[...] The 'Great Society' dreamed up by Friedrich Hayek is admirably 'liberal' in that it endeavours to provide as many means of happiness as possible to the individuals that make it up, while leaving everyone free to provide their own definition of happiness [...] But attention cannot be reduced to a simple question of means. You cannot claim to be holding an axiologically neutral discourse (separated from any subjective value) on attention, for the good reason that attentional processes are inextricably linked to our processes of valorization. [...] attention is individuating between it is rooted in a circular dynamic--in a circle that may be vicious or virtuous: I valorize what I pay attention to and I pay attention to what I valorize. As soon as the means-resource conditions the end aimed at through it, it is no longer possible to claim--as does our economic ideology--that it is maximizing the means while leaving everyone free to choose their own ends. Making do with an economic vocabulary in the study of attentional dynamics therefore prevents us from posing the essential question: how--which is to say, inevitably, in which direction, to what ends--are we to direct the attention which gives direction to what we become?