Beyond Understanding

There really is a truth to the claim “ignorance is bliss”. We seek knowledge and understanding of the world around us, constantly breaking down barriers which hold us in place. Progressing far beyond any has trekked before us into a world where logic and reason rules and mystery fades into oblivion. What beauty remains in the world we break down into facts, no longer seeking to experience the world but to understand the world. At the root of it, no real issue comes from the desire to understand the world. It is only natural for a curious species such as ourselves. The problem comes when we forget to experience the knowledge we seek. Behind every new scientific breakthrough, once lay a mystery. Something beautiful lies behind the mysteries of the world. Our lack of understanding opened a deep creativeness within our species to develop a story of the world. One which emphasized that beauty and also the chaos underneath. The element of that chaos often brings out the beauty. Although with an increase in understanding of the world the chaos drifts away, and so the beauty, leaving us with a hollow world full of facts but no real meaning behind them. So we continue to search for the meaning in the unknown we previously experienced on a daily basis. No longer can we see significance in the everyday events which we already understand. The rising and setting of the sun once represented a holy event to humanity, held up by the gods and never taken for granted. The nature of the rotation of the earth was not yet known and mystery surrounded the event. We began to tell stories which gave meaning to our lives. These stories eventually turned into a collective mythology, giving a shared culture to a people. A world held together by a united experience of a world they do not understand. Without the understanding they can open themselves up to truly experiencing the world for what it is, not what they want it to be, or what it could be, but what that very moment brings. In those days everything had meaning, because everything held a little bit of mystery with that lack of understanding. Today we see the world through a different lens.

We understand how the world rotates, so the sunrise and sunset no longer hold a deeper significance to us. We understand how weather patterns work, so we no longer see significance in blessing the gods to provide rain for the season. We break down the very mythologies of our people, which once held us together as one under the collective mystery. Now leaves us divided in a world we understand but no longer see. Understanding in itself is not the problem though. After all, it is only natural. We are born with an intrinsic curiosity which drives us forward in each generation. We must continue to grow and improve the lives of each generation. The more knowledge and understanding of the world we gain, the less hunger and death our people will experience. The problem comes when we forget who we are in search of the answers. Because in the end, there is no “answer”. We will always have to live with the mystery of the world, but that mystery becomes ever more intricate. Our scientific discoveries evolve far beyond the realm of everyday understanding and into a new dimension where few can appreciate the mystery ahead. Those who do appreciate the mystery often do not often stop to imagine the world through a mythological lens. So our collective culture continues to break down, reducing the beauty of the world to a collection of stories and mythologies we used to rely on. All that at one point, not too long ago, made us into what we are now. When we lose the stories of our people we also begin to lose ourselves and forget who we are. So we have no choice but to create a new identity, one based on facts and values. We attempt to find objectivity in a world which does not present much objectivity on the human side of things. We write countless essays on morality and the proper way to act when in reality no such proper way exists. The only thing which we can know truly exists is our own humanity. Within that humanity we once understood the world through the very narrative we now write off as worthless fiction. We tell ourselves we must trust in the facts, we cannot look backwards at the past, the stories of generations before us may have helped guide them, but we are smarter than that. To some extent this may be true, but the generations before also understood the importance of the culture of our people. They understood how to live and breathe together as one, how to see humanity in the other. They shared a collective love for the other because of the mystery of that story they all relied on. For us, the mystery may have died, but humanity has not died along with it. We can still find that same love and trust in the other we once found, but we must see through a new lens. No longer looking into the unknown with fear but looking towards each other with love. The only story we truly understand is that of ourselves. All else still remains a mystery. We must fight the convenience of only learning our own story and learn the stories of the many cultures of the world. To seek and understand those around us and truly gain an appreciation for this mystery of a world we live in. The mystery of the other is a mystery which can never truly be solved, and that is the greatest beauty of the world. We all have the opportunity to go out and expand ourselves to learn more about this great mystery, and the more we learn, the more we grow into the collective culture we once had through the mythological stories we tell. Through our understanding of the other we begin to unlock a new level of love and appreciation for the entire planet, and we learn to see we are all on the journey together.