Developing Usable Experiences

Truth and “sense-making”

November 3rd, 2006 8:32 am —  163 views

Before I get all crazy and lost in the philosophical waters of truth I need remember the truth of this context. This context being the one wherein I’m pounding my fingertips on this keyboard in a cold basement office early in the morning sipping coffee with a small space heater blowing at my feet. I’m blogging as an exercise in articulation and not to get all “philosophicallacious” on some soapbox being a oneway street selling ideas. Okay. Maybe that is part of this but still, I have to remind myself that blending ideas being taught in my classes with my persistent patterns of thought and habituation will help me retain what is being taught.

The topic being considered this week in a class on social systems and collections is that of “sense-making”. The heading in the syllabus is “Social systems produce value through sense-making”. There is much to say about sense-making. While reading a couple chapters in a book on sense-making I was struck by similarities to buddhism. Worth noting at this point is that the notion of “Truth” that I started on the other day is realized in the practice of buddhism and it is through my studies on buddhist understanding and practice that I was able to articulate to myself a satisfactory explanation of truth. It took awhile, just like it is here, but that really doesn’t matter. This is an exercise in articulation. It doesn’t matter if its read or not.

Central to all sentient beings is conscious awareness. Paying attention to what is going on around you is critical to the preservation of the self and the accumulation of knowledge. Our brains allow us to context-shift between different categories of thinking. That is not entirely accurate becase thoughts aren’t really categorized until we say they are categorized but I won’t go into that right now. Saying this another way, in order to stay alive and function with other beings, one has to be aware of their circumstances. Since awareness is controllable and can be broad or focused, many details go unnoticed. With our complex brain we are able to mentally reconstruct and re-enact circumstances (missing tons of detail of course) in a way that affords reflection and analysis. By doing this and other mental things while at the same time paying attention to what is going on around you is what allows one to make sense of truth.

Put one way, “truth” itself is nothing more than the edge of this vast cosmic knife slicing it’s way through the fabric of nothing. Nothing before, everything after. All awareness relies on this single knife edge and all beings share this truth, this moment, this “now”.

Getting all “zen buddhist”, truth is “what is” and to understand truth in this way is to pay attention and look around you. Our memory allows us to preserve a few scant details but immediately begins modifying and embellishing those details. The act of thinking and remembering is not this. This is this and there is no substitute. Needless to say, what we remember is never what actually happened, but that doesn’t matter. It only matters when what is remembered is utilized in some way.

Thinking requires memory. We can think because we have memory. It is thinking and awareness that powers sense-making. We are constantly cycling through what is coming in from the senses and what is being held in our memory all the while thinking and moving ourselves about in some magical way governed by impermanent structure that seems like freedom. The seemingly endless cycle of thinking is what makes time and without truth as I have described it there is nothing. Literally nothing.

But getting back to truth, at least from where this thinker sits, I must be getting to my habitual patterns for a “Friday”. Thanks for listening but this isn’t over. Not at all.

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