The Cost of Paying Attention
A notable feature of many formerly Communist countries is the apparent absence, or impotence, of any notion of a common good. Self-serving party apparatchiks have been replaced by (or become) quasi-free market gangsters. Many citizens of these countries live in the environmental degradation that results when economic development is left to such interests, with no countervailing force of public-spiritedness. We in the liberal societies of the West find ourselves headed toward a similar condition with regard to the resource of attention, because we do not yet understand it to be a resource.
Or do we? Silence is now offered as a luxury good. In the business-class lounge at Charles de Gaulle Airport, I heard only the occasional tinkling of a spoon against china. I saw no advertisements on the walls. This silence, more than any other feature, is what makes it feel genuinely luxurious.
.. The late, great Ted Riehle, Jr. of Vermont understood this many decades ago when he helped usher the no-billboard law through the state legislature. Some say they can feel their blood pressure drop upon crossing into Vermont from Massachusetts, as the commercial detritus and visual pollution of the billboards and neon disappear, allowing one to focus on the road and mountain vistas in the distance.