A systems view of biological health

Section 2: Theory

15 : The Window of Attention

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No one part or system is capable of embracing or processing all of the information available to it – so each lives in a small island of information and there are many parallel information streams, like the modem on your telephone line.

Compartmentalisation of information in turn implies that your body operates in a set of loosely coupled parallel (multiplexed) processes.

These converge and exchange information because the body transduces information from one form to another

Each cell, organ, system, "part" of the body-mind and cognitive mind has a window of attention – a small window of information that it can handle at any one time.

The "sea of information" in turn implies that your body operates in a set of loosely coupled parallel (multiplexed) processes, separated by the kind of information they sense and make use of. Each process and level of organisation is semi-autonomous, and is only interested in a limited subset of the total stream of possible information. It has a "window of attention" that may be further restricted according to prioritising what is important (and ignoring what is not). This need for a homeostatic range of information is as true for conscious attention as it is for a muscle cell, a kidney, or a lobe of the brain.

So, as you read this you may still be aware of your local environment, or the fact that you have a body, or the fact that there is a time limit to this particular activity - but these will be more or less in the background of your attention. Thoughts, feelings, external and internal (interoceptive) senses all compete for a central position in a surprisingly narrow window of cognitive attention. Whichever you focus on dominates your awareness of the present moment, the next two or three at the top of the pile remain as less clear background impressions, the next few on top of the sensory pile are vague, and everything else fades into the subconscious - unless you choose to bring it to awareness by shifting your attention. If you learn how to consciously navigate this axis, you will find that the skill of deliberately moving around within the window of attention has many valuable applications. For example, more thinking means less awareness of the body. So vice-versa, more curious (interested) attention to any sensory stream results in a quieter mind.

If Attention is used to define a "sense" (as in a sensory stream of attention), then it brings an interesting perspective as to what might be a sense. From this perspective, emotions, thoughts, qualitative states of mental presence, and relationality itself (the state of being in relaional field with another being or object) are also equivalent to sensations – because they take up bandwidth in your capacity for attention. Steiner listed [1] twelve non-interoceptive senses – qualities that one can pay attention to; including Life, Language (the sense that something is a communication), Concept, and Ego (Self).

That is not to say that attention should always be a conscious process, because your subconscious tends to be far better at doing this once it has been programmed as to what is important to you. But that convenient automatic state of thoughtless filtering is almost totally incapable of recalibrating itself to a new reality. If unmanaged it simply continues assuming that the world now is as it was in the last second, minute, hour, day, month, year, decade. In order to see the "new" you have to "work at it" by paying attention, and not just any kind of attention – and it turns out that this is the core principle of this book.

Each part, system, organ, functional Gestalt (etc. etc.) of your body that uses information (i.e. everything that the body-mind is composed of) also has a window of attention, being only able to perceive a limited subset of the total flow of information. Some of these will perceive first-hand information through sensory organs – such as the chain of taste buds that begin in the tongue and mouth, continue through the entire digestive tract. Others perceive second-hand or third-hand information based on meaning-making and response carried out by other parts. All of this is almost invisible in everyday life – and is more easily understood through the lens of the external senses. Senses may be present and yet never conscious. As one example, there are "Geographic Languages" in a few parts of the world (e.g. Northern Australian Aborigines) in which people do not say "that ant is to the left of your foot", but rather "there is an ant Northwest of your foot". The user does not experience direction as centred in the self/body but as the body/identity existing "as an intrinsic part of" a greater whole. The self is of a continuity of landscape - instead of the experience of landscape always being centred on the self. Speakers of geographic languages can be driven blindfolded in tortuous routes, taken into a building with no windows, and still be able to immediately use their directional language with accuracy. The geographic sense may be magnetic, and maybe the handful of visual receptors adapted in Robins to detect magnetic fields using cryptochrome is also present in humans. Or it may be "something else". The geographic directional sense remains available in these cultures because it is embedded in the language. Adults talk of "North" (etc.) rather than "Left", and so the children automatically learn this as a means of orientation. In a language that does not rely on geographic direction, the user is not required to direct his/her awareness to this directional sense and, therefore, does not learn to use it from childhood[2].

The value of Attention

Your attention has commercial value – but the kind of attention that has commercial value is automaton-like.

So one major conclusion of this systems analysis is that attention is fundamental to any adaptive behaviour, and without attention we eventually become automatons. As mentioned earlier, there is a certain quality of attention that brings your whole organic being back to a state of self-actualised responsiveness. Exactly what that quality is – is explored from many different angles both in this theoretical section and in the exercises. The importance of attention – and the fact that other kinds of attention lead to automaton-like (addictive) states instead of freedom is very well known by all branches of popular information, such as social media, newspapers, etc.

A lot of money and effort is spent in the modern world to grab your attention and keep it fixated in a loop. The "added commercial value" averages out at just a few tens of pounds per person per year – a vast sum when added together over all media users, but also a trivial amount of money when compared to whatever value you might place on a human life. This, I think, gives a clear indication of the value that multinational social media (and other media) corporations place on your life. Your attention – your time, your life - may be purloined to provide a marginal income stream worth pennies, because those pennies add up if the attention of millions of people is being pulled into an attentive loop.

The extremely fine homeostaticbalance of information flow is evidently required at every level – not just societal – becomes obvious when one considers what would happen if your waking mind were to be aware of all the information streams in your body simultaneously.

Some information is vitally important, whereas many information streams are unusable to higher decision-making levels or relatively unimportant to that particular moment and situation. So, how does it work that we appear to receive the most important information? Survival prospects are low if the most important information (whatever that might mean) does not inform decision-making. This raises vital questions about how humans and all living organisms perceive and make meaning of the world. How do we select and become aware of the most apposite layers of information? How are various strands of information integrated for the purposes of meaning-making? How does (and at what level of information-gathering) the meaning-making process tie into the sensory systems? To what degree does meaning-making occur before, during or post-hoc as a result of the response? How are all the other strands of information not considered most important at this moment temporarily put into the background? How is this all managed on a moment-by-moment basis so that it is possible to perform even the simplest of tasks [3] - such as picking up a cup of tea? Why might you think I was drinking tea when I wrote this?

Let's skip these important questions for the moment and come back to them a little later….