In her brilliant book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, Margaret Heffernan rigorously and eloquently examines a common problem: denying truths that are “too painful, too frightening to confront.” Many people revert to denial because they are convinced that it is the only way to remain hopeful. “The problem arises when we use the same mechanism to deny uncomfortable truths that cry out for acknowledgement, debate, action, and change.” This is among the phenomena that Dante had in mind when reserving the last — and worst — ring in hell for those who, in a moral crisis, preserve their neutrality.

There is another, similar phenomenon illustrated by Eleanore Gusenbauer, a neighbor to a concentration camp in Mauthausen, Austria. Heffernan quotes a portion of a letter Gusenbauer sent to the SS Leader at the Camp, in 1938: “I request that it be arranged that such inhuman deeds be discontinued, or else be done where one does not have to see it.” She is not blind to what is happening in the camp; rather, she fails to recognize it as evil. So much is in the eye — and perceptions — of the beholder. Here’s an excellent case in point: For Nazis, the swastika represented everything they cherished and the Star of David everything they viewed as evil. For Jews, the reverse was true.

Other examples can be found during the Civil Rights struggles (especially in the South) during the 1960s when otherwise civilized adults shouted obscenities at the children who were escorted by National Guardsmen while entering — thereby integrating — public schools. I call these phenomena “cataracts of cognition” because they really are blindspots that prevent people from “seeing” (literally or figuratively) certain realities and their implications. Millions of people in the military services claim they experienced “the fog of war” and there is a counterpart in the business world. There is also what I call the “invisibility of the obvious.” Very common.

My own experience suggests that people tend to see what they expect to see and fail to see what they do not expect to see. The brief film of Daniel Simons’ experiment involving Harvard students in a basketball passing drill (discussed by Heffernan on Pages 74-76) is well worth checking out at Daniels’ home page. In her book, Heffernan examines several phenomena that help to explain both willful and involuntary “blindness” as well as their causes; also, she suggests lessons to be learned that can help us to develop a “fierce determination to see” whatever we need to understand. She also provides some especially valuable information about the importance of aerobic exercise and cites an article also well worth checking out, “Be Smart, Exercise Your Heart: Exercise Effects on Brain and Cognition,” co-authored by C.H. Hillman, K.I. Erickson et al.

Perhaps Yogi Berra said it best: “You can see a lot if you pay attention.”