On Looking

"On Looking" is the name of the story (well. the part we read isn't so much a story, but I wouldn't know what else to call it) our English professor asked us to read for this blog entry. It's written by Alexandra Horowitz and, among other things, it poses an interesting question: What is "paying attention?" The answer may seem obvious, but if you take some time to think about it, it's not. Many psychologists have spent years upon years studying what exactly it is to "pay attention," and yet they still haven't been able to come up with a clear answer.

Another interesting idea in the text is the idea that concentrating on something means ignoring so many other things. The first few sentences do a great job making you think about this idea; for example, the author makes you realize that as you are reading her story, you are ignoring "the hum of the fluorescent lights, the ambient noise in a large room, the places your chair presses against your legs or back, your tongue touching the roof of your mouth, the tension you are holding in your shoulders or jaw," amongst many other things. I found it to be true in my case; as I read the story, everyone in my house left one by one, and I only noticed when I took a break to go to the bathroom, despite the fact that opening my home's is a very noisy task to say the least. Something similar may have happened to you as you read this very entry.

Finally, Alexandra Horowitz also writes about a bias in an individual's perspective named "deformation professionnelle" by the French. As one may infer by the phenomena's name, it means that humans tend to look at every context from the viewpoint of their profession. For example, a psychologist may see many diagnosable conditions on his friends while on a night out based on their attitudes, or an economist "views the simple act of buying a cup of coffee as an example of a macroeconomic phenomenon." It makes sense; most of us have witnessed it firsthand with our parents, and we will probably be victims of it in the future when we have our own professional careers. The protagonist in the story (whom I assume is also the author) tells us that later on she will go through a walk with different people, and will try to mark down what they see, how they see it, and what varies between people. She also provides a short anecdote of how a psychologist who was on a walk with her and who "thinks a great deal about attention" walks past $60 thrown on the street without even noticing. It's quite ironic, of course, but it serves as proof that no matter what it is practically impossible to keep our attention on everything around us. I would truly be interested in reading more of her experiences during this experiment.