Ways of Understanding

Understanding, an act we participate in without much conscious thought. An ability that we have been schooled to utilise in our nascent years, and is perhaps the key to our learning of new skills and comprehension of new subject matter. Perhaps the differentiating factor between passing or failing our exams, or being competent at our work. This and its partner, the short term memory, so essential to learning, prior to its confirmation among the filing system of the long-term memory, create a fine line between a person with aphasia or other cerebral dysfunctions, and a person with normal brain function.

Yet, even those of us who believe that we are utilising our brains optimally, we often fail to realise how inefficient we really are, and how often it is that we fail to understand even the most basic of matters. While it would be catastrophic for a doctor, engineer, architect, or any professional dealing with precise sciences, to misunderstand the area of their provenance, more subjective areas (and despite the specificities of the legal system, many laws are more subjective in their interpretation than we think)are where we see the slip-ups and complete miscomprehension of its human actors. Below are some examples of what I meant

1. In the world of political debates, when an issue is at stake, we can find supposedly intelligent people completely misunderstanding an issue that is the topic of their debate, and instead spend their entire time during the debate, moving up the wrong alley. Some of these people are what Descartes would call, those who consider themselves to be cleverer than they are, and are precipitious in their judgements and avowals. Yet, they believe that they have impressed the audience with the pedantry of their arguments. Or that they have fight a good fight.

2. In the corporate world, even in the most highly regulated arena like banking, there is always much room for misunderstanding from different sides. Perhaps they are spurred by an inability to continue their emotions, or are overly easily agitated by perceived slights. It is not unknown for the superior to be inconsistent in their directives, nor for the quacking staff to fail to elicit clarity of a vague instruction given by their superior. Nor is it uncommon for the staff to communicate instructions to each other in such a way that the instructions function more to confuse the communicatee than to shed light on anything. Sometimes, the receiver of the message has to undergo much cognitive decryption to make sense of the message that is trying to be communicated, and when he/she actually make the effort to find out, find the effort to be an almost pointless exercise.

3. A university professor who misunderstands a particular theory or does not fully understand what he/she is trying to communicate to the students tend to confuse the latter, and hence lead to more disinformation. What is more dangerous would be disinformation of the most fundamental of axioms and concepts since these are the foundation to the building of analysis. To base an entire analysis and spurious/erroneous concept is not merely a time-wasting exercise, but could become dangerous when these analysis are used as building bricks to formulate policies that would have its effect on the lives of the masses. A student who fails to clarify or check on the received information, but to continue in his/her miscomprehension, and to accumulate knowledge with perceptions that are skewed, is but building a house on quaking sand.

4.Another common and probably dangerous method of understanding is to see truth as relative, and thus forsake instances when truth might be arbitrary. Whether they be religious precepts, or the laws of physics. Should we build our interpretation on matters over which no authority could certify, because the shifting paradigm necessitates that truth shifts at all times, if it is but an exercise on intellectual play, might be a harmless, and perhaps rejuvenating to the mind. But, it starts becoming dangerous when we use our own subjective understanding (or misunderstanding) to influence and teach minds weaker than ours. Where then is our accountability to them.

At the end of the day, perhaps it is best that we bring the act of understanding into a more conscious position, and to observe ourselves as we enter into the motion of comprehending something which is new, something which we are reading, or information that are entering by way of our senses. Perhaps then can we really understand how and how much do we understand.


The above are partial examples of how understanding courses through human life. The entry is inspired by Descartes's "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting Reason".