Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation), as we begin today ‘let us remember, ‘What we give our Attention to matters.’
Our life’s experience would ultimately amount to whatever we had paid attention to. Attention: is important and most of the times we are indifferent to it. It is as fundamental as food; and we go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly and calmly. Once our attention is drawn to the mechanism of why and what we give attention to, it is as if a veil has been stripped off and we become freer in our action and choices.
This week again I bring to your attention an excerpt from the book titled ‘Willful Blindness’ – Why we Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril by Margaret Heffernan.
This book tries to understand, why after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say how could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don’t? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white-collar criminals, businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures even crimes against humanity.
Love is Blind
Emerging brain science lends a physical reality to the emotional turmoil experienced by the victims of romantic and maternal love alike.
A team of neuroscientists at the University of London have spent years studying brain activity in romantic couples and in mothers. They knew that love itself has an evolutionary advantage; we fall in love, mate, and look after our children because that is how the species perpetuates itself. But they wanted to understand which areas of the brain are active in response to love and which areas are not.
They found, not so surprisingly, that love activates those areas of the brain associated with reward; the cells that respond to food, drink, money respond to love, too. That’s why it feels so good to love and to be loved.
Even more illuminating than the areas activated by love were the areas of the brain that were deactivated. As volunteers lay in fMRI (functional MRI) scanners thinking of their children or their partners, two particular parts of their brains were not engaged. The first is the area responsible for attention, memory, and negative emotions; the second was associated with negative emotions and social judgment, the ability to distinguish other people’s feelings and intentions. In other words, the chemical processes of our brain that are stimulated by love disable much of our critical thinking about the loved one. Our illusions persist because our brains don’t challenge them. Like much neuroscience, this gives a concrete reality to what the poets have always known: love does not judge.
Excerpt from ‘Willful Blindness’ by Margaret Heffernan
I am sure that you will enjoy reading this book; you can buy your copy from the following link:
https://www.mheffernan.com/book-wilfulblindness.php
Enjoy reading it with your family, friends and near and dear one’s.
Namaste!
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