Puzzles...

There are many puzzles in the world...not the least of which is humans themselves. I have so much trouble trying to really understand other humans....some I get easier than others, perhaps because they are more like me, or so totally opposite to me that their motives become transparent. Others just continue to confound me.

Some people talk a lot, they expound on all manner of things and they wave their arms about in definition....but when it comes down to it does this give us a deeper insight into them??? Do we really know who they are voting for when they stand inside the voter’s cubicle? Do we really know what they are thinking or feeling when they give us kiss hello or tell us that we look ravishing today? (I have these little moments where I recall Jim Carey in the movie Liar Liar and the big gaps between what the mind words are and what the spoken words are).

Some folk are the silent observers. They watch with wise looks upon their faces and occasionally if you are very perceptive you will notice a small shrug of the shoulder, a tilt of lip or a twitch of the eye. You might guess at these nuances but your guess will be tainted by your own world experience, your personal baggage and your prior ‘knowledge’ of said person. What does this all mean? Do you have a real inkling about the individual? Or are you only surmising....even when it comes to husbands, parents, children, siblings.....how deep is our understanding of their inner drives, desires, needs....how well do we listen to the silence between the words, to the spaces between the silence...

Just one enormous puzzle....how many times have we all been surprised at someone’s behaviour? How many occasions have we been caught off guard because we never dreamt someone felt the way they did about something? How many times have we felt cheated because someone did not do or say or behave in the way we had come to expect?

Do we really know anyone? Or do we just know our idea of anyone?

Do we know ourselves or we do just know our idea of ourselves.....do we take this idea from the eyes of those other anyone’s whom we don’t really know????

The puzzle thickens......

Interestingly enough there is now a substantial body of research in experimental psychology showing that humans have highly developed capacities for empathizing which is in fact an ability to assess the mental and emotional states of others or perhaps to begin to understand them. Even though the nature and origins of human empathy continue to be contested, there exists wide-ranging and strong evidence as to the psychological mechanisms involved, the way these materialize in childhood, how they function at the neurological level, how certain pathologies affect the process of these mechanisms, and how human empathizing abilities compare with those of other animals .

But here’s the thing, although humans are obviously sensitive to the feelings and intentions of other agents it has long been recognized that empathy can be switched off for special purposes. ‘For instance when doctors seek to treat gross physical injuries, when military leaders engage in the strategic deployment of troops, and when battery-hen farmers are calculating their meat stocks. Under such circumstances reasoning about other agents stops being empathetic. In other words a personal decision has been made that it is now simply not relevant to consider what the agents in question are thinking and feeling.’

So what we know very little about is how various kinds of environmental, biological and experiential factors promote non-empathetic and potentially de-humanizing responses towards others. So we are still a puzzle…at any given moment that usually empathetic caring and compassionate human that you have known for years may decide to turn off the empathizing factor and function from a more dehumanizing place….and any number of extenuating factors may cause this…the need to keep working at something that is potentially dispiriting, the desire to achieve something that could be hurtful to another, the reminder of something that is too painful to recollect….or a confusing collection of similar probabilities!

The Puzzle gets so thick you can stand your spoon up in it!

When we comfortably assume we understand, all we are saying is that we have reasonable preconceptions that may at any moment be turned upon their heads! Actually we know very little.

The study of human psychology encompasses various aspects of human nature such as personality, emotion, relationships, sensing, etc. Psychology also deals with explaining consciousness and sub consciousness, self-entities and individual thought processes. Several fields of psychology have emerged over the years as a result of continuing research works. Different schools of thought have come up with different theories to unravel the composites of human mind. Psychology is a giant expansive study and it is not finite…there are theories and counter theories and more and more recent updates to existing theories as we study and grow and observe yet more finite nuances….

Humans are a very big puzzle and one thing is for sure, humans like puzzles, we watch murder mysteries because we want to solve them, we do crosswords and play Sudoku because we want to solve them, we gossip because we want to solve and understand the puzzles of our societal groups…and some of us spend our days (and occasional nights) trying to solve puzzles that are superfluous like understanding why we continue to say the wrong things in certain situations, or why our partners always leave the lid off the toothbrush or why no-one else can change the toilet roll…….

So next time your spouse puts his arm around you or your best friend asks you out for coffee or your daughter washes the dishes for you or you feel an empathetic urge to give a helping hand to someone……don’t bother to try and understand it…just accept, any moment your preconceptions could be turned on their head and any moment the arm could be taken away and the coffee could go cold and the dishes could stay piled up and you will wish you had a cave to hide in……just be grateful for the moment and the next moment and the next as it arises and leave your puzzling for paper and pen……toilet rolls will still be left for your attention, and toothpaste lids will still roll around in the sink, but you will have an arm around you ( preferably one of choice) and you will be more rested, because puzzling is quite an obsessive thing now, don’t you think??? Well do you??? And why do you???