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The Tao Te Ching says that we can "know the World without leaving our front door".
When you understand the way things work - how death follows life, how happiness and sadness need each other, in other words how everything has a complementary side - then you can understand the world.
That's one of those sayings that sounds really good in theory, but is a bunch of baloney in practice.
This almost sounds like a dig against Priests. How can someone whose never been married give marital advice?
How can a doctor who's never had cancer treat you for it? How can a psychiatrist who's never had kleptomania cure you?
Isn't it the same for priests? They all tell you what they believe you should do - whether you accept their advice or not is strictly up to you. I would imagine it depends upon the Fear Factor ...
Until you actually do it, you do not fully understand it.
Think about this for a moment. Did you understand sex until you had sex? Did you understand the g-forces of a roller coaster until you actually rode a roller coaster?
My brother is a case in point. At age 52, he and his wife adopted their first (and likely only) child. Up to that point, his entire experience with parenting was vicarious. He understood on one plane but was totally clueless on another. He had all kinds of hifalutin' theories on how children should be raised, how parents should interact with the kid, etc. etc., etc.
And then he brought his own child home. Suddenly, that suburban lifestyle he scorned is looking pretty good. And, just as quickly, he isn't quite so critical of the fact that I don't get out and exercise every day. That's because, suddenly, he doesn't have time or energy to run half marathons or play three rounds of golf in a weekend. Because he never really came to grips with how demanding and time-consuming raising a child can be.
Now he calls me up and asks, "How the hell did you do this with three?" Before I can laugh, I always remind myself that I was in the same shoes before we had ours.
Fully understand, no. I agree with that. However, the emotions and feelings related to certain experiences can be universal, at least to great degree. Sex? Maybe not understand how it feels but the desire is there. Even if someone has not had sex but masturbated has an idea of how it feels to have sexual satisfaction.
As far as the parenting example it is not so much whether they now realize what it takes to be a parent. The work it takes is what people may no experience. Do you have to have been a football player to be a coach? There are cases where people have not been players and have been great coaches.
I believe it was Beethoven or Back, which one?, that was deaf I believe. Did that individual had to be able to hear to write great music?
In every experience there is a basic array of feelings, emotions, philosophical views that are common in pretty much every experience. How thay affect each individual will vary. That is why there have been great human being that helped jews during WWII? Why? Because they did not have to be in camps or persecuted to understand the feeling of oppression, take care.
Yes, I believe it is possible to understand, imagine and even perceive what you have not yet experienced. As in my case, child birth, being a father, a soldier in combat, drug addiction, etc. None of which I will ever experience. Now as for relating to someone who as lived those experiences, that is where I become a student.
How can a doctor who's never had cancer treat you for it? How can a psychiatrist who's never had kleptomania cure you?
Isn't it the same for priests? They all tell you what they believe you should do - whether you accept their advice or not is strictly up to you. I would imagine it depends upon the Fear Factor ...
I think there are two kinds of understanding. One is about the intimate knowledge of feelings. Someone with cancer has these. The doctor treating them is knowledgeable only in terms of concrete things. He can understand cancer, and how to treat it. He can, if he's suffiicently empathetic, get some of the emotional feel, but he can *be* the patient. There is a very good movie called 'The Doctor' with William Hurt, about a cancer doctor who developes cancer, and how in the end it totally changes how he approaches his job and his patients.
There are degrees of understanding. I was in a homeless shelter for about six months. All my 'stuff' was in storage and I couldn't pay for it. It broke my heart to lose the irreplacable things (still does) but I had other things to think about then. But to keep down the noise factor at night I listened to the raido on one of these little dollar store raidos. They had a fire up in the hills above LA and a number of people were burned out. They had a call in show on the local pacifica station about how to deal with the loss.
I haven't been burned out, but I have lost. These people were going to rebuild, and I didn't know when there would be money. But I was with them. It wasn't the same exact experience, but gone is gone.
And deep down each experience is always personal. It's never the same as anyone elses and in reality that is the dividing line we can never cross.
NASA scientist and engineers understand with 100% clarity situations astronauts have never experienced. They use logical reasoning to send them to never before experienced places with confidence. But empathy is part of our cognitive development which helps to guide us. The reason we only need to house a relatively small portion of the population in prisons is because most of us understand that prison is not fun even though we have not been there. The ability to understand what some one is going through is a function of our intelligence, maturity and morality.
For example: I can "understand" that it hurts when a bullet hits your shoulder. I can understand that it's painful. But can I define the experience itself? I don't think so.
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