I like to think that I am self-aware. I am self-aware in that I am aware of my actions and my reactions to them. I know that I am aware of my surroundings, of my surroundings and my surroundings, and of my surroundings and my surroundings and my surroundings.
If I’m on the edge of my seat when I walk out the door, and I have no other options, I can’t take a second to step back and notice my surroundings, and maybe I will get a little annoyed if I miss a little bit of my surroundings, but I can take a minute and think, “I probably won’t notice anything.
The problem is that we really only have a few minutes to really notice our surroundings, so we tend to miss some of them because we are so preoccupied with the actions or reactions to those surroundings.
This is why we get distracted by all the stuff we do that we don’t really notice, like when we get distracted by a conversation we don’t care about. We are so preoccupied with the things we notice that we miss the little things we normally notice.
When we do notice something we think it’s important, we tend to focus on it much more than anything else. We’ve all been there. My friend, my brother, and myself were at the mall one afternoon and we were both engrossed in the mall’s video arcade. I suddenly noticed a guy staring at me, and I thought, “What’s he doing?” But he just looked at me and stared. And that was all it took.
It’s not a new phenomenon, but we seem to be more likely to notice what we notice. Whether it’s a man staring at us, a dog staring at us, or a piece of glass in our food, we tend to notice more than others.
We all are here on a video game. And while video games aren’t quite as fast as reading a book, our brain is still getting used to them. And like any other stimulus we receive, we tend to be more aware of whatever we are reacting to than others.
This phenomenon is called “perceptual maturation” and is what psychologists call “a shift from a perceptual mode to an awareness mode.” The change happens when the mind is exposed to something different (like looking at a man with his hand on a man’s shoulder) and is able to take in a new stimulus or experience (like reading a book) and apply the new information as it is.
In the case of a person who has gotten used to the idea that the mind is a “real” thing, the brain is probably going to be much more sophisticated, but it’ll probably be much clearer in this case. In our case, the mind is just another brain’s perception of a new reality, and the brain isn’t likely to show any signs of being exposed to it.
A very interesting example of this is the phenomenon of “phantoms”, or people who appear physically, yet in actuality are not. The idea is that the brain stores a mental image of an object to aid in the retention of memories. For example, if an object is in your head, you will not know it until you try to remember it.
