Foundational Postulates for an Attention-Based Social Theory (v1.21)
Everything social begins with attention.
I’m in the process of enumerating a theory of social reality grounded in attention rather than time, money, or language. It was initially drafted in 2008 and tested through private application across disciplines since 2015. I’m now making this public as a reference point for ongoing critique, refinement, and expansion.
The core claim: attention is a finite, zero-sum, self-reinforcing, and attenuating resource — and the substrate from which all social dynamics emerge.
This post is deliberately concise. I’ll be offering future essays and am working on an in-progress book-length treatment.
As a living document, this is subject to change. Changes will be versioned.
Foundational Postulates
P1: Everyone needs attention from others.
P2: Attention is scarce.
P3: Power is the ability to command attention.
P4: Capital and labour are both attention proxies.
P5: Attention is modal and fungible.
P6: Socially-directed attention seeks reciprocity.
P7: Incoming attention may not be repelled, only potentially redirected.
P8: All interpersonal actions are attention-mediated and balanced.
P9: Attention is subjectively valued.
P10: Attention attenuates.
P11: Deliberate refusal of attention is one of the most anti-social behaviors.
P12: Attention is self-reinforcing.
P13: Attention wears grooves into the physical, cultural, and psychological landscapes and shapes future attention recursively.
P14: Attention carries provenance.
Appendix: Modes and Artifacts
Attention exists in two states: a live state directed by actors, and a stored state. Both states perform selection/exclusion functions that shape attention flows modally.
The modes (P5):
Directed attention: Voluntary, conscious focus on a target (e.g., a thought, task, person).
Received attention: Awareness that one is the object of another’s directed or projected attention.
Projected attention: Conspicuously directed attention aimed at others, usually to elicit a response.
Captured attention: Involuntary hijack of attention (e.g., pain, drama, alarms).
Delegated attention: Attention exercised on one's behalf (e.g. via employees, tech).
Regarding P13, the grooves are where attention flows coalesce into stored attentional energy: artifacts (e.g. architecture, beliefs, money, awards, social metrics). Artifacts may perform one or more modal functions, but not all artifacts perform all of them. Artifacts can be composited into greater complexity. Actors are, socially speaking, artifacts capable of independently and actively directing attention.
Version History
2025-10-01: v1.21 - Minor wording tweaks in the intro paragraphs
2025-09-20: v1.2 - P1: “craves” → “needs”; added P14
2025-09-19: v1.1 - Artifacts better understood as state, not mode
2025-05-03: v1.0