The Ethics of Attention: How we shape each other through presence and absence

Somewhere in the space between listening and ignoring, between noticing and overlooking, lies the foundation of our ethics.

We shape one another through the quality of our attention. The way we see, the way we listen, the way we make space (or fail to) changes the people around us, changes the moments we inhabit, changes what is possible between us.

> “Attention is not just another ‘cognitive function’: it is… the disposition adopted by one’s consciousness towards the world. Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, it therefore has the power to alter whatever it meets. Since our consciousness plays some part in what comes into being, the play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. So how you attend to something—or don’t attend to it—matters a very great deal.”

— Iain McGilchrist

Attention is not passive. It is an ethical act. It determines what is held, what is discarded, what is allowed to flourish, what is left to wither. When we pay attention, we lend reality to something—we affirm its existence, its importance.

And when we withdraw attention? We erase, we minimise, we turn away.

Attention as an Act of Care

Care is, at its core, a form of sustained attention. To care for someone is to make space for their existence, to hold them fully in our awareness. It is to listen with presence, to notice what is unsaid, to recognise what might otherwise be missed.

But if care is attention, then neglect is not just a failure of kindness—it is a failure of seeing, of noticing, of allowing another person to fully exist in our awareness.

How often do we speak of harm in terms of what was done? But harm is just as often found in what was not done—

• The silence where words should have been.
• The absence of a check-in after something difficult.
• The failure to see another’s hesitation.
• The unwillingness to witness discomfort.

If consent is about what we ask of one another, care is about what we notice, unprompted.

The Power in Who Gets Noticed

Attention is not evenly distributed. Some voices are automatically amplified, while others are silenced before they ever speak. Some people move through the world expecting to be heard, while others must fight to be seen at all.

Care cannot exist without awareness of whose experiences are centred and whose are ignored. It cannot exist without an understanding of how power shapes who is granted full attention and who is dismissed as “too much” or “not enough.”

Harm is not always loud. Sometimes, it is simply not listening.

What It Means to Attend to Another Person

To be present with someone—truly present—is to practice an ethics of attention. It is to say, without words:

I see you. I hear you. You exist in my awareness, fully and without condition.

In relationships, this means:

• Not just hearing words, but attuning to what is beneath them.
• Noticing when someone is withdrawing, even when they don’t say why.
• Being conscious of the spaces we take up and the spaces we leave for others.

In moments of intimacy, it means:

• Recognising that consent is more than words—it is presence, it is attunement, it is attention.
• Understanding when someone is hesitating, even if they haven’t yet found the words to express it.
• Holding space for what happens after—not treating connection as something to be used and discarded, but something to be cared for.

In community, it means:

• Witnessing harm, rather than pretending not to see.
• Listening when someone names their experience, rather than deciding for them whether it is real.
• Holding accountability as an act of attention, rather than an act of punishment.

Because harm, too, is shaped by attention.

• A harm denied.
• A harm minimised.
• A harm ignored.

Each of these wounds not just through what happened, but through the failure to acknowledge it happened at all.

What We Fail to See, We Cannot Repair

If we are to be ethical in our relationships, in our communities, in our spaces, then we must first pay attention—not just to what is easy to see, but to what is difficult, what is subtle, what requires effort.

Because attention is care, and care is the foundation of everything else.