Fraternity

I have been thinking about something that happens in the human psyche which is basic and instinctive, but at the same time quite profound - one of those occurrences when two pieces click into place with a satisfying snap, such that one knows that they were designed to fit together.

I am thinking about the coupling of the personal pronoun I with the transitive verb to understand. Not just the language use, but the mating of the concepts represented by those words.

Bipedalism, one hears, is the trait that lifted the heads of Homo sapiens. I won't deny that this is a great convenience, but I think the above conceptual association is the thing that really raises us off the ground. And I would add that the calculations and reasoning surrounding the claim need not be complete or accurate to produce the sanctifying result. The instinctive claim to understanding is enough, whatever nonsense Mssr sapiens believes he understands. He begins to scale the cosmos, the stars and nebulae becoming his handholds, the galaxies his stepping stones, and he finds himself eye to eye with beings very different from the animals walking the earth.

Nor can he easily go back, returning to the soup below to escape the angel's conversation. I understand I am but broth does not serve one well if he also believes broth has no claim to any sort of understanding. All is meaningless might serve, if one could limit his language and thought to expressions of fear and desire, but those pesky notions of injustice, propriety and truth continually ambush the organism. Like an infantryman deposited onto a beachhead, under fire and with an angry sea at his back, the only way open is foreword attack.

And pressing ahead, determined to grapple with the vast unknown that waits on the other side of understanding, the combatant will glance to his right, and to his left, and find that he is not alone, and that he advances in the company of his brothers.

Such is understanding, our status, and our university.