situation awareness

An Ancient Greek verb, that challenged my attention recently, led me to thinking beyond my reading.
When one looks at the verb, apoblepein [present infinitive form] or apo-blepw [lexicon entry form], one sees the preposition 'apo', meaning 'away from', used as a preverb to 'blepw' which denotes 'to look at, regard'. Therefore, one might conclude that apoblepein indicates that the subject looks away from it's object. But that would be far from the meaning. The Ancient Greek thought conveyed here is that the subject is looking away from everything else but the object. Therefore, the subject's attention is totally toward the object, neglecting all else.

The Liddell and Scott Lexicon shows that a grammatical direct object was used with this verb only for "look upon with love, wonder, or admiration...." Otherwise a prepositional phrase was used that indicated the attention was to or toward the object. So, as I then thought, what happened to the 'situation awareness' for the subject. The Ancient Greeks didn't have cell phones nor motor vehicles nor highway traffic, but they must necessarily have been aware of the importance of situation awareness from their competitive athletics and military experience.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_awareness

http://members.cox.net/ogdoadicnotes/eudaimones.html