Chapter Sixty
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
It’s a weird little trait of our mammalian brains,
that we spend a lot more time thinking about the stimuli near us, be they
people, places, activities, what have you, they we do thinking about the stuff
that isn’t. It’s related in some ways, I
think, to object impermanence, which is the idea that things don’t exist for
newborn’s if they aren’t in front of their faces. We only lose that a bit. Like, when you’re away at college, and you’re
all about partying, and a little studying, and you almost never think about
your family at home. When was the last
time you thought about that cousin you haven’t seen since you were kids? When you’re on a tropical vacation, relaxing
on some Jamaican beach, sipping rum drinks out of coconuts, you aren’t thinking
about your poor old dad, struggling to get by without your help. It is this property of our brains that leads
us to make all sorts of selfish and thoughtless decisions, and erodes our
better natures by the repetition of this thoughtlessness.
(c) Copyright 2020 Diana Hignutt
No comments:
Post a Comment