I have a strong desire to comprehend stuff

I claim that comprehending is a hierarchy and can usefully be thought of as a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid is awareness that is followed by consciousness, which is awareness plus attention. Knowing follows consciousness and understanding is at the pinnacle of the pyramid.

Two aspects of this comprehension idea deserve elaboration: consciousness and understanding.

When I was a youngster, probably seven or eight, my father took me with him when he drove to a local farm to pick corn for use in the café the family managed. We drove for a significant amount of time down local dirt roads to a farm with a field of growing corn.

We went into the fields with our bushel baskets and filled them with corn-on-the-cob. Dad showed me how to choose the corn to pick and how to snatch the cob from the stalk.

On the drive home I was amazed to observe the numerous fields of corn we passed on the way back to town. I can distinctly remember thinking to myself, why did I not see these fields of corn while we were driving to the farm earlier?

Today I have an answer to that question. I now say that on the way to the farm I was aware of corn-on-the-cob but on the way back home I was conscious of corn-on-the-cob. There was a very significant difference in my perceptions regarding corn-on-the-cob before and after the experience.

We are aware of many things but conscious of only a small number of things. We were aware of Iraq before the war but now we are conscious of Iraq. There is a very important distinction between awareness and consciousness and it is important for us to recognize this difference.

To be conscious of a matter signifies a focus of the intellect. Consciousness of a matter is the first step, which may lead to an understanding of the matter. Consciousness of a matter is a necessary condition for knowing and for understanding of that matter. Consciousness is a necessary but not sufficient condition for knowing and understanding to take place.

When discussing a topic about which I am knowledgeable most people will, because they recognize the words I am using, treat the matter as old stuff. They recognize the words therefore they consider the matter as something they already know and do not consider as important. Because they are aware of the subject it is difficult to gain their attention when I attempt to go beyond the shallowness of their perception. The communication problem seems to be initially overcoming their awareness and reaching consciousness.

Understanding is a long step beyond knowing. Understanding is the creation of meaning. Understanding represents a rare instance when intellection and emotion join hands and places me in an empathetic position with a domain of knowledge. When I understand I have connected the dots and have created a unity that includes myself. I have created something that is meaningful, which means that I have placed that domain of knowledge within my domain that I call my self. I understand because I have a very intimate connection with a model of reality that I have created. It is that eureka moment that happens rarely but is a moment of ecstasy. As Carl Sagan says “understanding is a kind of ecstasy�.

When I read I almost always read non fiction. I have tried to read fiction and to learn from reading what is considered to be good literature. However, my effort to read good literature fails because I thing that learning by reading good literature is a very inefficient means for gaining knowledge and understanding.

I claim that I can acquire more knowledge in one hour by reading non fiction than I can while reading good literature for ten hours. That is, I claim that learning by reading non fiction is ten times more efficient than learning by reading fiction, i.e. good literature.

Do you agree that acquiring knowledge by reading non fiction is ten times as efficient as from reading fiction?

I'd say it'd depend on what kind of knowledge you are trying to aquire. The pyranmid of knowledge you refer to follows an evolutionary pattern against time; but, could it also be applyed to all knowledge, practical or not?

There is no greater joy than in understanding new things - Leonardo Da Vinci

I think understanding, is vastly more important than knowledge. There is an important difference between the two. Knowledge is knowing that if you add oxygen and hydrogen together - they will create H20. Understanding is comprehending the reasons why this happen, why oxygen and hydrogen, when formed together create H20. Its also about why they don't form something else, why H20 has the properties that it happens to hold.

With a great deal of understanding you can do things which others may have only dreamed of. For example, if you understand the stock market. In which you focus not on the knowledge (that the stock market goes up and down) - but understand how it works, then you have something much more valuable. If you know, that a certain stock is going to go up - that is knowledge. If you understand why any stock goes up, that is understanding the market.

So if we focus on understanding the world around us, rather than simply deriving knowledge from it, we inevitably will become much further ahead.

I am an advocate for people becoming self-actualizing self-learners and that they should seek that knowledge that their curiosity dictates. I am convinced that if our society does not become significantly more intellectually sophisticated in the near future our civilization may not endure for another 200 years.

What kind of knowledge do you advocate? The one that brought us the hydrogen bomb?

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.�

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ‘disinterested knowledge’ as similar to ‘pure research’, as compared to ‘applied research’. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ‘see’ and then to ‘grasp’ through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

We often use the metaphors of ‘seeing’ for knowing and ‘grasping’ for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.

The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ‘truth’, is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ‘truth’ discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.

Amen brother/sister! Not often do I find such understanding. Our culture causes people to think that such ideas as we preach are alien concepts.

Welcome to Brain Meta. If your experience here will be anything like mine's been so far, it will be one of enlightment and self-fulfillment. How did you find us, just out of curiosity?

If that is true then you could say it is our inequities that inspire us to seek more, but I would say it is something that we are already connected to that leads us back to a greater awareness and sensibility when we find that our changing beliefs really offer no permanent solution to the need for lasting satisfaction.


The intellect would surmise the ultimate reality, while the heart knows there is only now.
So are we moving toward something, away from something, or in gaining the ultimate knowledge discovering what is already here always within the ever changing desire to move toward new concepts or away from our antiquated concepts?

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I discovered this forum just by accident while scaning Google for something.

I am not a believer in absolutes. I place my trust in human brains and if they fail us then we are lost.

100% correct.

Beliefs change, and the human brain eventually fails and dies.
Would you say, that you are filling your time until the absolute eventuality of death or loss of your brain?

The Universe became aware of Itself on the day that the brain evolved to produce a consciousness. When humans came into existence. The Universe as we know it came into being because of that event. If the day comes that we cease to exist, so will the Universe itself. For we will not be there to contemplate it. It is up to us to find out the nature of our connection with the Universe so that, through it, we may become One with The Universe for eternity. The strugle to find this knowledge before we run out of time is our inescapable destiny.

Not necessarily, with all the planets in all the galaxies in all the universes in all the dimensions of reality.. you'd think there would be some form of life - somewhere, that existed before us.

Good point. I guess I forgot about death and taxes when I said there were no absolutes.

In your own experience do you remember being aware of the universe and all that is in it at birth?
Do you remember being taught about the universe as you were growing up? Did the universe become real to you after it was real to those who taught you? Do you believe in separate universes, such as the one you experience and the one your parents believe they brought you into? Do you think there was an original who started the whole universe thing and if so, who would that be and how did that original come about?

Maybe, maybe not. We could be the first. Maybe the last. It's up to us.

Interesting, so what your saying is our perception of reality is being formed by other peoples perceptions of reality?

Before I answer your question, can you explain how my personal experiences about what you are asking become relevant to the topic? The questions about memories sound vague and/or silly. And the ones about my believes sound irrelevant.

Comprehension of reality (stuff) would be relevant to how comprehension comes into being. Maybe you don't have a mind of your own. If you did how did you get one of your own? Did it come with the packaging and do you remember when you first engaged this mind in comprehensive thought? Does it come fully functional or does it come in seed form developing within the growing body? When does comprehension become fully functional or does it ever?


There is a certain amount of influence. But the individual has within their self, the ability to see beyond that influence, and comprehend something greater than mainstream interpretations of reality.

One interpretation of "The Beast" mentioned in the Bible, is Authority established thru blind obedience.
We often accept words of fact and reason because the majority accepts it.
Some get used to just accepting relative truth from those who have been given titles of authority without much conscious thought.

You and your weird questions! NO! I don't remember!

Yes. I remember my father answering my questions about the Universe at about age 4 or 5. He was giving me the wrong answers on purpose, but I believed him at the time.

I belived my father's version of it. The reality he portrait to me became my reality at the time.

Through quantum mechanics we learned that paralel universes are possible. I believe that it is possible that there is as many seperate universes as there are human minds to comprehend them.

The answer to that question lies outside our present capabilities of comprehension. My own opinion changes at every turn of the wheel. But I do believe that we're inching ever closer to that answer. We'll find out within my lifetime for sure.

Putting these two beliefs together
I have to ask if you think (according to your beliefs) if it is possible that others within their own universes have achieved already what you seek in your universe to understand in your lifetime, or if the other parallel universe evolution is subject to whether your universe achieves enlightenment?

(on a humorous side note, if we all are depending on your universe to find the answers, then the sooner you find out, the sooner we can all go home...)

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! You're right, that is very funny.

I HOPE that one of us has already walked the trail and got there; and that the rest of us are just going through the necessary motions. I am frighten to the core at the alternative. I would love to be able to "go home" as you put it as soon as right now.

The search for the 'Truth' is the divine inspiration talked about by many a wise sage. This truth has been symbolised within the Feather. See how many tribes wear feathers like they're ritual objects. The better the feather the more status you have. This may have originated from the feather of truth of Maat in Egypt, but I feel its a lot older than that. Many dreamt of flying in their childhood, as did I, it seems its the curiosity aspect of humanity. This is what got us where we are today, and its this simple symbolism thats important.

I believe that coberst felt this aspect of humanity when he posted this thread.

See Joesus, simple reply and to the point. You should try it sometime.