Attention Machines

"What you believe is heavily influenced by what you pay attention to"

That was the topic of intense conversation between myself and a very close friend. That -

- what you believe is the "Truth" is dependent upon what you experience;
- what you experience is dependent upon what you pay attention to;
- what you pay attention to is guided by your existing internal belief systems;
- your internal belief systems carry the baggage of your historic wants;

All of this leads to a basic argument that what we believe is the "Real Truth" is merely a reflection of what we "Want" to be true based on our history. That's a dense sentence. Re-read it. It means that you can easily fool yourself into believing what is real, simply by wanting it to be real. It doesn't mean it is real or true, only that you think it is.

So if you can let go of the baggage of your historic wants and can take control of your focus - your attention - you can start to see your biases in what you believe is true. Simple to understand, really tough to do in battle.

This discussion came about because of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: Where you become aware of something and then see it everywhere (ie. I just bought a new car and now I see them everywhere). We all know reality hasn't changed, but our perception of reality has changed and now suddenly our perception of the truth (it seems that there really are more cars on the road just like my new one).

So the real questions are:

* "What are you paying attention to?"

* "Why are you paying attention to it?"

* "Who is guiding your attention if your not?"
(the media is very good at guiding your attention for you if your not paying attention ... by the way ... so is everyone else)

* "What in your past is guiding your focus?"

So can you stop believing that what you think is true is really true? Can you lose your baggage?

See you on the wire.

- Steven Cardinale