I am curious what this means, Christian? Can you elaborate? Can I share with you what came to my mind when I read this simple sentence? I thought, when you really understand what someone is saying, you just know. The thinking mechanism isn't involved because there is a FEELING there of "getting it."
That being said, I do not FEEL like I understand what you are saying in this post. :D
Actually, my point is that most of the time people think they understand what the other is saying, but they actually do not. I'm thinking specifically of political discourse. Person A attempts to translate his thoughts into communicative sounds and then Person B says "I understand what you are saying and you are wrong." Now this is very disturbing behavior by person B, since the words we use and sentences we construct exist within a context that is largely invisible to others. Said differently, what I say is dependent on the many other concepts I've come to understand, and therefore no one can fully understand what I am saying unless they understand the other concepts in my head that were used to construct what I said.
We need to realize that communication is a very difficult thing. Both expressing our thoughts and understanding the thoughts of others is very difficult. I deal with this by constantly asking myself WHY someone believes what they believe and then asking questions that will lead me toward the answer. It just irks me so much when people cockily say "I disagree." No! What we need to do is become one mind during a discourse and work together toward the greatest understanding of the problem we can get at.
I am curious what this means, Christian? Can you elaborate? Can I share with you what came to my mind when I read this simple sentence? I thought, when you really understand what someone is saying, you just know. The thinking mechanism isn't involved because there is a FEELING there of "getting it."
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I do not FEEL like I understand what you are saying in this post. :D
Actually, my point is that most of the time people think they understand what the other is saying, but they actually do not. I'm thinking specifically of political discourse. Person A attempts to translate his thoughts into communicative sounds and then Person B says "I understand what you are saying and you are wrong." Now this is very disturbing behavior by person B, since the words we use and sentences we construct exist within a context that is largely invisible to others. Said differently, what I say is dependent on the many other concepts I've come to understand, and therefore no one can fully understand what I am saying unless they understand the other concepts in my head that were used to construct what I said.
ReplyDeleteWe need to realize that communication is a very difficult thing. Both expressing our thoughts and understanding the thoughts of others is very difficult. I deal with this by constantly asking myself WHY someone believes what they believe and then asking questions that will lead me toward the answer. It just irks me so much when people cockily say "I disagree." No! What we need to do is become one mind during a discourse and work together toward the greatest understanding of the problem we can get at.
To explain my attitude in a phrase: We don't disagree, we're just at the early stage of joint thinking.
ReplyDelete