I was talking to Ahmah the other day about why we sometimes end up behaving completely differently around different people and in different situations. It almost seems a bit hypocritical.

But when you think about it, it's not really. You aren't changing who you are, but you're respecting the people whom you interact with.

For instance, when you go to a church, you don't wear a bikini. It simply isn't decorous (is that even a word?). Instead, you wear something that's appropriate to the occasion. In the same way, when you're around different people, you need to be sensitive to them - to talk to them about what they're interested in, to monitor your behaviour such that they are comfortable around you. It's a sign of respect.

Cycles of knowledge

I was reading John's blog when it dawned on me (I was going to say struck me, but as I've said before, my thoughts don't travel fast enough to strike) that a lot of knowledge is circular.

First of all, knowledge is circular because from the day we are born, information is being overloaded into our system. To get on with life and move on, we have almost no choice but to believe in the information, and trust that what our parents tell us is true. We cannot really establish any one truth move progressively, because that's not the way information in this world gets relayed to us. Instead, we can only assume temporarily that something is true, and use that truth to lead to new conclusions. Information is thrown at us in the disorganised, chaotic pattern the world seems to be ordered by (allusion to Chaos Theory, which is really not at all chaotic), and we have to somehow fit the pieces together. We use the incomplete puzzle to try and create and put in new pieces of the puzzle. In the same way, we assume that what we know is true, and that the way we've fit the puzzle pieces we have together is correct, to try and create or join together more pieces of the puzzle. Then looking back, we see how some of the temporary beliefs we have formed are likely to be true because it fits in with the rest of the pieces in the puzzle. In a sense, it's circular reasoning, and hence technically a fallacy, but it's really the only way we can know. Even the so-called basic Truth, cogito ergo sum, is vulnerable to circular reasoning.

Secondly, a lot of levels of understanding and growth are cyclical. As you mature, you realise how juvenile and naive your thoughts were before, and you change your mindset. Then you mature some more, and you realise that what was juvenile and naive was actually best, so you end up reverting, or regressing to these mindsets. It happens a lot in artists too. They start out with the childlike drawings, move on to realistic art, and regress to a stylised form of art not unlike that of a child's.

 In fact, that's evidence that Chinese culture is more matured than Western culture. Just look at the number of years it took for the Chinese to realise that art wasn't simply about just trying to translate reality onto canvas as realistically as possble, and compare it with the West. For the Chinese, if I remember correctly, the transition was just that, a transitory period lasting maybe a dynasty or so. For the West, it was ages.