Truly understanding people takes both time, effort
How many people do you know? At the top end, sociologists would say no more than 150. Sure, you may have more acquaintances, but those you can rightly claim to know (demographics like age, career, marital status, etc.) likely fall below that number.
Now, as you mentally scan the people in your social circle, how many do you actually understand as opposed to merely know? Few, I suspect.
People become familiar with us by observing what we say and do, and how we engage with them. But, in today’s hyper-connected and time-crunched world, it is common to simply skim the psychological surface of someone’s nature. Via technology, our public personas are visible through multiple conduits, often creating the false perception that knowing about a person is the same as understanding her or him. Not. For instance, a Facebook user may have lots of “friends,” but what exactly does this sort of so-called friendship entail?
We call this kind of knowing “aboutism.” It occurs when we believe having information about someone passes for grokking who he or she actually is. In fact, the latter necessitates a deeper dive into her or his thoughts, emotions, personality and values, a form of inquiry requiring an investment of time and engaged presence that proves challenging in our hit-and-run social environment.
Interpersonally, we don’t learn much from information alone. Truly understanding a person requires shared experiences, a mutual kind of “felt knowing” rather than “thought knowing.” So, in the context of relationships, even having a wealth of data about someone is insufficient for creating a genuine sense for who they are.
For example, when I visit someone’s social media pages, listen to them speak or read their ideas, I am not necessarily experiencing them as a human being so much as simply gathering facts about their public persona. To then assume I comprehend them as a person is an illusion — a popular one, unfortunately.
Consider our political firefights of late. When told someone is a Republican or Democrat, I know something about them, but I don’t grasp who they are, what they believe, or how they came to their opinions. To catapult from this extremely limited information to a set of beliefs about that individual is a major miscue, one that often promotes divisiveness and conflict.
Knowing is more popular than understanding because it’s easier. It offers a shortcut to labeling people as us or them, trustworthy or not, safe or threatening, etc., so it requires little or no thoughtful inquiry.
Even in presumably close relationships (spouses, partners, family members), some settle for knowing over understanding. Once convinced we know the other person, we may stop seeking to actually comprehend who they are.
And because we all change over time, trading understanding for mere knowing drives disconnection. People we may have understood at one point in their lives are not frozen in time. We need to keep looking inside regularly.
As Einstein said, “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.”