The Loss of Cognitive Patience

THE LOSS OF “COGNITIVE PATIENCE”

Therein lies the backstory of a reading brain that does not allocate attention and time to its more effort-requiring, intellectually demanding processes. We skim, we word-spot, we browse, we skip over complexity, and we miss beauty (both meanings). Somewhere along the line of becoming digital readers, we have lost the “quiet eye” and other imperceptible, important things. Moving from one eye-byte to the next, we have lost the “cognitive patience” to dive beneath the surface of words and thoughts to perceive beauty and to encounter “other”: other perspectives, other cultures, other historical epochs, and most importantly the thoughts and feelings of others. In the process, we short-circuit the protean capacity of the reading brain both for thinking critically about the thoughts of others and also for evoking and propelling our own best thoughts. For, the more we skim words, the more we skim thoughts-- the thoughts of others, and also the thoughts that are uniquely ours. With our appetite for saving time, we have lost it. We are increasingly oblivious to the fact that when we read, we no longer control how we allocate time to the processes that require time most.

There is an analogy in the work of the Korean philosopher Han Byung-Chul. In multiple books he has chronicled how our experience of time in a digital milieu has accelerated to the point where we are poised not so much to process and consolidate our experience of life, but rather to move continuously from one event to another. Consequently, we experience, if we do at all, smaller and smaller intervals of time between events that are insufficient either to consolidate or reflect upon what we have experienced. We have lost, in his terms, the capacity to linger, a time-driven capacity directly analogous to what is occurring in the reading brain today. With the plethora of information provided by our varied screens daily, we move from one burst of information to the next with no time in between to think.

Just as Han Byung-Chul writes about the costs to human society, there is a correlative cost in the human reading brain to what occurs when the “intervals between events” ---and/or between bursts of textual information--- begin to disappear. In the process, we abbreviate or eliminate the time to understand the complexity of an argument, to appreciate the perspectives of others, to evaluate the truth in what is written, and to perceive the beauty of the authors’ arduous attempts to render their best thoughts into words. The milliseconds that the brain uses to attend to the complexity of thought, the discernment of truth, empathy for others’ perspectives, and personal reflection can make the difference between a people who can think deeply and act thoughtfully and a people who mindlessly process information, misinformation, and disinformation before moving with rapidity to the next piece of information. Along the way, we have lost a quiet mind, capable of the reflection we once possessed and that, without notice, has gone missing. What we need to learn is how to move from our continuous restlessness--- our constant movement from event to event, thing to thing, person to person, enthusiasm to enthusiasm—to a quiet eye, a quiet mind, and if we are very fortunate, a quiet heart.