Thoughts about our need for an explanation.
 

Hello all.

Wondering about-- how powerful is our need for an explanation when contemplating the unknown?

And so on--

petex

Incredibly powerful. Science is founded on this need. It seems perhaps to be humanity’s calling to strive for greater understanding.

For me, more important is to know why I am here, now; what I have to do here, now.

I'm assuming by knowing you mean knowing ultimate truth and in reasonable detail how it all works after death. That is the age-old question. :biggrin:

It was important for me in the past and that was due to a splinter of doubt and fear. Now that the doubt is removed the fear is gone and the need for knowing is also gone.

It's an intellectual impossibility to know the unknowable and that's part of the problem. The mind absolutely detests that conundrum. It is wont to reject paths that don't seem to have a solid explanation as to the details. Too simple. Fairy tale. Pipe dream. Fantasy. Or it blindly accepts without questioning and understanding, adopting an unquestioning, inflexible, dogmatic and overly literal interpretation of a path. Either way the conundrum is removed but never truly understood.

How does it all really work? I haven't the slightest clue and that's okay because in the end it just is, and what I believe or disbelieve doesn't amount to a hill of beans. It's okay I don't understand because I'm not designed with the capacity to understand. There are far, far more things I'm incapable of understanding or doing than I'm capable of. Why should this be treated any different?

Hi.

We might also wonder when the process of understanding--or perhaps more accurately--seeking to understand--begins. Certainly at birth, possibly before? but whichever, the new born begins the wondrous and complex process of fitting together cause and effect using evidence provided by the sensory faculties--which the new born is also having to investigate and become familiar with ( as a personal opinion, if ever there were needed evidence to support ideas concerning the miracle of life, then imo this immediate post natal development provides such evidence, for it is amazing)

Wondering on a little further,

Is this process connected in some way with the realisation of "self" being seemingly distinct from what is sensed,--observed, touched, smelt, heard, and so on ?

petex

Explanation is nothing more then learning. I feel it's about the now as opposed to the afterlife.

This is a good point, explanation can lead to concrete outcomes such as medicine and cures, something very specific. It is incredibly easy to see this in science and even in terms of events in past actions (in the present now) on the learning curve of past spiritual actions that have led us to now, such as we don't do now. Just pointing out we can see the importance explanation (has) leads to and does it continue. I'm sure the thought of explanations of the past were frowned on before having the same question today of need. It will lead to cause and effect.

I think it's cause we're wanting to understand the world around us cause of how vast it is, and wanting to learn cause of it, and it helps create spaces for growing, thru explanations and sharing understandings thru perspectives.

Re post 7.

Wondering how explanation(s) based upon supposition fit in with the suggestion that "explanation is nothing more than learning" ?

Mythologies could be considered as examples of explanation based upon supposition--?

We might imagine that explanations contained in mythologies are in response to there being a need for a satisfying answer ?

petex