attention deficit

To refer to a phenomenon or quantity as being deficient implies that there is some proper amount one might expect to have. A gas tank that is three-quarters empty, for example, would rightly be considered deficient if our destination were two hundred miles away; a "gasoline deficit," as it were. It would be just as reasonable to refer to this situation as a "distance surplus," although we exclusively prefer the former.

An individual who is lacking in ability to focus is referred to as having a condition, or a disorder; an "attention deficit." This characterization could just as rightly be inverted - we could instead refer to it as a "distraction surplus." The question of how to remedy the situation, then, shifts the burden of responsibility from the individual onto his environment.

Whereas once it was common to speak of societal ills or maladies in moral terms, modern societies have moved to describing undesirable or deviant traits or behaviors in medical or psychological terms. Gambling addiction would have once been condemned as a failure of character. Today, it is considered a disease. For better or worse, the question of moral agency on behalf of the gambler is wholly absent from the discussion of cause and treatment.

These two paradigm shifts, on one axis from the social to the individual, and on the other from the moral to the psychological, indicate a profound change in how we understand the nature of attention, addiction, and ethical conduct. Whereas once it may have been politically viable to ban the sale of alcohol on compassionate grounds, such a proposition today would be considered laughable to our libertarian sensibilities.

That the people who want to ban advertisements fail to recognize their similarity to the prohibitionists indicates how far along the individualist spectrum we've shifted.