PCAPPC

We're alert, I suppose, but that has a narrow connotation, implying a readiness to react to something that would upset our otherwise equanimity. One can be alert without paying attention, and often the two are at odds with one another. Also, we attend to the matter at hand by disregarding and deliberately ignoring things an outsider might regard as relevant. We dutifully complete tasks by disciplining ourselves not to be distracted by details. We believe that by dismissing irrelevancies we discern the general principle, the truth obscured by specificity. The world is filled with baubles, we say, and only the weak allow themselves to be enchanted by such random and meaningless detail as the way light refracts from water cascading over a waterfall, the ephemera of its cool mist, the color of twilight on arid rock, the low growl of well-fed bear. But it's those who spend their days preening their principles and cataloging abstractions that are silly in my estimation. Their th...