Heroes Not Zombies

Many years ago I used to listen to a pirate radio station called Radio Caroline. It was broadcast from a boat in international waters which got around the broadcast licensing issues of the time. At one point they went through a phase of promoting something they called “the LA habit”, encouraging the listeners to “get the LA habit”. LA, in this phrase, was short for “Loving Awareness”.

I remembered this when reading Iris Murdoch’s “The Sovereignty of Good” recently. She wrote about the benefit of paying a particular kind of attention to – loving attention. When we pay loving attention to the world we see more beauty, develop more compassion and experience the Good.

“Loving Awareness” is probably a good idea, but, actually, I’m even more persuaded of the benefits of “Loving Attention”. Our dominant way of attending to the world comes from the left cerebral hemisphere, and it’s what we employ to grasp and manipulate the world by dividing reality up into manageable pieces. The right hemisphere, on the other, pays a broad attention to the world, which we need to see and create connections. We need a holistic attention to better understand others. We need it to engage and understand.

This is what we need today to counter the alienation, division and despair which is so prevalent in our societies.

We need it to build bridges, form mutually beneficial bonds and to deepen our engagement with nature and with each other.

We need to pay more loving attention – the evolution of the LA habit!