Seduction versus attention deficit

When there were only two or three TV channels, if you wanted to see the highlight of the show, you had to put up with the rest.

Today, at the slightest loss of interest, you can switch to another channel, or watch several at the same time. The pace of the action is certainly faster, and the plots richer and denser, to the point where anything more than 20 years old seems hopelessly slow. How could we put up with such stripping down? Not to mention the fact that we can share and discuss in parallel; what a lively experience!

The same thing happens in the classroom; we've gone from scarcity to abundance, and boredom is no longer acceptable. If it's not immediately interesting, you can move on to something else without difficulty and without permission... it's only a short step from there to having an attention problem, especially if you've stopped understanding what the lesson was about.

Seduction as promise

In the Hindu tradition, there are seven chakras, and each can be seduced: by sex, the belly, the plexus (ego), the heart, the throat, the eyes and the mind. We can be sexually attracted, salivate, flattered, softened, enchanted by music and words, immersed in aesthetic or intellectual admiration. Seductive propositions abound, whether in love, business, politics or philosophy.

In all cases, seduction operates like a promise, but a tempting smell is not a meal, a good idea is not its realization, and flattery is not self-confidence. Seduction works, but its true value can only be judged by what follows. Seduction is certainly appearance, but it must be based on substance, otherwise it will turn bitter.

A person seeking strong emotions will not be seduced in the same way as someone looking for a job. How heavy metal stars seduce their fans can sometimes be perplexing, but undeniably their aesthetic moves them and they deliver what they promise. The same goes for computer trainers; their aesthetic appeals to different clienteles in different sectors: orderly, messy, social, creative, cool, but each develops a style of seduction, intellectual or emotional.

Instant seduction

Captivation is the goal of seduction; hence the idea of contrasting it with attention deficit. If you can be seduced with the blink of an eye, a whole context is needed for that blink to become so effective and acquire such a disturbing significance.

In the absence of context, as in zapping, seduction depends on convention. The missing ingredient is apparently context. To the extent that context is appropriate, it does most of the work, and the blink of an eye completes it. The children of the remote control may have long since lost all sense of context, everything becomes everything, and agitation serves as a substitute.

Contextual elements such as an attractive, airy classroom, a prestigious venue, quality presentation, functional, high-performance tools, well-defined and relevant subjects, meaningful discipline and controls can all be seductive, day after day. They speak for themselves, demonstrate the care we take, and can be acted upon. All the teacher has to do is deliver the lesson. Online, these elements find their equivalents. Seduction works in context; without it, attention is scattered, unattached and unimportant.

The context of the course is so vital that the only courses that are truly remembered are those that had one. We teach and learn for a reason, the one that appeals to us.

To capture attention through seduction, all we have to do is make the idea seductive in the right context.

Illustration: Seamless fractal pattern - Irina_QQQ - Shutterstock

References

Philosophy of seduction - Philosophy - Online courses
http://www.philosophie-en-ligne.com/seduction.htm

La séduction pédagogique - Denis Jeffrey - Academic Matters
https://academicmatters.ca/la-seduction-pedagogique/

Le pouvoir de la séduction - Théodora Domenech -  Revue Française d'Histoire des Idées Politiques
https://www.cairn.info/revue-francaise-d-histoire-des-idees-politiques1-2014-1-page-61.htm

Chakras - Wikipedia