(ML) How Do We Begin To Think About The World?

The question is really a very vague and general subject that could go any which way.

I suppose the best way in which to start would be to think about the question in fragments... The first part being: "How do we begin to think?"

To try and explain the full psychology of how a person could think would be both futile and unnecessarily lengthy for the purpose I have in mind today, but I suppose the best I can do would be to cover what I think would be relevant in this discussion.

Basically people process experiences, things, or events through their own senses or at least by their own understanding, if they are experiencing things vicariously through the information given to them by others. "Beginning to think" is the stage after taking in information. It is the time wherein they take the information they have and store it either as pure as they can as new knowledge, or interpret through the many different dispositions and biases previously acquired.

Therefore, how we begin to think could follow this pattern: receiving information -> interpreting it according to our own perspectives -> forming our conclusions about the information. This could all just happen in seconds compared to the actual process of thinking in which the conclusions we draw are utilized in the way that we think and express opinions, and for the reasoning we use to make decisions about how to live our lives. This is how people filter information and decide where to place their interest and energy.

The second fragment of the question would be: "What is the world?"

This is, by all means, a simpler question than the first, and yet, perhaps more important in answering the question as a whole. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary presents approximately fourteen definitions for the word "world" and to not narrow down the specific meaning that we want to answer in the main question would be to trivialize answering the question at all. Personally, I think the definition best suited for this situation would be, "the system created by human society by which we comprehend both human affairs and those of the earth." It's really quite convoluted, but I simply mean to refer to the world as not just a rock, but as the place where everything happens.

Now, how do we begin to think about the world?

As one of my friends put it,

There are two ways to view the world:

If you view the world in a pessimistic way,
You see the disasters
You see the corruption
The hopelessness
Most people are evil, they just step on others.

If you view it in a optimistic way,
The world is beautiful
If you look around you, there is life, filling to the brim
There is hope
There is always "another day" to start over.

(Mangahas, 2010) :)

Where do we start, then? Well, the "world," this situation in which we find ourselves, is local as well as global. So, my suggestion would be to work from the inside out, from small scale up to the international scale. For it's in my general belief that things in the most basic units have a way of persisting even as the units become more complex, so there are usually similarities that make it easier to understand things on the global level when we know how they work in simpler units.