Concentration

It strikes me that one of the distinguishing characteristics of being human, thus of consciousness and self-awareness, is the ability to concentrate at will. Animals are quite capable of concentration too, but it is not under their voluntary control. I observe this on every walk I take, especially this time of year. The squirrels are in the final phase of their preparations for the coming winter. They’re all over the place. And I can see how the environment directs their attention and compels their action. Every squirrel, every time will climb the nearest tree or hide under the nearest bush if, as I walk by them, I get close enough to them.

Voluntary action is the hallmark of transcendence. It requires a kind of separateness from the physical. The separation is rarely very great, but there it is. It is that “cubic millimeter” of separation Carlos Castaneda attributed to his real or invented sorcerer-guru, Don Juan. I am, of course, not talking about reflexive actions; controlling them requires extraordinary training. Nor do I refer to spontaneous heroism in situations of sudden crisis—self-defense or defense of the child. I once saw the strangest sight. It was a chipmunk “standing up” to one of our cats. It had been cornered; there it was, about to be killed. It rose on its hind legs and made warding off motions at the cat while making a hissing sort of sound. The cat, for whatever reasons—perhaps my immediate proximity distracted it—did not immediately act. The chipmunk then absconded. But for a moment, heroically, it was ready to face down the vast predator that over-loomed it. I don’t mean that sort of thing. We—whatever that word means—are tightly woven into our bodies. What is amazing is that we can indeed over-come the material at will.

What this suggests to me is that culture—personal as well as collective—will manifest itself in forms that signal concentration and detachment. By contrast, decadence will manifest itself as an increase in spontaneity, informality, and distraction. My classing spontaneity with decadence will rub some people wrong—rubs me wrong too, you might say. But I’ll say more about that in a moment. Processes that proceed in an automated way, stimulus followed by response, resemble the natural, the lower, the physical. Processes triggered by intentions, where the intention follows and guides the development—these are of a higher order.

The life process itself, as I see it, is the action of something high gathering strength and gradually freeing itself from its entanglement in the lower. Therefore life has direction. It is teleological. It manifests in increasing levels of order—and this order opposes, counters the random arrangement of the physical. Chance operates in the material plane, mind creates order. In humans the first possibilities of genuine detachment occur, and these manifest as concentration and conscious volition.

The process, in the human realm, has a cyclic pattern. Thus it manifests as cultural development followed by exhaustion and decay. Oddly enough our very success in organizing matter leads to decay. The pressures of necessity ease up. In consequence we relax our concentration, let go of our formalities, and permit ourselves to be distracted. Distraction requires much less effort. It is going with the flow, as it were. Ours is an age of exhaustion—and let’s not be deceived by our fantastic wealth, brilliant technology, and celebrated diversity. The whole structure of life today is organized to maximize distraction. That is what a culture of consumption produces. Things, things, things. Faster and faster. Flicker and flicker. Instant gratification is followed by equally instant dissatisfaction. Which calls for an immediate fix. And so on it goes. By contrast any activity that requires sustained, focused attention will appear as boring, old-fashioned, out-of-it rather than with-it. I maintain three blogs. Of these one is amusing, sharp-witted, and stimulating. One is cultural in focus but entertaining on a higher level. And this one is much more concentrated. Which one has the least readership? You guessed it. This one. Why? It requires concentration to follow.

Now a note about spontaneity. There is a lower kind which is reflexive. And then there is the higher kind. It is the higher kind that we actually admire and see manifested in the great works of art. But that kind of spontaneity arises from a great surplus of power built up over long periods of sustained effort, mastering higher forms of expression. And when it begins to operate, it looks effortless and yet produces wonderfully ordered structures. That spontaneity is valuable. The other kind even the drunk displays in various amusing and destructive forms.