Understanding
understanding
One philosopher thought that to understand
everything would mean to forgive everything.[1]
That has some interesting implications for the theory of law! Other people
believe that understanding leads to the ability to control. Although both of
these ideas cover part of the idea, I do not think that either of those
extremes cover the possibilities fully.
To understand something means that this something
becomes part of your frame of reference. Understanding builds a comprehensive
web of connections.
In a practical sense, to understand
means that you are able to use or see the use of what you understand. A partial
understanding of a utensil will naturally limit your use of it. You will only
be able to use something to the extent that you understand the nature of the
utensil. A better understanding of the utensil will refine your use of it.
For example, a stick is a stick; it is useful for bashing things, or supporting
something. Discover the possibility of carving wood and you have multiplied the
possible applications of a stick by a million times. Not only can you refine
your joints, or add nasty points to make the business of killing your prey more
convenient, but you can represent things, tell people who you are. Discover
paint and the wood stops rotting. Anyway, you can probably see what I mean now:
Understanding builds a web of useful connections.
To understand something fully, demands that you
understand it within the context of everything else. You must understand its
role not only with reference to you but with reference to that of which you are
a part: between the thing and our environment as a whole.
Understanding discovers relationships of use between all
sorts of things. The more complete the understanding the more one can
appreciate the relationship between yourself and the thing you are using.
Let me use another example. The development of technology over the last 400
years has brought us an equal share of good things and bad. One of the bad
things technology has brought us is the fact that we have allowed the use of
that technology to destroy the environment. Much of that destruction was caused
by an incomplete understanding of the monster we had created. But, strangely
enough, as a result of our misuse of the environment we have also come to
understand that same environment better, more completely. We are now more aware
of what the environment means to us, more aware of how important it is to us
and of how much we are part of the environment. As a result of this we are
slowly developing a technology which will be more in harmony with the
environment. We are even beginning to use technology to address the damage that
that earlier technology and our use of it brought on. What a paradox! The
interesting result is that thinking people everywhere are seeing their
connection to the world in a very different and unexpected light. They feel
part of something larger.