Understanding Humans

Man, he says, is curious. He reports this boldly to his universe, and in so doing achieves this description by several meanings of the adjective. Perhaps he wonders most why he wonders at all.

He has found the mysteries of his world deep, its recesses frustrating. He plods on, caring not that his tools are crude, nor that he is somewhat blind and deaf. Amazingly, he finds among his discoveries not only that there are fruits to such labor, but that the labor itself is fruit. The map, the treasure. Bit by bit, building on blocks laid over millennia, he has now, only recently, begun to unravel the great enigma of his existence.

Though the sky makes a lot more sense to him now, he’s not so sure just how much he knows, and doesn’t know. As he gazes afar at these things he can’t fathom, he grabs for explanations that he can. He seeks to know his world, and understand it. He needs it, and realizes the converse may not be true. And as his society becomes increasingly complicated, he desperately needs still more knowledge, to guarantee the one thing that matters to the universe regarding the species in the first place, that he survive at all.

Hence this volume. “Understanding Humans” is designed, simply, for anyone who wishes to gain insight into this extraordinary creature. No matter what your level of education, you’ll learn something by reading this book. And no prerequisite is needed; this is the prerequisite, your indispensible guide to understanding humans in The Modern Age.

The author is a primary care physician, doing the job in what they call “the trenches”. It is at this end of the profession where, should you so desire, you can get to know, intimately, hundreds of thousands of humans. At “the office”. Or in the ER, or in clinics at The U, and the VA. For each and every of them, a story, a unique journey and circumstance. The secrets of their struggles, and the idiosyncracies of their milieu, carry the clues to the workings of us all, and of “all us”, together.

“Understanding Humans” is a conversational effort which utilizes that special language called American English. So please, excuse all the neologisms and the occasional bad grammar, and the relative plethora of quotation marks. Though deeply complex issues are presented with pluck and parsimony, be sure of this: “Understanding Humans” is at no times flippant.

The book is divided into four sections. It starts with a very flighty discussion that challenges the reader to begin to understand the world of science’s newest “way-out” theory, the one they call “Chaos”. It is a new way of looking at literally everything that is and has happened in our universe, so to understand anything, you have to know something about “Chaos Theory”. The author admits to having read little on the subject, so what is presented is a fresh view of this fantastically interesting concept. This section, titled “Simply, Chaos”, is far and away the book’s most important entry in its table of contents. (It may be necessary to surf the internet on a few of the concepts discussed.)

The middle section of this guide gets to the fun of behavior, of humans. Here one can learn to recognize the troublesome actions of relatives and acquaintances, and people in the news, and to understand the roots of their own problems. In a separated section, the functional human is discussed, including insights regarding identity and substance abuse, and a simple narrative on the physicalness of this beast presented as an analysis of the titanic struggle of flexion versus extension.

The back of the book contains a scattering of essays that are meant to inspire thought on an array of modern issues. From “Don’t Feed the Humans”, to “Life’s Hard, Not Easy”, and “The Spoils of Capitalism”, and others, there are afforded certain provocations.

They say it’s more important to know all the questions than it is to know all the answers. So if you, too, aim to be counted among the curious, then ask questions, good questions, to yourself. Look harder at what you see. Wonder what, and then why. It will require all this and more if among your goals is understanding humans.