Tentative Thesis

Le Brun takes a very deterministic approach to the mapping of human emotions and how they manifest themselves physically. While there is much to his work that remains relevant today, modern psychological trends seem to refute the universality of Le Brun's methods, generally taking a more flexible view of this phenomenon. As such, there is room to propose a compromise between the antiquated and the modern, given that emotion does, inherently, manifest in physical form, however, these manifestations vary dramatically from culture to culture, era to era, and, most importantly, from person to person. In Austen's Persuasion and Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, particularly, there are clear demonstrations of both correct and incorrect inferences of the physical representations of various emotions. From these instances, the compromise between old and new thoughts becomes more clear.

The Cost of Attention

In N. Katherine Hayles article Hyper and Deep Attention: The Generational Divide in Cognitive Modes, the supposition is leveled that humanity is shifting from one form of attention to a very different form. The first form, deep attention, which is used most often in higher education, is “characterized by concentrating on a single object for long periods (say, a novel by Dickens), ignoring out-side stimuli while so engaged, preferring a single information stream, and having a high tolerance for long focus times.” While this form of attention is seen as being traditional, Hayles notes that, evolutionarily, the more chaotic hyper attention preceded its patient counterpart. This more capricious form of attention is “characterized by switching focus rapidly among different tasks, preferring multiple information streams, seeking a high level of stimulation, and having a low tolerance for boredom.” There is a sense that the two have to coexist with in each of us, as we are mere animals in the eyes of biology, yet we have situated ourselves comfortably atop the food chain, enough so that we are able to enjoy and reap the benefits of utilizing (the admittedly less practical) deep attention. Though there are fewer than there once were, there are still dangers present in the world, and we must be able to draw ourselves away from Dickens on occasion (no matter how captivating), to ensure that we may continue to enjoy such a “luxury.”

            Hayles’ description of hyper attention seems quite relevant to Frank McCormick’s poem Attention Deficit Disorder. The first stanza provides an especially insightful vision of life through the perspective of an individual who cannot focus in any way other than through hyper attention. The first line, “I guess I paid attention to the wrong things,” suggests a) that there is a qualitative value applied to the things on which one chooses to focus (which may well be true) and b) that the speaker feels his attention is not at his command, for if it were, he would have likely made an effort to pay attention to the right things. The following lines depict the minor details to which the speaker did pay attention, including the “empty space between the words,” the “silent edges of the textbook,” and also the physical characteristics of the teacher (i.e., shape, color, wrinkles). Despite being able to only focus sporadically and on miscellaneous objects, the speaker, in the final line of the stanza, remarks that he remembers them vividly, even claiming the capacity to “re-draw them in my sleep.” It could be read and interpreted to mean he has vivid, almost lucid dreams about the random subjects of his hyper attention, but either way, waking or dreaming, the stanza as a whole suggests that, while a Dickens novel may be cumbersome, in small doses, what hyper attention lands on is locked into the memory with a tenacity that is formidable. 

Autism, Einstein & Facebook

According to PubMed Health, the number of diagnosed cases of autism is increasing substantially. For instance, “a child who is diagnosed with high-functioning autism today may have been thought to simply be odd or strange 30 years ago.” With this in mind, might we consider the possibility that autism is not a matter of having or not having the condition, but rather looking at the condition as existing over a continuum, from which none of us is exempt? That is to say, might we all, to some degree, be affected by the socially impairing condition known as autism? It would explain the recent boom in diagnosed cases, especially as we are, as a society, less willing to consider a child simply “odd or strange,” but instead feel more comfortable applying a medical explanation for this unusual behavior. An exceptional case of autism going undiagnosed (although this is widely debated) is that of the physicist and Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, who purportedly threw tantrums and preferred solitude. Both of these behaviors are listed in the PubMed Health article as symptoms of autism.

            Furthermore, it seems plausible that there may be a correlation between increased cases of autism and the observable decrease in direct, face-to-face, human-to-human (not to stress the point to much) communication. With the explosion of the technological industry, the human interactions upon which society once relied solely have been slowly replaced by more modern electronic means. Granted, the population that is most affected by this technological usurpation of our most basic human exchanges is well advanced beyond the age PubMed Health suggest we are susceptible to developing autism (first 3 years). Rather it may be the reverse, that is, a broader portion of the population having the condition would likely encourage the establishment of an alternate form of social communication. Is this utter speculation? Absolutely. Is there not, though, an uncanny sense that all of our new contraptions for avoiding human contact have an especially apparent use to those who have autism?