Why do we focus on some things and not others?

Human beings observe the world around them using their only tool, the five senses. No matter how observant a person may think they are, it is important to remember that the senses are subjective and distorted by emotional bias. This bias is different for every individual and is based on a person's past experiences. Therefore; we focus on some things and not others because we are biased when we observe information. We use our senses and past experiences to interpret what we are observing and sometimes this limits how much of the actual picture we see.

In addition to the senses being inaccurate, people organize information as they observe it further limiting what they see. It is impossible for a person to analyze the myriad of details involved in the observation process. People use subjective reasoning to select the details they focus on. Often times these details are superficial and are general assumptions based on previous experience; they do not accurately depict what is being observed. We then organize these partial details in order to make sense of them and then assign meaning to the limited details we had just taken in. Since we observe using senses which are subjective (distorted by emotional bias), we compartmentalize the information to make sense of it, then interpret the sum of this information (which is often general and superficial) it becomes easy to see that there is a lot of details we simply neglect to take in.

Further limiting our view is the actual way we interpret this information. Even after we have missed many details through the observation process, we then limit what we are focusing on based on how we choose to create a perception. Like I said before, we usually generalize while observing to more easily interpret and organize the information we take in. We use this information to draw conclusions about what we observe and perceive in order to make sense of it. But, when we cannot fully realize what we are perceiving, we start to fill in the gaps based on internal information. We start to attribute certain information to long held assumptions which are internal. Although we may not directly observe the details we focus on, we indirectly connect them to what we are actively perceiving so we can believe we see the full picture when, in fact, we are almost entirely creating this picture ourselves. This causes us to further distort what we are observing and perceiving making the picture we actually see marginalized.

So, to restate the idea of why do we focus on some things and not others, we are humans beings. Most of how we interpret comes from preconceptions we develop based on past experience. These preconceptions find their way into our senses and make us limit what we observe. We then generalize or compartmentalize much of what we are taking in to make quick sense of it. If we cannot make direct sense of what we are focusing on, we then use concocted notions to fill the gaps which actually paints a false picture. This causes us to inadvertently miss more details.

If my explanation did not make sense, then maybe you were focusing on something and missing something else... (another cheesy joke)