The Devil You Know Is Better Than The Devil You Don't

3. To get our attention, an utterance made during the course of deliberation must fend off competitors such as a person’s preoccupation with certain prior or future events, the simultaneous actions or utterances of others, and even the color of the wallpaper.”—Arthur Lupia, Can Online Deliberation Improve Politics?

This thesis is really interesting to me. Throughout my life, I have always struggled with keeping my focus while studying, doing homework, or even being productive in the workplace. In the third grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD. It has been a struggle to keep focus or on task ever since. I feel that this holds true, especially when I am trying to study. While we need to fend off “competition” for our attention, I feel, we as a people, really welcome the competitors to our attention. We would rather be distracted than complete the task at hand. For example, which is more interesting: doing an 800-1000 word paper or watching the Chicago Bears take on the Green Bay Packers? While writing this blog post, I’ve lost focus and my attention has sidetracked several times. It’s a constant battle with this bad habit, which has gotten worse for the human race due to the advancement of technology. I feel like this holds true in every aspect of our lives. Last night during the Oscars, Leonardo DiCaprio mentioned climate change and how we need to shift our attention to try to come up with solutions for it. We are all aware that climate change is occurring; yet we gear our attention in other directions that interest us more. We rather have someone else focus on climate change, while we focus on the “more important” things in our lives. Simultaneously, we feed our attention to the less painful choice. Conclusively, I feel the saying “ the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t” really applies to this situation of fighting for our attention.