The Understanding

What is it that we understand?

That is, if we can understand anything.

Not to be confused by the existentialist question of whether we can accumulate knowledge, the question of understanding, though similar is really quite different. When we acquire information, which is essentially the knowledge of a fact, or more precisely a fact that we accept in our current paradigm of acceptance, we are adding to the ever-growing sand pile of certainty in our mind. Of course there are processes such as our individual perception, censorship, among others, but when it comes down to it: you typically accept information as fact if you had no prior knowledge of it.

It is true, that the flow of information is ever-expanding, but still it is indeed limited to a certain extent. But that being said, the possible interpretations of the knowledge acquired is unlimited. Yet, given all of these possibilities, the human mind seems to want to turn the information at hand into a simplified version of it to comprehend it. My question is: why?

When we try to understand a topic or fact, do we not want to understand it in its own entirety? By associating the information coming at you with generalizations as an attempt at relativity, we are bound to lose a great deal of that information as a compromise or discrepancy to understand it. In this process, since we lose information is it fair to say that we do not understand the topic, seeing as we do not understand it in its entirety?

Since our interpretation, and understanding comes from generalizations, i believe that the only things we can truly understand are some fundamental principles that have a vague, and broad scope of interpretation. These are things such as laws, theories, and emotions. But since laws and theories can be changed or debunked, that only leaves our emotions.

Emotion can be the one thing that we can truly understand, because only we ourselves can know why we are having that emotion, and how exactly it is making us feel. Yet still, there is not one person that can truly describe their emotions, or figure out precisely what mix of thoughts and experiences have inspired them.

This leads me to my conclusion, and hypothesis... The only way we can understand, is throughout observing ourselves, and trying to channel our feelings into a self-generated interpretation. To do this, we must strive to find the correct symbols through the art of language to express our own emotions. If we can come to this, even if our interpretation is not right, at least we can understand what it means to us. From language, we can take our experiences and through logic make them concrete understandings, and later allow our understanding to progress and evolve with the expanding stream of information in the world.

The information in this world may be limited, but the wisdom it can produce is not.