Man the Unknowable?

‘That defiantly illogical thing known as human nature,’ the view that ‘man is a substance clad in shadows,’ can justly be held to have earned some space in any medium to acquaint people with the ill-known, or the barely-known, or the unknown or the unknowable about the human being. Hence this attempt at covering this topic though in an unavoidably brief and superficial manner. The limited purpose of this attempt is to invite interest therein, considering that the significance of any near-conclusions about it will range over the economic, the political, the social etc spheres of human experience.

John Steinbeck had occasion to observe: ‘No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself. A poet while recommending self-study as a means of gaining self-knowledge says something which will lend substance to the supposition referred to by Steinbeck:

‘We feel, day and night,/ The burden of ourselves - /....the wiser wight/ In his own bosom delves,/ And asks what ails him so, and gets what cure he can.’ The poet continues:

‘Once read thy own breast right,/..../ Man gets no other light,/ Search he a thousand years.’ There is a hitch in following up on this idea/suggestion. The finding by psychology is that by and large man remains ‘an unmapped territory,’ and the exercise to be undertaken by himself toward and about himself and by him about others too will of necessity be a well-nigh endless one, yielding at best suggestive and indicative clues and almost never conclusions to form the firm substructure for any structure thereon which goes beyond the flimsiness of theorizing. Steinbeck’s observation presupposes a certain measure of sound self-knowledge, of healthy self-awareness. That this presupposition is at best cautiously usable is disclosed by JOHARI WINDOW which would have us take note of the fact of the human self/personality being composed of four compartments, viz., the public area, the private area, the blind area and the unknown area. The first compartment defines such knowledge as will be possessed by a man about himself and possessed by others too about him. The second describes knowledge such as is possessed by him about himself and such as is sure to be protected by him as his special/private preserve. The third area indicates knowledge such as is possessed by others about him but is denied to him about himself. The fourth area stands for knowledge which is denied to him about himself and to others too about him. The second and the third areas and perhaps the fourth too may roughly correspond to an area of ‘pretense,’ where the wearing of a ‘mask’ in the act of self-presentation may be favoured and the second may represent an area of defence too. At this point it is appropriate to mention the well-known difference between ‘true motives and the gilded and hollow pretext,’ the former staying put in the ‘private area,’ and the latter falling in the area of ‘pretence,’ itself a means of defence, a barricade a person raises against attempts by others at getting at the ‘core of his self.’ The enlarging of the public area and the shrinking of the blind and the unknown areas may perhaps promote amity and understanding in interpersonal relations, while enlarging self-knowledge. But this may call for willingness to seek the assistance of others and readiness to take to ‘self-disclosing communication.’ This defines in fairly clear terms the task ahead of every human being. But nothing will change the infinite variability of human nature and the equally infinite mutability of conclusions about it. In fact, there is a remark to the author of which one cannot easily give the lie: ‘Man differs more from man, than man from beast.’

Life in the case of everyone provides a chance, an opportunity, a means of test, a challenge, a bargain and what not. How it is dealt within all its aspects proves the kind of man he is. Right here the problem arises, set forth in engaging rhyme:

‘We do not what we ought;
What we ought not we do
And lean upon the thought
That chance will bring us through.’

By way of elaboration, the poet (M. Arnold) says:

‘We would have health, and yet/ Still use our bodies ill; /Bafflers of our own prayers, from youth to life’s last scenes.’ Again:

‘We would have inward peace,
Yet will not look within;
We would have misery cease,
Yet will not cease from sin;
We want all pleasant ends,
But will use no harsh means.’

The poet who addressed the exhortation to man: ‘Know then thyself,’ holding the proper study of mankind to be man, was fully aware of the perils such study is beset with, when he sees in the subject of the recommended study:

‘Chaos of thought and passion, all confused;
Still by himself abused or disabused;
Created half to rise, and half to fall;
Great Lord of all things, yet a prey to all;
Sole judge of truth in endless error hurled;
The glory, jest-and riddle of the world.’

Then the question – not easily answered - follows:

‘Could he whose rules the rapid comet bind,
Describe or fix one movement of his mind?’

In the process man proves to himself the soundness of the view that he carries within himself ‘the cemetery of the dead,’ the hopes, the expectations that died out on him, the aspirations/the ambition that had to be discarded and soon. To worsen matters, it is almost never that ‘man’s ideal goes beyond his infirmities.’ In a painful sense, life’s truth lies buried in this paradox: ‘If you wish to live, you must attend to your own funeral.’ The meaning is plain: if man’s mind is not to become a festering sore, suppurations taking their origin in disappointments, disillusionments, despair born of these and so on, after every such experience, he has to begin his life anew. Every experience should educate him out of a particular way of life and way of thinking such as had given rise to disappointments…etc., into a fresh one. Life may be made up of ‘constant calls to action’ but man should find the time ‘for more than hastily contrived answers.’ How many will rise equal to meeting this expectation?

The unmapped territory referred to in an earlier paragraph defines the area where there is the virtual certainty of endless hide and seek. If this tendency to ‘hide and seek’ is to be kept under severe control, there must be absolute honesty in the very necessary exercise of self-confrontation, self-monitoring, self-appraisal. This is a quality of head and heart which may be very rare. Charles Duff said: Human nature has as many varieties and shades as there are men and women.’ ‘Obsessions, eccentricities and delusions’...etc. are indicated by Duff to have been universally present; he points out how J. S. Mill was insane for some time after which he began his work on ‘Logic,’ how Rousseau developed into a maniac and so on.

A poet refers to the human mind ‘whence vice and virtue flow, honey and gall.’ Shakespeare referred to the potency of the mind in paving the way to either of two possibilities–­making a heaven of hell or a hell of heaven.’ If it is true that ‘life is a disease and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives,’ the human mind will be found to have had a lot to do with the truth.

In the task of getting to know about man, the student has to wrestle with quite a few well-known hazards in reasoning. One of them is when he runs ‘into a prejudice which quite cuts of the view.’ One is when layer upon layer of prejudice thickens into a tendency to ‘stereo-typing,’ when he is ready to apply pitch to an entire category; when he is prepared to give the benefit of favourable assumptions to an entire category, then he will have run into the contrary, viz. ‘bias.’ To worsen matters, the unique in the individual consisting in the hard core of his ‘individuality’ and the conformist in the individual will each present a front past which it will be quite difficult to carry study. Life is ‘perhaps the only riddle that we shrink from giving up,’ but in seeking to resolve it at least to partial satisfaction, we are reduced to devices such as 1. ‘attribution’ the weakness for which will never make us rest until we feel that we have divined (such divination may more often than not, more likely than not, be no different from an exercise of imagination) an explanation of events and actions by persons; 2. the exercise called ‘allness’ hastening to conclusions about a person from the very little we know about him (we may perhaps call it positive allness, when we give a person the benefit of favourable assumptions about him from the little good we know about him and call it ‘negative allness’ when we choose to condemn him from the very little bad we know about him). When the poet addressed an exhortation to the person bent on discovering the mystery of life: ‘Resolve to be thyself; and know that he who finds himself, loses his misery,’ doubtless he knew that he was expecting of man ‘what never was, nor is, nor e’er will be!’

‘Resolve to be thyself,’ is a piece of advice that is likely to leave some, wondering about ‘experience’ and ‘example,’ and ‘advice.’ Are they to be held to be of no relevance and significance, particularly when there has been constant enough advice to derive wisdom and benefit from others’ experience and from wholesome ‘examples’ set by others and from disinterested advice given by others? No doubt there is a measure of contrary truth in views such as that ‘being true to one’s experience is the central requirement in the continued existence of a real self;’ that ‘experience is a dim lamp which only lights the one who bears it and is incommunicable.’ No doubt it is true that ‘Experience is simply an unprincipled witnesss who will give evidence on either side.’ For all the element of truth in these views, we shall be wrong to reject the benefit of accession to wisdom such as may be brought by knowledge of others’ experience; it abridges the toughness of the task of learning from one’s own experience; it saves us time and energy and perhaps other resources as well. As always, the capacity for deriving wisdom from experience – one’s own and others’ – will vastly vary from individual to individual. And the extent to which one integrates the essence of such derived wisdom into the essence of his style of living and thinking will directly depend on the capacity referred to in the preceding sentence.