person who cut you off on the road was rushing a child to the hospital. How we feel depends on our perspective, and we have control over that. We can take Buber’s “I-It” perspective or his “I-Thou.”

Odell then describes being approached on the street by a group of primary school students doing a survey about the community. She came away from it thinking that the different groups of people living there needed to care more about each other and be more engaged in the place they all shared.