Intentional Blindness

by Pat Daily

You may have heard of attentional blindness before. It’s also called selective attention. The concept is that you can be so focused on one thing – a particular object or person, or a task as simple as counting the number of times a team passes a basketball, that you miss other things that are clearly visible and present in your field of vision. The topic went viral after Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons published their invisible gorilla video. If you’ve never seen it, you can check it out here: http://www.theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html

That’s attentional blindness. Intentional blindness is similar but distinctly different. It involves volition. We make a choice and that changes everything.

When our parents kiss, we turn away. We don’t want to think of them as passionate, sexual beings. They’re our parents. They accepted that role when they had us, and now they need to stay in the behavioral confines we’ve created for them. A friend of mine in Singapore tells me that they have a saying for intentional blindness: We choose to look the other way.

We pretend not to see the mess in the sink or notice that the dog’s water dish is empty. Actually seeing those things and acknowledging them would require us, as decent humans, to take action. We don’t want to see the beggar on the corner, or the crippled kid in class, or, God forbid, the hairs growing out of grandpa’s nose and ears. It’s much easier to ignore it all That’s a problem.

Sometimes it’s small, benign. Pretending our parents are asexual creatures whose sole purpose in life was to create and provide for us, isn’t going to hurt anyone much. It’s funny, a little gross to think about, but kind of funny and kind of sweet.

Attentional blindness is being so focused on something else that we don’t see the train coming. Intentional blindness is choosing not to see the train because it’s inconvenient, or we don’t agree with its politics, race, gender, or who it roots for in the upcoming game.

Here’s the thing: The train doesn’t care. It doesn’t care that we don’t like it, it’s going to run us over anyway. Dead is dead, regardless of our preferences in life.

I write fiction. It’s my job to think about things that could be different. One of the things I do to help a story is to ask, “What if?” What if the protagonist doesn’t like the politics of his/her love interest? What if the character doesn’t want to do what I, the author, want her to do? This happens. What if we never found a vaccine for polio or Covid? What if some fundamental aspect of our physical universe, like the universal gravitational constant or the inverse square law, were different? What if we had taken Putin’s threats of invading Ukraine seriously? What if someone else is right, and we’re wrong? What if solar power was far more efficient than it is now? (This made it into my novel, Spark, with some interesting consequences.) I have a friend who makes a point of listening to (and reading) viewpoints that differ from his – politically, socially, and financially. At first it pissed me off. Why listen to that crap?

What if we’re wrong? he asked.

Because it’s the train on the tracks. Ignoring something – cancelling something or someone – doesn’t stop the train. Then we’re surprised when we get run over.

That’s a good thing. Asking “what if” has made me change my mind on some critical issues. That doesn’t make us weaker. It makes us stronger.

Let’s do it more often. Maybe even every time we get triggered.

©Copyright 2022 Pat Daily for Uncaged Book Reviews www.uncagedbooks.com Published with Permission

Pat Daily is the author of SPARK. He is an engineer and former Air Force test pilot who worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on both the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs. When not writing or trying to bring new airplane designs to life, Pat can be found gaming online. He is a fan of role-playing games — particularly open worlds with engaging storylines where actions have consequences.

Showcase Bill & Phylliskerschner

Exploring Other Cultures with Plucky-Lucky Duck Husband-and-wife publishing collaboration promotes cultural learning.

Authors Bill and Phyllis Kerschner present an intelligent, informative, and highly entertaining reading experience in Plucky-Lucky Duck’s Amazing Adventure. They invite the young minds to listen intently and learn about the great big world around them as this story introduces children to other cultures.

Plucky-Lucky Duck is the ultimate explorer. Only it didn’t start out that way. In the beginning, he was pleasantly enjoying an ocean voyage, but when a big storm hit and threw him overboard, he was set adrift with only the stars in the sky and lots of water to keep him company. Ultimately rescued by a Chinese fishing boat, Plucky-Lucky Duck takes this as a very favorable sign to continue his adventure. Soon, PluckyLucky Duck is visiting not only China, but other faraway places like Japan, Russia, India, and Africa. ones, especially the American children, to learn about other places and cultures. The authors wanted to create a good literature that would both educate and excite children. And this book will broaden the minds of young readers as they learn about other countries, geography, astronomy, aviation, biology, history, and more.

For book order/s, you may reach Bill at wmkerschner88@gmail.com

About the Authors

Bill and Phyllis Kerschner are a husband and wife writing team whose combined international exploration, not to mention their own five children and ten grandchildren, led them naturally to write about world travel for children. Bill is a retired transoceanic airline captain and retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Col., who served with the United States Air Force and Air National Guard for twenty-two years. Phyllis is an English, speech, and drama teacher with many years of experience, as well as a published poet. She also worked for many years as a forensics teacher and coach. Residents of Wisconsin, the Kerschners enjoy traveling, obviously, as well as reading, hiking, and cycling.

Plucky-Lucky Duck’s Amazing Adventure by Bill and Phyllis Kerschner Hardback: $16.95 | 978-0533156474 Year Published: 2007

Plucky-Lucky Duck’s Amazing Adventure by Bill and Phyllis Kerschner had been exhibited in 2022 London Book Fair New Title Showcase

on Apr 05, 2022 - Apr 07, 2022