Beneath the Spoken Truth

I'm not sure if I will have time to blog since school has resumed and would like to post something "my-style" to end this on a good note if I don't have the time. But there's a high possibility that I would still continue posting this time round. This is the longest post I've made so far but I really hope everyone can finish reading it. Although I do wonder who will really understand.

How long would you need to know a person before you think you understand him/her? What if we erase the time factor and ask this instead: How well do you need to know a person before you consider yourself to understand or know him/her? Can we gauge it by the accuracy in guessing what he/she will say or response in a given situation? If that is true and you can guess with a high accuracy how a person might reply or response, why is it that we always hear "You don't understand me!" if the person is already supposedly being understood?

All forms of communication involves some form of miscommunication. In another word, the true intended message will never be fully communicated even if one fully utilizes languages, signs, gestures and every other possible means. And even when assuming that we can somehow convey the exact intended message, it will still be subjected to interpretation.

Likewise, interpreted messages will never be exactly the same as the conveyed message. No 2 individuals undergo the same life experience and upbringing; no 2 individuals see things exactly the same way. Therefore, everyone has different interpretations of the same message. On top of that, misinterpretation is common in our daily life due to a few possible factors. These include, but not restricted to, inappropriate usage of words, inappropriate language, omission of information deemed to be as "common sense" and more essentially - preconceived notion (aka perception) which is what I personally believe to be the main factor of misinterpretation.

To make this easier to comprehend, recall the first time you know a person. By just looking at the person's physical appearance and behavior, your mind has already formed an opinion about the person, even without having you speak to him/her yet. This is more commonly known as "first impression". Some people argue that "first impression" counts and stays throughout with the perceiver whereas some beg to differ. I would say that it's both. More importantly, it depends on the mindset of the perceiver. If the perceiver interacts with the subject with an open mind and if the subject is unlike what the perceiver had perceive of him/her, the perceiver is more likely to change his/her preconceived notion. Comparatively, if the perceiver hold on to the preconceived notion and maintain a close mind while interacting with the subject, his/her perception is likely to remain unchanged. Do bear in mind that, this is not only applicable to "first impressions", it could also be perception formed over time which might possibly result in selective listening when interacting with the subject thereafter.

According to Martin Heidegger (German Philosopher), technology challenges to reveal. Technology is defined as the entities created by the mental and physical effort in order to achieve some value. Languages are consider a form of technology as well. So as we communicate, one has to understand that we are concealing some information to reveal other information. For example, for one to say that "I am a man", he needs to first conceal the feminine part of him (there's no absolute male or female). This is just a very very simple example to illustrate the theory, in the reality of a normal dialogue, it is still much too complicated for me to explain. And this refers to Concealed to Reveal.

But I think that the opposite stands true as well (not sure if Heidegger mentioned it, I didn't read his works =D) - Revealed to Conceal. While communicating, to achieve the concealment of information, one reveals other information. This should be easier to understand compared to the aforementioned. For instance, if a man wants to conceal his real age of 35 year old, he would reveal that he is 30 year old.

Now, to understand what Heidegger meant by technology challenges to reveal, there's another step missing. We need to understand that there is a concealment of the first concealment (Concealed to Reveal). Without this understanding, we will never be aware of the first concealment of the "truth". This is also necessary for the point (Revealed to Conceal) I brought in too.

Therefore, my thoughts after knowing about what Heidegger said is that we need to be aware that there is a Concealment of both "Concealed to Reveal" and "Revealed to Conceal" in order to reveal the "Truth". In simpler terms, we need to be critical (which I absolutely hates but still trying -.-). Human claim to be the higher being with the ability to think but develop their thinking too far into concealing to reveal and revealing to conceal which resulted in clouding the simple truth. Since we can mold our thinking this far, why can't we develop our thinking further to see the truth?