Reclaim your attention
A reflection on cognitive neuroscience of perception, intelligence and wisdom
Our attention has become the currency in the world oversaturated with information.
We used to lack knowledge, but these days we have access to much of the Library of Alexandria in our pockets—thanks to the miracle of technology.
But do we care to pay attention to it? Or do we get distracted too easily?
Image: Robert Fludd's depiction of perception (1619)
Right now, we have access to all the knowledge in the world as bodies of expertise are growing exponentially. But our cognitive capacity for comprehending even a fracture of the information available to us is too little, at least for now. What has become of the meaning of ‘expertise’ in light of this?
Being in control of what we devote our attention to is critical. What we attend to creates our reality. Wisdom is the capacity to attend to the right aspects of reality at the right times so that our cognitive map of the world matches its territory.
Only when the map more or less matches the territory can we act with wisdom. Intelligence alone, natural or artificial, is a raw substrate of cognition, but only the executive nature of wisdom has the power to discern the universal law.
Amishi Jha, a neuroscientist at the University of Miami, distinguishes between three types of attention:
1. Flashlight: strong, narrow and directed (in terms of energy, think of it as YAN—the masculine aspect);
2. Floodlight: broad, diffused and receptive (in terms of energy, think of it as YIN—the feminine aspect);
3. Executive control: a higher cognitive function which manages 1 and 2.
(Here's the key to maintaining the right balance of your cognitive energy when attending to the world.)
In addition to the above, if I get it right, as we learn from the pioneering neuropsychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary, attention types 1 and 2 are mutually exclusive and roughly correspond to the left and the right brain hemisphere, respectively. We can’t access both at the same time even though we need both to make wise choices.
We can attend to detail with precision but only at the expense of ignoring the big picture, which defines the meaning of this detail in in context of the whole. For example, we all know what the word ‘frame’ means, but the word itself is meaningless when considered out of context: Is it a window frame? a film frame? a frame of reference? etc.
We need to use the YAN energy of the narrow beam of flashlight-attention to attend to details with precision, set goals and direct our actions; but equally, we need the YIN energy of the receptive openness of floodlight-attention to determine what any one piece of information means, both technically - in relation to other disciplines of knowledge, and existentially - as beings interconnected by our shared humanity.
Executive control helps us to dialectically transcend the ‘either/or’ dualism of the the left hemisphere’s tunnelled perception. In other words, it re-integrates what seems like a logical contradiction in the broader context of the whole afforded by the right hemisphere. In this way, functional application of executive control lifts us up to a higher order of perception.
From here we can discern through the dualistic illusions of secular and religious dogma as a means to transcend into planetary wisdom, which is our future if we are to have one.
#21stcenturyskills #attentioneconomy #perception