Some claims are just that, pretensions.For example, that we can pay attention to two dialogues simultaneously.I will avoid neurological details.Not because it is a particularly complex topic (well, yes, it is also complex), but because we all know how it works.If you are reading messages on the phone, your brain can more or less capture some significant words of what the person in front of you is telling you.But that is about 25.000 light years of listening (listening, not hearing) that person.
If you are reading messages on the phone you are reading messages on the phone, and nothing else.Our consciousness is, in this sense, quite limited.I do not kill that other species in the universe that can listen to an audio of WhatsApp and at the same time fully understand what your spouse tells them, there, on the other side of the table.But we are not like that.
May seem to some kind of projection.Maybe it only happens that as I am a bit of Lerdo so I think everyone else is equal.Put the matter, yes, I have to admit that the statement I made above, devoid of adequate neurological documentation, requires an experimental evidence, in addition to some provisions.So let's do the following.Let's call volunteers to hear (I can't say listening in this case, and that is the problem) two speeches at the same volume and at the same time.Moreover, they can try in their homes, if they feel voluntary today.Put two radio programs at the same time on the computer and observe if they can then summarize what they were saying in each.Not the general issue.No loose words.And they will see that they are complicated.
But the test is not there.The test is to put a third radio program.Ah, difficult, right?Yes.I would say that the increase in difficulty is logarithmic, although, of course, it would be necessary to measure it.Therefore, if it is obvious that we cannot follow three dialogues at the same time, why do we presume that we are able to attend two?
We usually believe, with some superb, that we are multitasking.It is true that we can complete several tasks in a certain period, but, in reality, we divide the time into more or less thin slices and during each of those fractions we dedicate all our attention to something in particular.No Quito (this is one of the caveats, indispensable) that we can, yes, chew gum and walk at the same time.Or handle the car and attend what the radio says.Or chop onion and decide what tie we are going to use tomorrow morning for that meeting.But there we are confusing two issues.The tasks that require attention and those that the body does for mere muscular memory, such as putting the changes in the car or chopping onion.Did you see the people who always handle and when they have to go as companions, they pise in the brake involuntarily in certain situations?That is body memory.If we had to pay attention to each of the hundreds of small movements we do when driving, we would not reach the corner.
That is, all good with hearing the radio while we handle, but what do you think they replace the windshield with a large LED TV.Translucent, of course.If we can do two things at the same time, then there would be no problems watching a movie and driving in transit.100 kilometers per hour.Certain?
No, of course it is not a good idea.Because the matter is attention, and human attention is monofonic.Other ways to connect with the environment, no.For example, the ear is always attentive, until we sleep.In dogs smell also works during sleep.You can try this with the domestic pichicho bringing some delicacy to the snout while sleeping;The faces they wake up are very funny.But we cannot pay full attention to more than one thing at a time.If, in addition, language is involved, even more attention is required.
We are able to play simultaneous chess games, but that's because chess is in turn.If it function as the language, which is constituted by a single sequence of sounds (plus some other manifestations, such as gestures and looks) in which order and presence or absence of tiny particles - like yes or not - can changeAll the meaning of what we are told, so the supposed simultaneity goes to the gate.In fact, the ear (or smell, in dogs) acts as a mechanism that diverts attention to possible danger, and then any other sound loses relevance.You can change a possible danger for a cell phone notification and we have the same situation.Your attention goes elsewhere.So we are designed, sorry.
Absence
But there is something else.If while someone is talking to you, look at the cell phone screen, not only are you not paying complete attention, but you are also sending you the clear and different message that you are not paying attention.They are two different things, and both are serious for what constitutes a relationship between two people;especially, the second.There is a mania of mine, but in general it is good that the people you want and who say they love you.Whim?Narcissism?Oh, no, there is something much more brutal behind this.
The repetition of this message, that that person is not paying attention to you, is spelling an ominous word for human relationships.That word is absence.As much as that person intends to be there while looking at the phone, he really is elsewhere.It doesn't matter where, and it is very likely that you have valid reasons not to be in this place now with us.But having reasons does not change that for practical purposes it is as if it were not;he's absent.Is but not.
The absence is not neutral.Produces - all we have crossed duels we know this - painful and slow, but definitive psychic reactions.Since otherwise we would lose reason, the absent person is slowly disappearing from our daily consciousness.If it was someone loved, we will remember it with emotion, with tears, with a heart made pieces.But it will not be every hour of each day.After some time, we will remember it on your birthday.Or when we find a photo, by chance.Or because someone mentions it.But the rest of the time the absence leads inexorably to oblivion.It is understandable.Necessary.
We believe, with some innocence, that it is harmless.But what we are doing is becoming a little more absent every day.That is, you are leaving that person alone.There are not many more toxic circumstances for a relationship, especially for a relationship, than to feel only when we are - suckly - accompanied.
In view of these reflections, what would happen if being together becomes that each one spends his phone most of the time, if the absence is mutual?It is a question.