Diving Deeper: The Full Depth of “This is Water” in Odell’s book

I first read “This is Water,” a speech by David Foster Wallace, in my sophomore year English class. I remember being so inspired by it, so much so that it has stuck with me even past that classroom. When I saw that Odell mentioned his speech in “How to Do Nothing,” I was excited to see a piece that I personally loved being used by another writer. When I read Wallace’s entire speech again, I was struck by how similar his ideas were to Odell’s, even though she only included his work briefly in her book. In many ways, it seemed to me that his speech is like a little mini version of “How to Do Nothing!” This prompted me to dive deeper into just how much of Wallace’s ideas can be seen in Odell’s book, beyond just the one point she mentioned.

My essay analyzes the striking similarities between Wallace’s and Odell’s beliefs. The perspectives in the just-over-20-minute speech can be seen over the course of Odell’s entire book. Even thoughts about the very attention economy itself is an overlapping point of focus between the two writers! If there is so much correlation between the two pieces, why did Odell only mention DFW once? I don’t have an answer for that. However, my essay does aim to point out how two writers with different explicit goals ultimately voiced a similar message, and hopefully bring even more validity to the points they are both trying to make.

https://hschnell-11145.medium.com/diving-deeper-the-full-depth-of-this-is-water-in-odells-book-de116bde3393

Breaking the Ice: The Power of Our Differences

https://medium.com/@hschnell_11145/breaking-the-ice-the-power-of-our-differences-9e1a21bf3690

It is no secret that there are striking differences between each one of us. We see the prominent effects of diversity nowadays especially, with increasing coverage of all sorts of beliefs, races, and political ideas. What is lost in these conversations, though, is the positive power of these differences. Odell speaks profoundly on the uniqueness of every person and the “plurality” within our society. While we many times use this as a barrier, my writing aims to point out why this uniqueness is so important, and why we must not shy away from it.

Our similarities are commonly emphasized as being important (and they are!), but our differences are just essential. When we are often urged to leave out topics like religion and politics in our conversations, because we often times have extremely differing views, my writing argues that we should and need to talk about things we are at odds with, and why it is so crucial that we do. The “opportunities of expansion” that our differences give us is so key to our development as individuals and as a society that we need to learn to appreciate them, instead of using them to build walls against each other. The questions of why this is important and how we can achieve this are all ones that I tackle in my writing. Yes, similarities are key, but see why our differences deserve equal opportunity and appreciation in our conversations as well.

The Benefit of Letting Go

By now it is clear that Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” is a call to resistance of the attention economy. The “nothing” that she urges us to do is a removal from the busyness our capitalist society thrives on as a sort of activism against it. Her underlying goal is to help us find more meaning and perspective in our lives, not feeding into the anxiety the attention economy builds upon. She has furthered this idea, though, by explaining how we can do this in a way that actually makes a long-term effect. 

It may be easy to wonder how we can “do nothing” consistently when not all circumstances allow for that. Let’s be real, people have work to complete, bills to pay, and families to raise. Not all of us have time (or money!) for weekend getaways, or even just an hour walk around the park. Odell argues, however, that the form of “political refusal” she suggests “retreats not in space, but in the mind” (38). Doing nothing means more than just escaping our productivity-obsessed environment physically, but also mentally and emotionally. Odell calls this “standing apart.” By standing apart, we “take the view of the outsider without leaving…look at the world (now) from the point of view of the world as it could be” (61-62). This requires an altered state of mind, not a change in location. Therefore, this is something we can grow to do all the time, not just for a weekend. 

            Let’s use Facebook as an example, one that Odell also uses. She claims that because real refusal of attention happens “first and foremost in the mind,” we should not be concerned with a “‘once-and-for-all’ type of quitting but ongoing training” (93). Thus, she argues that quitting Facebook is “fighting the battle on the wrong plane’ (90). Rather, we should redirect our attitude and attention towards it. Odell believes we must quit the ongoing mind game that Facebook and other social media plays with us. This involves “know[ing] when we are being guilted, threatened, and gaslighted” (93). For Odell, “doing nothing,” and “standing apart” is not about changing if we use social media or not, but changing how we use it, and what we allow to affect us. 

            There is great validity to Odell’s argument; millions of people use Facebook, and an altered state of attention while scrolling through your feed would certainly be like a protest against the attention economy. However, I do think there is also validity in getting away from Facebook, or other social media sites, altogether. How much time do you spend scrolling through your feed, whether it be Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter? One can spend HOURS mindlessly going through posts. I am not saying there is no benefit to these social media platforms; many forms of good have come out of them. However, deleting a site like Facebook, even just for a time, can help to be a wakeup call of just how much time we spend on it. This new time can be devoted to more worthwhile deeds and forms of “nothing,” like birdwatching, that Odell encourages. Although she argues “total renunciation” would be fruitless, I think it can open our eyes in ways that wouldn’t be possible otherwise, by giving us a chance to really see how much this media affects us, and how changed we are when we are not at its mercy daily (61). In addition, wouldn’t leaving Facebook altogether still be fighting the “hysteria and fear” that Odell criticizes (59)? Aren’t we still choosing to not feed into the harmful commercialism it promotes by just saying “Ok, I’m done with this”? Odell’s suggestion is not a bad on at all; in fact, I really like her argument. However, I do not think it is the only way. 

            Additionally, deleting Facebook is more recognizable. I certainly do not think we should shout our removal from it from the rooftop, but consider the following situation: You are a Facebook user trying to combat the attention economy, and someone asks if you are on Facebook. Do you say, “Yes, but I am actively resisting the fear-inducing frenzy that this commercial media drives”? Is it possible, yes, but this encounter is unrealistic and quite awkward. On the other hand, if someone who was trying to fight these same issues answered “No, I’m not on Facebook,” that would grab attention much easier, and could lead to a respectful (not boastful) reasoning of why. Odell herself speaks of the benefit of “shock[ing] people out of their habitual stupor,” and this would do just that (66). While Odell’s argument of resisting by changing the mind would be beneficial, how do you spread that strategy around to others? Leaving Facebook shows this resistance, and that it is possible. 

            I was once having a conversation with my friend about Snapchat. He was complaining about how “toxic” he thinks it is, and that he wished he could just delete it. He admitted that his holdup to doing so was a bad case of FOMO. He also went on to say how he admires people who have deleted it, and that each time he has a conversation with them, he feels more inclined to do it himself. Odell’s tactic of refocusing attention on social media (and in life), is a great way to combat the attention economy personally. However, doing something like actually deleting it is a pure example of NOMO-necessity of missing out, which Odell herself argues for (22). Simply stepping away in this situation of Facebook is not what I think to be a surrender, but an equal fight against the attention economy and the lies it feeds us. 

Jenny Odell’s Project

There is no denying we live in a capitalist society and a country constantly focused on how we can be not only better, but the best. This “we must we number one” mentality has taken over our leaders and has consequently seeped into our lives as individuals. Just look outside in your own community; cars fly by, people rush down the streets, eager to not miss a moment of productivity. This busyness is prevalent in our society, even in ways we may not realize. In her novel, “How to Do Nothing,” Jenny Odell offers a wakeup call to this busyness, and just how much it impacts our lives. 

While “How to Do Nothing” may seem like a strange title at glance, for how can she really give us directions on something as simple as “nothing,” this term is actually much more complex, especially when the project of her book is taken into consideration. Odell’s book is dynamic and constantly developing, but in the heart of her pages is a revolt against our “capitalist value system” and its skewed definition of productivity (xvi). Simultaneously, she calls us to refocus our attention from this attention economy and alter our perspective of productivity. Her guide for us to achieve this is through doing “nothing,” and she offers insight on how to do this and why it is so important. 

Odell’s stance on “capitalist productivity” is quite different from the average person’s view because we are trained to think of being productive as a good, beneficial concept (xi). Odell is not necessarily disagreeing with this concept by saying productivity is a bad thing, but she argues that the context of our productivity makes it either beneficial or not. She discusses the microtasking site, Fiverr, to explain this idea more clearly. The goal of the company is to allow people to use their time, regardless of what they do, to make money. She describes the result of this “work metastasizing throughout the rest of life” (17). She calls out this company for taking advantage of our desire to be productive and successful and taking up our attention even more. This proves her point that we are so often consumed with ways to be better that we stay busy, to the point of work taking over our lives, which is not necessarily the productivity we always want to have. 

Is there really a problem with work, or busyness in general, consuming our life, though? Odell is a working woman, and a fairly busy individual herself even when she is not working, but it is what we spend our time on that she says we should be concerned about. And she feels this concern because of the way that “corporate platforms buy and sell our attention,” like Fiverr, in a way that encourages a “narrow definition of productivity” which ignores the “local, the carnal, and the poetic” (xii). I personally was struck by her evaluation of social media and its deceiving messages. Portrayed as a way to express ourselves, Odell points out that much of social media is actually invaded commercially, with a goal to keep us in a “profitable state of anxiety, envy, and distraction,” in a way that actually hinders our self-expression (xii). The world in which we live, the capitalist “attention economy” thrives on fear and anxiety, and our worry that we are not good or successful enough (xx).  Because of this we must learn to redirect our attention to the “physical reality,” in which our identities are not shaped by our place in the economy (xiii). This, as Odell argues, is achievable by doing nothing. 

By stressing the damage that the attention economy has on us and our communities, she achieves the first part of her project, which gives us at least a basic understanding of why we need to do nothing. But what doing nothing entails is the second part of her aim. Odell personally does this by birdwatching. By spending time in the presence of birds, she not only formed a recognition of them, but the birds (particularly crows) developed a recognition of her. While this may seem unimportant, Odell shared that this connection sparked a changed appreciation and “alien animal perspective” of the “animateness of the world” in which she shares with the birds, and you, and me (21). She is not encouraging us to all go birdwatching, but she is encouraging us to form our own “removal,” because once we return, we have a “fundamentally changed” attitude of the world (9). This attitude helps us combat against the attention economy and resist its unappreciation for things that aren’t financially beneficial. 

This changed attitude and the escape we need prior to it is our “doing nothing,” and this is our activism against the attention valued society we live in. Odell understands how our perspectives are damaged by the attention economy, so she calls us to resist by “doing nothing.” Ultimately, this is a call to reevaluate what we understand as successful, focus on what is really real, and maybe redefine what our “best” really is. In a nutshell, we are called both figuratively and literally, to “stop and smell the roses.”