Thought
I often have an experience I call "running into a wall on the road to understanding," which is failing to understand something so completely that there might as well be a wall there blocking understanding. It often comes up on concepts like racism; I cannot even begin to comprehend judging another person by something as trivial as the color of their skin. But sometimes it happens on a smaller scale, too. The smaller-scale ones are things like jokes I don't get, or failure to notice something that someone is pointing at. The small-scale walls generally have a way around them, if I have time to figure it out. Large-scale walls, however, generally do NOT have ways around them. (Or if they do, I have yet to find them. And in the case of some concepts, I don't WANT to find a way around the walls.)
A couple things about the walls occurred to me today. One is that, whether large or small, a lot of the walls exist because my brain just doesn't work the same way as others, or because I either wasn't exposed to certain ideas or never paid any attention to those ideas earlier in my life. But other times it's because part of me knows what someone means and doesn't WANT to know. :-)
A couple things about the walls occurred to me today. One is that, whether large or small, a lot of the walls exist because my brain just doesn't work the same way as others, or because I either wasn't exposed to certain ideas or never paid any attention to those ideas earlier in my life. But other times it's because part of me knows what someone means and doesn't WANT to know. :-)