Explanations as Building Blocks of Human Mind

Try to understand it, criticize it and refine it. Let’s learn together.

Have you every wondered what is means to understand things? We understand something or we don’t. what is the difference in those two. we sure can feel it. But can you explain it? I personally could not. At least not until recently. The quest to answer this basic question lead me on a long journey of questions, answers and then counter questions.

The answer to this question lies in the depth of human nature to the way our mind works. It is fundamental to being human a potential gift from evolution.

We are born curious. By nature we are driven by curiosity at core. Curiosity is the drive to understand things. Again what does it man to understand things. Human understanding or mind is a structure of explanations that we sometime call beliefs, values, principals and so on. At core they are all explanation. How?

When a child is born he look for answers to so many basic questions like, what is that person who is so nice to me and taking care of me so nicely? Then he learns that every time he makes a certain sound big living things around him gives him attention and provide things he needs. These are explanations, clarity of how things behave. When we understand something what we are really doing is making the potential behaviour of that something predictable. To the level we can predict their behaviour is the point we understand them. Understanding is not limited to people, it includes almost everything that exist in our life from objective to subjective reality. No wonder we feel safe in light and scared in dark. Darkness eliminates the predictability of a place. If something is unpredictable it is scary it may endanger our survival. No wonder we like things and people who are familiar. We feel safe at places that are familiar and scared at places or around people who are unknown in other words unpredictable or not understood.

When things and people behave in accordance with our expectation (understanding in other words) life is great. When they don’t life turns in Chaos.

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