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Mar
8
Concentration [long post]
Filed Under Mysterious Music, World Culture |
It’s often argued that our multimedia world is a recipe for mass Attention Deficit Disorder, and this is frequently depicted as a bad thing.
But in fact there is a valid place for multiple streams of information, beside those that provide an opportunity to focus on one single thing for an extended period of time.
A Symphony is no more or less valid than a miniature, it’s just something different.
The point at which demands on our attention become a problem is the point at which an enforced imbalance occurs. We no longer have the time to focus or concentrate on bigger structures, because we are increasingly obsessed with shorter, smaller, more varied sources of information or experience. We don’t see the metaphors that represent the bigger picture, therefore we don’t see the bigger picture.
It’s fine for a trader to react to many different graphs and screens and flashing information portals all day, so long as he has the opportunity to escape to the theatre (or whatever) in the evening. It’s fine for the teenager to spend time messaging and IM-ing and facebooking and myspacing and texting and phoning if they have the opportunity to spend 30 minutes studying Shakespeare during the school day.
Why? Because on the one hand we need the ability to concentrate and contemplate, in order to maintain the ability to focus and develop the many complex aspects of our lives that unfold over a long time period. On the other, we need to exist in harmony with the increasingly fast and fragmented trends that shape our world.
The problem occurs when information overload makes us feel we have to keep ‘up to date’, all the time. No one can do that, and why should they? Even Presidents and CEOs need downtime.
If we define ourselves by the amount and speed of information we assimilate without allowing for extended time and concentration on a single experience, we are limiting ourselves to the superficial. By doing the opposite, we are shutting ourselves away from the nature of the modern world, and self-indulgently declaring that we have no need to gain deep understanding of our fastmoving environment.
Neither is true.
Just as we can’t allow ourselves to become hyperactive information-seekers, we equally can’t ignore contemporary trends or fight against the organic development of our society.
Once again, the balanced integration of long and short forms seems to be the most worthwhile.
by the way congratulations if you managed to get through the whole of that post without clicking off somewhere else