The need to know

The need to know – getting my existential jollies

A friend emailed to say that he will not be able to attend a pre-arranged meeting. No problem, I can reschedule my day. I don’t need to know what caused his change of plan.

I wrote the following sentence to send to the BT help desk - “When I am on the BT home page and click the email button the system goes to the login URL but then takes me back to the BT home page without logging in to the email.” But a reboot sorted the problem before I sent the email. I don’t need to know what went wrong.

I don’t need to know lots of things. I don’t bother with the nitty gritties. I get my jollies by wrapping my brain around counter intuitions and uncommon sense.

I suspect that there are different parts of the brain specialised in handling higher and lower degrees of conceptualising - possibly those parts of the pre-frontal cortex that deal with executive functions.

Most people do not philosophise about the grander aspects of their world view. They have been encultured to accept their natal version. They therefore inhabit a predictable, cultural universe which is chock a block with eternal verities:

• The earth is flat.
• Heavier than air machines cannot fly.
• Atoms are indivisible.
• A woman’s place is in the home.
• We share ancestors with the great apes.
• The Pope is infallible.
• Kings and prime minister’s rule by divine right.
• God is dead.
• The war to end all wars.
• Freemarket fundamentalism is the best guide to growing the economy.

My particular nature and nurture has been constantly reworking my world view with its list of verities. I was born into the UK class system as a subservient upper working class, church going, small town lad. But social mobility kicked in through being a boy soprano from seven, participating in archaeology digs from 14 and, studying for a university degree in Zoology from 18. I was a romantic in a tweed jacket who was convinced that the world could be a better place and that there must be better ways to be human. I committed to zero population growth and to experiencing different cultures. The need to know was at its peak.

By my early 20s my world view was informed by three aphorisms:

• The only constant thing is change.
• The only certainty is doubt.
• So – follow the flow.

The western take on the aphorisms drew me to phenomenology, post-modernism and a vision of neurotic nihilists living in existential vacuums. All very depressing.

The eastern take on the aphorisms drew me to Taoism, Buddhism and Zen and to a vision of peaceful meditators living and working in non-egoic mindfulness. All very hopeful – at least in theory.

In the last twenty years or so there has been a blending of eastern and western world views and a rethink on the psychology of perception. The common root is an acknowledgement that thoughts, feelings and moods (TFM) are mind made mainly in the unconscious, and have no abiding reality – there is neural plasticity. The mind can change the shape and functioning of the brain which can change the mind. I feel the need to know more about this.

Evolution has been fine tuning the structure and functions of mindbrains since they first appeared due to cephalisation in ancient invertebrates. Bits of the ancestral mindbrains are still working in the lower regions of modern people including you and me. There are enduring structures and functions that first appeared in reptiles, mammals, primates, great apes and hominids. There are also new bits in human beings – notably the cortex and especially the pre-frontal cortex.

Since our stone age days of foraging these changes have allowed consciousness to be conscious of itself. And this ability has grown exponentially since language evolved, and it has enabled the growth of the eastern monastic tradition, western science and technology, and the hierarchical division of labour. I feel the need to know more about this.

Neurologists have been studying meditators. Their brains are different from ordinary folk. This is a result of thinking this way rather than that. They sit quietly and practice mindfulness. Amongst other things they bear witness to their monkey mind and, in so doing, calm it. Amongst other things the calmness allows a realisation of the ephemeral nature of their cultural points of view and this enables them to be un-attached from ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ and thus to radiate good humoured peace and encourage reconciliation. I feel the need to know more about this.

But who is the ‘I’ that ‘needs’ to ‘know’? And why those needs? And what does it mean to know? And which part of ‘me’ is asking those questions? One of my songs from the 70s has these lines:

“You’ll find plenty question masters
making quagmires of their brain –
The man said, “There is no answer”.
They said, “you are insane.”


I spent many years wallowing in the intellectual, truth-seeking quagmire. But mindfulness arose and with it the pre-linguistic realisation that “the reality which can be described is not the real reality”.  It was therefore arguably permissible, healthy and desirable to be open to change and doubt, to enthuse about counterintuitive uncommon sense, and to get my jollies by ignoring the nitty gritties and by calmly following the high level flow.