"World's oldest calendar" - Mesolithic Lunar Warren Fields Calendar vs Solar Calendars: Neolithic Stonehenge/Irish Newgrange, + Star Charts-Calendars w/ Selective Attention - Filter: McGilChrist; W James, Bargh. Neuroscience - what people pay attenti

Selective Attention - Filter: Iain McGilChrist; W James, J Bargh. Neuroscience What makes selective attention pivotal?? Because what people pay attention to is a product of their motivation/purpose. The other side of the selective attention coin is as William James explained attention "implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others." – which reinforces Maimone-Mannheim argument that ideologies tend to exclude (filter) what doesn't fit their ideological framework. There are several "lessons" to be drawn from selective attention such as the shift from lunar to solar orientation. There are several historically documented developments – evolution - of spiritual and religious beliefs" Mannheim's Paradigm stated that the social sciences and spiritual-religious worldviews were shaped by the political-economic reality of society – in part explained by the selective attention function. 1. "Selective attention," also called "selectivity bias"—the tendency to orient oneself toward and process information from only one part of our environment to the exclusion of other parts, no matter how obvious those parts may be." David DiSalvo 2. "Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are!" - Ortega y Gasset 3. "Attention may sound dull, but it is an essential aspect of consciousness. In fact, it governs what it is that we turn out to be conscious of, and therefore plays a part in the coming into being of whatever exists for us "We bring about a world in consciousness that is partly what is given, and partly what we bring, something that comes into being through this particular conjunction and no other. And the key to this is the kind of attention we pay to the world." Iain McGilchrist 4. Neuroscience & Selectivity: "It is argued that selectivity in processing has emerged through evolution as a design feature of a complex multi-channel sensorimotor system, which generates selective phenomena of "attention" as one of many by-products." 5. "Mental categories are absolutely essential in simplifying and understanding the information-rich environment,……" John Bargh (before you know it) Mental Categories produce stereotypes [effectively symbols of condensed information]. 5. Filtering & selective attention: "William James wrote that attention "implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others." "[interaction with stimuli] is indeed accomplished, quite literally, within the approach circuit of the rostral tectum. And while these simple circuits for governing interactive behavior may seem far removed from the higher cognition of humans, they are indeed the precursors to the mechanisms that control what has been called "selective attention." 6. Christina Maimone on Mannheim "Ideology is, as Mannheim uses the term, a mode of thought that obscures the real condition of society to the group holding the thought, thereby stabilizing the shared social reality of the mode of thought. Groups are simply unable to see particular facts that would undermine their conception of the world, that would show their collective perception of the social situation to be a misapplication of thought to experience "