We have all had those moments where we are completely oblivious to what is going on around us because we are lost in thought. The sad truth in fact is that most of us spend the majority of our time with this dispersed attention. We spend most of our time living in a world we are fabricating in our minds with thoughts of the future, of the past and of the happenings in distant places. This is unfortunate because, as Etkso Schuitema says, you cannot see what is in front of you if your attention is occupied with what is around the corner.
In the humdrum of our days we flock past each other, past the trees and the children with smiling faces, past the street vendors and the buildings, cut off from life itself in our cognitive fortresses, lost in our thoughts and agendas. Thoughts about what is going to happen tomorrow and what happened yesterday make us miss the vast majority of what is happening around us. We are oblivious to what is happening in our own bodies, what is happening in the distance and even what is happening right in from of us.
Clearly most of us are guilty of not paying proper attention to what is actually in front of us. The question however is, how do we pay proper attention? Maria Popova provides useful insights in her thoroughly engaging article “The Art of Looking: What 11 Experts Teach Us about Seeing Our Familiar City Block with New Eyes.”
In that article Maria explains that we have two types of attention. The first which she calls vigilance keeps us open to all stimuli allow us to spontaneously respond to the environment as it presents itself to us. The second is selective attention which unconsciously curates the few stimuli which is relevant amidst the flurry of profuse stimuli bombarding our senses.
This distinction between these two kinds of attention is essential. The terminology which I have been introduced to is slightly different to that referred to by Maria. I know the distinction as the distinction between receptive attention and predatory attention.
Receptive attention is an openness. Receptive attention allows experience to come and fill it, without discrimination. This is the attention of the child or the artist who finds wonder in the smallest details of experience. The bountiful wonders of the world are experienced as they are and for themselves. Receptive attention is aware of the hum of the street lights, the texture of the buildings, the immaculate design of the cars, all these things that we generally cut out of our awareness come flooding back when one’s attention is receptive. The worlds reveals itself to those who are receptive and let it in, those whose attention does not discriminate between the useful and the useless, those who see the new in the old and the novelty in the familiar.
Predatory attention is a different beast altogether. Predatory attention is the default mode of attention for almost all adults and it reveals itself as an intentional and unapologetic discriminator. Predatory attention functions like a spotlight. It functions to remove the irrelevant, useless and old from our awareness. It cuts out vast chunks of the world, everything that is not directly relevant to our agenda and has been experienced before. Predatory attention is the attention of the goal-oriented and jaded adult who has seen it all before and only cares for what is useful to achieving ends and getting through the day.
Predatory attention is commonly thought of as a good thing. Society seems to admire individuals who know what they want and focus completely on achieving that goal. We should however be open to the idea that this valuation is misguided. It is misguided on two counts. Firstly it actually does not necessarily make us any better at achieving our goals and secondly it is not conducive to living a happy an fulfilled life.
When we are single minded in our pursuit of our goals we will often miss information that is relevant, though not obviously so, to that goal. People that are very successful tend to have the ability to step back and make their attention receptive, allowing them to become aware of relevant information they might otherwise have missed. This enables them to act more effectively. We see then that predatory attention can in fact be counter-productive, receptive attention is generally more successful at effective action than predatory attention because it enables a greater awareness.
Most significantly however is that predatory attention makes us miss out on life. When our attention is invested completely in our goals and what is useful to them we miss out on all the wonders of life that in fact fulfill us and make our happiness stable and consistent. A person who functions from receptive attention is an experience machine whose life is filled with wondrous experiences with new delights around every corner. Happiness and fulfillment is not deferred to achieving some goal as it is with predatory attention, the moment itself fulfills the person and gives meaning to their lives.