By H.Asif
The mind’s ability to focus attention is perhaps the most powerful force within its inner workings. Through attention, the mind does not merely perceive the world—it creates our sense of reality. Attention is like a brush that paints the canvas of life we inhabit. By sharpening this tool and employing it with dexterity, we can craft the life painting of our choice.
To truly understand attention is to peel back the layers of our mental fabric, where each thread is woven with intent and purpose. At first glance, attention may seem like a simple act of focusing the mind on a particular object. But in reality, it is much more than that—it involves filtering out irrelevant details, blurring the periphery, and sharpening our focus until the stimulus stands clear and defined in our mental field. This act of focusing is what creates a coherent gestalt—a seamless perception of reality in which everything appears to fit together, giving us the confidence that we are the architects of our own reality.
Let’s slow down this process and dissect it piece by piece. Imagine a moment as a perceptually coherent frame, where all elements are related to one another and to the mind’s eye in a predictable manner. Within this frame, content can be morphed and magnified as we direct our beam of attention toward it. This beam does not simply illuminate—it transforms. It alters the prominence of objects, magnifies their significance, and reshapes the relationships between them, depending on where and how intensely we focus our gaze.
In this way, we are not passive observers but active creators of our reality. The canvas before us—the screen of our perception—displays objects in a coherent and predictable manner, yet this coherence is entirely shaped by our attention. When we focus our attention on a particular object, that object becomes magnified, more detailed, and more real.
To further clarify this point, imagine a large, life-sized screen in front of an audience, with eye trackers embedded in the glasses of the viewers. Wherever the viewer’s eyes move, the corresponding area on the screen comes into sharp, high-resolution focus, while the periphery remains blurred. The movie on the screen is not just playing; it is directly connected to the viewer’s attention, unfolding and morphing based on where and how the gaze is directed.
This screen is a metaphor for our perception. The story, the characters, the objects—all change and shift depending on where our attention is placed. Our reality is composed of what we focus on, and crucially, it excludes what we do not. This understanding of attention as a creator of reality was brought into sharp focus through my experiences with two patients who suffered from transient psychotic episodes, both experiencing reality tinged with paranoia.
In both cases, the patients entered a heightened state of awareness, where their attentional levels skyrocketed. These individuals, with their naturally creative dispositions, began to focus intensely on minor, often unnoticed occurrences in their surroundings. It was as if the screen of their reality was skewed by too much attention, distorting the entire image. Their minds became hyper-focused on unnecessary details, magnifying them to the point where these details dominated their perception, leading to a distorted reality. The most prominent elements in their mental states were blown out of proportion, causing significant distress. Could this have been the result of an unimpeded action of their attentional centers? Perhaps they lost the forest for the trees, with their attentional focus narrowing so much that it distorted their entire perception of reality.
While psychosis might be an extreme example, it highlights the impact of heightened attention on our storylines and perceptions. Consider other scenarios where distorted attention alters perception—such as in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). In OCD, the individual’s attention becomes fixated on a particular internal stimulus or external object, making it difficult, if not impossible, to redirect focus. In such cases, the screen is constantly interrupted by the object of attention, drawing the person’s focus and creating a skewed reality.
Another aspect of this distortion is the loss of context, often linked to the right hemisphere’s broader, more integrative processing, as opposed to the left hemisphere’s more focused, detail-oriented approach. This loss of context may explain why delusional paranoia and other delusional states often involve an overactivity of the left hemisphere, overshadowing the right, resulting in a fragmented and contextually impoverished perception of reality (as discussed in Iain McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary).
It is also crucial to understand what drives the beam of attention to surface and highlight a given scenario. Typically, this is a function of salience and value—whatever is salient and valuable to our system at any given time commands our attention. Common culprits are fear, desires, novelty, and the immediate needs of the system.
This mechanism is not just a personal phenomenon; it has profound social, political, and economic implications. Marketing, for instance, employs numerous tools to grab our attention and imbue marketed objects with value through fear, desire, novelty, and need. In today’s digital media environment, attention is the most valuable commodity. The relentless pursuit of interactional data by companies is aimed at understanding our needs, desires, and fears so that this knowledge can be used to capture our attention. Once attention is secured, reality can be shaped according to market forces—a scenario where our perception of reality and sense of self are at stake.
As the former Uruguayan president José Mujica once reflected, “The market has generated a subliminal culture that dominates our instincts. It’s subjective. It’s unconscious. It has made us voracious buyers. We live to buy. We work to buy. And we live to pay. Credit is a religion. So we’re kind of screwed up.” His words are not just a political statement but a deeply reflective commentary on the dangers facing our collective psyche.
Our politicians, business leaders, artists, and creative minds must be held accountable by deepening our understanding of how the mind works. It is incumbent upon mental health practitioners to not only help people maintain their inner balance and manage stress but also to cultivate internal sensibilities against the onslaught of market forces.
In essence, attention is both a tool and a lens through which we construct our reality. It magnifies and shapes our perception, for better or worse, and understanding its role is key to grasping the complexities of the mind and our lives.
#AttentionAndCreation #MindAndReality #PsychologyOfAttention #MentalHealth #MarketingAndMind #SocialPsychology #CognitiveScience
References:
- Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary
- Shitij Kapur, The Aberrant Salience Hypothesis
- José Mujica, various speeches and interviews on market culture