Our attention is finite, yet we spend it everywhere but where it matters. This is not a moral failure. It is a structural one. Attention economics is the idea that in a world overflowing with information, human attention becomes the scarce resource. Whoever captures it, holds power. Over time, this has reshaped not just markets, but inner lives. What we notice. What we ignore. What we can tolerate. What we can no longer sit with. For a long time, people warned that television would rot our brains. In hindsight, television looks almost generous. A show required you to stay for forty minutes. A film asked for two hours. A detective story invited you to notice details, to remember names, to hold multiple threads in your mind at once. You watched. You followed. You waited. Listening to music meant staying long enough to learn lyrics. Reading meant sitting with confusion until meaning arrived. Writing a poem meant wrestling with language, not skimming it. Even boredom had a purpose—it ...
I had just stepped into Karura Forest, the late morning sun filtering through the canopy, when the thought struck me. Why is it that so many Kenyans, when given the opportunity to own land or build a home, begin by clearing every sign of life from the soil? We clear every tree, scrape off the topsoil, and replace grass with cabro. Then we head to plant nurseries and buy potted palms to ‘bring life’ into our homes. A strange cycle: nature out, then purchased back in, at a premium. Why is nature—especially dense, forested, untamed nature—treated not with reverence, but with suspicion? This isn’t just about trees. It’s about psychology, memory, fear, and aspiration. And it might explain why, in a country with incredible biodiversity, we still pour concrete where grass could grow, chop trees only to later hang plastic vines on our balconies, and consider seclusion in nature to be more dangerous than restorative. The Fear of the Wild Dense nature is often associated with risk. Places with t...