Stuff that repels the attention

A SEP is something we can’t see, or don’t see, or our brain doesn’t let us see, because we think that it’s somebody else’s problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it’s like a blind spot. If you look directly, you can’t see it unless you know exactly what it is. The only hope is to perceive it by surprise from the corner of the eye. —Douglas Adams

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We can think that the opposite of catching the attention is being unnoticed, but it is not true.

Sex and violence catch the attention. The red things catch the attention. The beautiful, dangerous and different things catch the attention. We can think that the opposite of catching the attention is being unnoticed. That is what happens with the common, the grey, the monotonous, the routine, the usual and the normal.

But it is not true. The topic does not end here. There are things that go further than being unnoticed: repelling the attention. They are less known. They are almost invisible. Unknown. Why? Among other things, precisely because they repel the attention.

The difference between things that go unnoticed and things that repel attention is the following. At least things that go unnoticed can be recognized if we strive to look at them. But in the case of things that repel attention, again and again our mind will make us believe that those things do not exist or are not a big deal, inventing all kinds of excuses and explanations.

I am going to leave here a list with some of these things:

1. Our own future death.
2. Our own selfishness, and so our own selfish actions. For example, many people who make moral reasoning assume as true the previous hypothesis that their own behavior is ethical. This is an extraordinary limitation to reach conclusions such as that each of the human beings is the cause of the suffering and death of thousands or millions of sentient beings.
3. Selfishness in general, and the limits it can reach in extreme circumstances; but also altruism, and the limits it can reach in extreme circumstances, and how both behaviors can occur in the same person depending on the context, the set of circumstances being a determining factor for this behavior. The knowledge of human emotions, illustrated perfectly by literature, particularly in operas, comedies and soap operas, clearly explains how and why the same person, under certain circumstances, would kill us, while under other certain circumstances, would give their life for us.
4. Our own stupidity, and so our own mistakes.
5. The terrible risk of suffering a terrible pain.
6. The interests of the people we dominate and take advantage of them (for example, the non­-human animals’ interests we exploit for our own benefit) without an opportunity to defend themselves. That is what I call “The winner’s logic”.
7. The suffering of animals in nature (wild animals). That is, the suffering of those beings with whom we do not relate, and of which we can not be responsible since we have not had any effect on them. Most people absolutely ignore, as if they did not exist, this kind of suffering. Think of lions, bears, wild boar or deer. Many human beings are able to see and be moved by tender images of a mother with her offspring, but if what she sees is an animal devouring others, it is not uncommon to have no empathy for the victim.
8. Suffering in the distant future and in general, remote or inaccessible suffering. That is to say, the suffering of those beings with whom we not only do not relate (neither personally nor as a species), but also, we have no way of doing so at present.
9. The consequences for ourselves, in the medium and long term, of our behaviour that make us feel satisfied, in the short term.
10. Our own acts motivation (similar to the one before).
11. The consequences for other loved beings, in the medium and long term, of our behaviour that make us feel satisfied, in the short term. For example: having a lot of children (or even just, some children) without thinking too much about the consequences of being, for those children.
12. The conscious measure of satisfaction. Curiously, if we make it, the satisfaction decreases. For example if at a party you are forced to answer the question: How are you doing? And instead of answering whatever, you make a valuation process of the grade of satisfaction that you are feeling at that party, suddenly, the satisfaction decreases.
13. Things without form (without regularities, without stability, inertia or recurrence), which do not come to be named as such “things”, because we can not identify them.
14. The possible validity of the arguments of the critics to the foundations of our own mental, political, philosophical or moral position. For example, if we have a forged position around abortion, science vs religion, veganism vs animal exploitation, capitalism vs socialism, liberalism vs interventionism, etc. We have the inclination to not consider the possible validity of the contrary’s arguments, but only the possible mistakes and incoherence in the expression of those arguments, in order to attack them.
15. In particular, the possible validity of moral positions or solutions to moral dilemmas that either do not correspond with our current behavior, or we know or have the strong intuition that we will never be able to follow. Example of the first case can be veganism for those who eat animals. Example of the second case may be veganism for those who believe that they can never stop eating animals, or the trolley dilemma for those who believe that they will never be able to perform an action that causes severe damage to someone, even when the omission was even worse. Precisely because of this tendency to divert attention in the cases mentioned, the arguments and scientific hypothesis should be accompanied by a description of the author’s subjective context and, to the extent possible, include subjectivity in science. The new scientific method should take all these things into account.
16. The recognition of therapeutic obsessions as such.