Blissfully ignorant?
June 10, 2009
“My experience is what I agree to attend to.” ~William James (1842-1910)
Can we really pick and choose what we experience? Can we ever really ignore the bad and focus on the good? Behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher argues just that in her new book, Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. Robert Desimone, a neuroscientist at MIT, studies the concepts raised in Rapt. Through his work on macaque monkeys and humans, Desimone has found that it is indeed possible for controlled, top-down processing to win the battle over the brain’s attention. A noisy environment can hinder one’s ability to ignore strong signals, but eventually it may be possible to hone one’s concentration skills, Desimone told the New York Times.
This obviously has its benefits, such as dealing with tragedy or hardship. But if no one recognizes the bad in this world, who will there be to attend to it? What would happen if we all suddenly become blissfully unaware?
