Inattentional Blindness

Kristen was an eight-year-old child. He was sitting on a park bench, sad. There was worry, fear and depression on his face. It was evening walk time. The park was full of people. People used to come near him, look at him and quietly move on. A couple also passed by. The couple saw that there were posters about the child in the park. The woman passed near the child. She looked at him carefully. She went ahead and stopped near the poster stuck on the tree. The poster had written in bold letters that this child is missing. Below it, the child's age, height, weight, facial color and name were written and also a photo. The woman read the poster carefully. She came to the child again. She also looked at him carefully and when she was sure that it was the same child, she shrugged her shoulders and moved on. She also did not try to contact the phone number written on the poster. The child sat on the bench for two hours but no one paid attention to him or called the number written on the poster. Did the park even become deserted?

Who was Kristen and what happened to her? This is an interesting story. Kristen was a child actor and was part of a social experiment by the psychology department of the University of Rome. The university was feeling that irresponsibility was growing among people. They did not look left or right and did not help others, so they decided to conduct an experiment in the central park of Rome. The university made Kristen sit on a bench on the edge of the middle corridor of the park and put up fifty posters of her disappearance throughout the park. Posters were also pasted on the trees to the right and left of Kristen and the team stood at a distance with cameras. The park was large and beautiful and the people who came there were also educated and successful. In the two hours of the experiment, a hundred people passed by the child. Most of them saw her. More than half of the people also read the posters and four or five people even identified the child, but despite this, no one helped the child until it became dark in the park and the child was left alone in this park.

Psychologists conducted this experiment to test a new theory called "Inattentional Blindness." This theory was proposed in 1992 by Professor Aaron Rock and Erin Mack of the University of California. A book with the same title was published on their research in 1998. Aaron informed the world in 1992 that we humans have become victims of attention deficit or blindness. We no longer see anything left or right. We have become limited to ourselves. We have to reach the office on time or go home from the office on time so that we can sleep peacefully or save a five-dollar deduction from our salary. Therefore, if there is an accident on the way or ten or twenty people are lying injured on the road, we do not see them and if they do, we do not pay attention to them. We forget while buying or eating burgers that there is no fire extinguisher in the building we are sitting in and if there is a fire, If it goes, the entire building including us will burn to ashes. Or a child is wandering in the street with a bag hanging on his shoulder during school hours. Or we have turned onto the wrong road and many people are suffering because of us. We are not able to see this. Aaron gave this theory in 1992, years before the advent of mobile phones and social media, and died in 1995. After that, the storm of mobile phones and social media came, after which attention blindness among humans continued to increase. Therefore, now this experiment is being repeated in different countries at different times to assess the severity of attention blindness.

Kristen's experiment was conducted in Rome in 2016, after which it was declared that 100% of the citizens of Rome suffer from attention blindness. They see this, but their brains are not willing to help others. Psychologists repeatedly mentioned in the report the woman who carefully read the advertisement, then identified the child and then shrugged her shoulders and walked away. This theory shook the sensible people of Italy. I do not know what the Italian government or society has done to combat this blindness, but I do know that this blindness is reaching its peak in our society. We no longer see anything left or right. We go through a problem like animals and then forget about the existence of this problem, so a few days later it comes back into our lives and causes more destruction than before. My claim is that you should look back on your routine one day and answer this question: Have you ever paid attention to the loose screws on the chair you are sitting on, when you know that you If you give it two minutes, this chair will be fixed and you will be able to sit on it more easily. Or the washroom you are using has no soap, the faucet is leaking, or the floor is dirty, and if you give it two minutes or draw the attention of the cleaner to this, this problem will be solved. Or when you leave the office, turn off the lights, fan, and AC. Or clean the frozen floor on the table you work at. Or there is chewing gum stuck to the bottom of your shoes. Or your car is making squeaking noises. Or the plants in the house or building you live in are dying of thirst. Or your employee is sick and you have not even asked him how he is. If the answer to all these questions is yes, then you know that you have suffered from attention blindness and you will be the victim of a major accident at any time.

I think the day you see this blindness of your own, you will also see the blindness of the entire system. For example, look at climate change. The whole world is telling us that Pakistan is the biggest target of climate change. Pakistan has the most glaciers after the North and South Poles. Their total number is 13,032. They are the biggest source of water in the country. They are melting rapidly and if our temperature increases by just two degrees, 65% of the glaciers will melt, after which Pakistan will first experience floods and then the country will suffer from drought, meaning all our children will die of hunger. The whole world is screaming. A new rainfall system has been born in the Atlantic Ocean, due to which rainfall and floods are increasing in Pakistan. The whole world is ringing the bell. There is a fear of floods in the cities of Pakistan and the whole world is screaming. You people should stop cutting trees. Increase tree plantation a thousand times. Rivers. Get away from drains, canals and rivers, clean the waterways and fix the sewage system and water drainage system of houses and streets and the whole world is waking us up by shaking us. You don't have much time left. You should immediately build small dams, make lakes in villages, dig dry canals, change the irrigation system, change the water and sewage systems of houses and start storing rainwater. But we are not paying attention to any voice, any scream. Even today, we are building housing schemes, houses, shops, fences and fields right in the middle of the river. Our villages were flooded last year and we are taking a dip in the river this year too. You should also leave this alone.

When we were drowned two or four years ago, we knew that dry rations, clean water, fire and clothes are important in floods. So, if we didn't do anything, we would have at least built a small stove on our roof before the monsoon, kept dry rations and clothes and made a cheap system to filter water. But you see, no one has made this arrangement in any flood-affected area. The government has also realized after successive floods that a boat is the most important tool in floods. But it is possible that in a riverine district or tehsil, the government has arranged boats or tents or trained people. So, the whole country is sitting in the water at this time and looking at the federation and the United Nations. And I am sure that next year too, we will be sitting on the roofs and cursing the government in the same way. You can see our brilliance. We suffer from water shortage for seven months. We are subject to shortages from drinking water to electricity and then we continue to drown in water for two months. But despite this, we are not ready for water management. Neither we nor the government are ready for water management. What is this? It is simply "attention blindness" and this blindness is spreading from the government to the common man. The question is, if the government is not doing anything, then what are we doing? Why are we building houses or hotels in the middle of the river? Why are we cutting trees and not arranging water and ration during the rainy season? Aren't we ourselves responsible for this situation? We are responsible because we are suffering from attention blindness. We see the destruction in front of us but we don't see it, so we keep groping and stumbling like blind lame people and this is our real issue.