Just when we need our entire minds, we seem to be losing them. This is the considered opinion of Johann Hari, a British-Swiss writer and journalist, writing in a Guardian Weekly feature, “Focus (If You Still Can)” (Jan. 7, 2022).
It’s not that we’re losing all our minds, just about 20%, according to studies. This is a critical amount considering that we’re confronting some of the most serious threats to our survival in the history of human civilization, and the capabilities we need to make crucially important decisions are precisely the ones being compromised.
The problem, Hari explains, is focus. We are bombarded with so much information coming at us in short, disconnected fragments that our thinking processes are similarly affected. Consequently, we are losing our ability to give long, sustained and thorough concentration to our complex challenges.
The ubiquity of cellphones means that almost everyone is subjected to the constant interruptions of text messages, telephone calls, and the barrage of information that keeps coming from such sources as FaceBook, Twitter, Snapchat and TikTok. We also get this with radio and television, not to mention the incessant stream of advertising that is using innumerable manipulative techniques to gain our attention. Our consciousness, the most important element in our identity as individual persons, is being stolen.
This is creating—both deliberately and inadvertently—what neuroscientist are calling “an attentional pathogenic culture.” Neurological studies have shown that we’re normally “very, very single-minded” beings with brains that “can only produce one or two thoughts” at a time. “We have very limited cognitive capacity.” The belief that we can follow five or six media inputs at the same time is an illusion. What we’re actually doing is “switching back and forth”, a juggling process that the brain then integrates into a “seamless experience of consciousness.” The gestalt of understanding that we consequently create is a contrived state of awareness determined by the inputs we receive. Media is an intrusion that comes at the cost of impairing our ability to conduct a thorough examination of any one of the information sources we receive. The overload and fragmentation limits our ability to think clearly and cogently, leading us ever further from a connected and integrated sense of reality.
Hari guides us through 12 limiting factors:
- Incessant switching and filtering from the speed of information input, the cause of futile attempts to accurately judge and edit out irrelevant information.
- The loss of “flow states”, the deepest kind of human thinking that results from being wholly immersed in a subject.
- Physical and mental exhaustion from attempting to live in a hyper-active world.
- The collapse of sustained reading and concentration.
- The displacement of mind-wandering, the process we use to integrate our thoughts and feelings into meaning.
- Technologies that are designed to track and invade our attention.
- The sense of futility and failure that comes from offering simplistic solutions to complex problems.
- The stress from constant vigilance that causes us to scan for risks rather than concentrating on complex problems.
- Deteriorating diets that create peaks and troughs in our metabolism.
- Chemical pollution that impairs brain functioning.
- ADHD as both a cause and symptom of the loss of focus.
- The physical and psychological confinement of children at exactly the time when they need the freedom to explore, grow and mature.
On our little island in the wholeness of things, some or many of these factors are impairing our focus. We don’t usually notice this effect because the impairments are making us into who we think we are. But they become increasingly evident when we try to solve difficult problems or make important decisions. We tend to respond to the surface and immediacy of the situation rather than considering the deeper and longterm ramifications of our solutions. So our decisions tend to replicate the character of the media that is abbreviating and fracturing our attention.
On Quadra, as around the world, we are experiencing the consequences of this loss of focus, unable to successfully confront the global environmental crisis of our own making. Even with all the tools to address the challenge, we can’t seem to muster the sustained effort and concentration to be effective as nations, as communities, or even as individuals. The fractured quality of the passing present prevents us from understanding and anticipating the results of our decisions and actions. As the treadmill of more-is-better keeps moving faster, it simultaneously impairs the quality of our judgments and subverts the effectiveness of our solutions.
Johann Hari’s advice is to slow down. Escape the trap. Give yourself time to reflect and process what is happening to you. Consider what you as a person are doing. Think about what you are thinking. Do you feel whole and complete in how you think and behave, or do you feel fragmented and disoriented? Be careful with reflexive responses to problems because they may be coming from judgments impaired by a loss of focus.
We, as an island community and as a tiny sample of humanity, are confronting an existential environmental challenge. So it’s time to ask if our distracted behaviour is adding to the problem, or is our attentive mindfulness contributing to a solution. If we can’t individually and collectively think and behave with focus and consistency, then we can’t solve the pressing problems that are of an existential importance. This subject, academic as it may seem, is really a life-or-death issue.
Ray Grigg for Sierra Quadra
Top photo credit: Too much information RCabanilla via Flick (CC BY SA, 2.0 License)
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