The word askēsis can refer to a set of practices used for strengthening attention, especially attention to oneself, first for the sake of caring for oneself, but ultimately for increasing one’s capacity to attend to others. Attention is a practice and a kind of care.
“One cares for oneself in order to be able to care for the city” is how Edward McGushin puts it. For this reason, practices of attention can also be cultivated as modes of resistance to political power, to social conditioning, and to one’s own psychological history.
Philosophy on this view is work (ergon), it “comes into being through the constant work of the self on itself.” It is a kind of training in “athletic concentration.” In this context, simply developing stronger attention may be a politically potent move.
Attention can become a form of counter-resistance, a martial art of perception.
