Understanding Is Knowledge

By: Ian Weiss

When I first got into politics, I did to prove a point. To show off my wits as you may, but as I have aged I have distanced myself from the idea that politics is about being right. On the contrary, politics is about understanding.

When a classmate says something I find blatantly wrong I think to myself no way, but before I share my opinion on the matter with the rest of the class, I take a second to consider their point. While intuitively disagreeing with the point said may cement myself in my beliefs, how am I to look myself in the mirror and say I am an informed citizen without even acknowledging the opposing view?

One may think a knowledgeable man is certain about what is right and what is wrong, but has s/he considered a famous quote by enduring philosopher Socrates, a man considered to be one of the most knowledgeable of all time. “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” In this quote Socrates acknowledges the fact that he has a sense of uncertainty about everything he is certain about.

How does Socrates know that what he deems to be factual or the “truth” may be false due to his own subjective sense or perception when it comes to labeling the things around him. A man may be certain that life first requires confidence in oneself before being successful, while another man may be equally certain that life requires confidence in other people before being successful. Who is to say one man is more right than the other in this situation?

To have a certainty about something as crucial as success in life takes time and serious thought. If one of those “certain” men dismisses the other’s point, has he taken time to consider the drastically different life the other has lived through. Who is to say that if each man was swapped at birth, they would not aswell swap their personal beliefs about success in life?

While we live on this concrete earth, where we can agree there is a floor beneath us and a tree in the distance, we as well live in a separate world which only our individual selves can understand; the world which exists only in our mind. Another enduring philosopher Aldous Huxley described every individual as a universe in itself, because every individual lives in a world inside their head. So in a room of five people, there exists five universes plus the one we already know and I say each individual’s “head universe” is unique because it is the result of both genetics and the external data which has entered into their brain in the exact order it has. So would it not be correct to say the world we live in consists of the one we can all agree on and the other seven plus billion.

That is why I say understanding is the highest form of knowledge, for to know everything one must know every person and their subjective experience because that is what makes up our world.

While I got pretty deep into it, simply put: to understand another person’s point of view is to know more about the world. We are only to become informed global citizens when we acknowledge every individuals point of view. By judging an opinion, we lock ourselves into a box where only we hold the key, but by attempting to understand another’s opinion we open ourselves to the idea that we may be wrong.

By accepting the fact that we may be wrong, we consider multiple points of view instead of one and finally decide which one we choose to hold closer than the others.