Attention is Reality:
“When we think of misdirection, we think of something as looking off to the side, when actually, it’s often the things that are right in front of us that are the hardest things to see; the things you look at everyday — that you’re blinded to.” ~Apollo Robbins
A master of controlling an individual’s attention, self-described ‘Gentleman Thief’ Apollo Robbins describes misdirection in a way that makes sense. Robbins says that he prefers to think of our brains like a security system: inside of our brain, there’s a security guard (Robbins’ is named Frank) who watches the tape through our eyes, listens to the phone with our ears, and stores information away in the back inside of a file cabinet. In the video, Robbins performs an act upon the audience that shows how Frank can be manipulated and taken advantage of.
Attention defines our reality. What we see in front of us is what we take as truth — but our perception of the truth can be altered based on how we process information.
In class for the Whittier Scholar’s Program, we had to keep a log of our attention tendencies while on social media. YouTube tends to be my pocket-pick for social media, followed by educational communities on Facebook. Educational media such as Khan Academy is almost always tabbed throughout the school year (currently I’m brushing up on my math skills) along with MIT’s OpenCourseware videos. These forums help me revisit topics learned in class and are pivotal to how I learn.I’ve found that, personally, I am drawn to lots of informational videos that have a wide range of topics: from politics, to recent technological and scientific breakthroughs or announcements (such as Elon Musk’s plan to send 1 million people to colonize Mars), to ‘how to’ videos like pickpocketing. It was this that led me to remember Robbins’ TedTalk seminar regarding misdirection — and I feel that it fits perfectly into the discussion.
Our reality is something that we take for granted. I fret over the arduous quantities of homework still left to complete, but I neglect to think about how much simpler it is to research online than it is to find a book using the Dewey Decimal System; I have to actively remind myself that my reality is one fabricated by myself. My attention is focused on specific things; what I take for granted can seem invisible to my own security system, even if it is right in front of me.
In the word’s of David Foster Wallace: “What the hell is water?”
