by Katalin Balog
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern. —William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Laments about young people’s declining mental health, their inability to read novels, contemplate art, or simply pay undivided attention to anything at all have reached a panicky intensity lately. Not being particularly young, I can distinctly remember a time when things were less dire in this regard (except for the mental health part, having grown up in Eastern Europe…). We loved the films of Antonioni, Bergman, Tarkovsky, and Tarr, whose slow pace, for the most part, would be out of the question in today’s film industry. We were able to entertain ourselves without being entertained.
I propose that there is a common thread to these problems, and of course, they don’t only afflict the kids. We are all losing our ability to engage in a way of thinking I call contemplation. Young people are in an especially difficult place: whereas older people still remember and possess that ability to some degree, younger people have not had much opportunity to pick it up in the first place. And while it always required a certain amount of leisure and cultivation, a certain amount of groundedness and prosperity, today, contemplation is widely underappreciated and is in decline.
Contemplation is more than simply having experience; not all experiencing counts as contemplation – otherwise, we would all be automatically non-stop contemplators! In contemplation, experience is “held” in attention and explored without a particular goal in mind. This is different from other forms of attention deployed in thought or perception, which are fast-moving and task-oriented. Contemplation happens in small ways every time we stop to appreciate the world as we experience it, every time we are present for what is happening in a deliberate fashion, rather than breezing through in automatic pilot (or being absorbed in thought to the exclusion of experience). This could be a momentary lingering on someone’s body language or the way they express themselves. It could be an experience of merging with the natural environment. It could be a state of reflection reading a novel or poem. It could be just sitting and mulling over some experience of the day. Thomas Nagel said that there is “something it’s like” to have an experience. Contemplation then is attention to what it’s like. Read more »