Baby, you understand me now
If sometimes you see that I’m mad
Don’t you know no one alive can always be an angel?
When everything goes wrong you see some bad
But I’m just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood
— Nina Simone
Being misunderstood can be painful, especially when you have good intentions.
The movie Atonement comes to mind. Featuring my favourite female actor, Keira Knightley, it is the kind of movie I would rewatch and recommend to anyone who has ever been misunderstood.
As long as you can speak, you are liable to being misunderstood. The words that come out of your mouth are within your control, as are those that you write or type using your fingers. The interpretation of those words is not. Everyone is therefore susceptible to being misunderstood as long as they have words. But it goes deeper than that.
As long as you’re a physical entity, you are liable to be misunderstood. Pygmies in the heart of the Congo forest have been misunderstood for centuries. A while back, Tanzanians were looking for albinos following the claim that they are the secret to riches. Further south, in Mozambique, bald men were hunted for the same reasons. It appears you don’t need to speak to be misunderstood. You simply have to exist.
That goes for ideas. Perhaps a good example is the idea of laws and theories. I was taught that a law is irrefutable. A theory is inferior to a law in this regard. Upon further reading, I discovered that they are no different. A law is a theory, but marketed to minimize reproach. Principles, such as that by Archimedes, are also psychologically framed to avoid critical attacks. You don’t even need physical reality to be misunderstood.
Existence, whether physical or abstract, is all it takes to be misunderstood. We’re all in the same set. That being said, like in the Animal Farm, there are those who are more misunderstood than others.
Blacks were thought to be closer to monkeys and chimpanzees before we developed more powerful tests and lines of thought. They continue to be discriminated against and misunderstood based on questionable ideologies. Jews also fall in a similar category.
In the persistent search for power and in efforts to preserve it, being misunderstood can be weaponized, for good or bad. A weapon need not fire to have its effects. The antlers of an impala, the fanning hood of the cobra, or the horns of a buffalo are enough to signal to anyone who dares to approach with malicious intent. And even then, they may be misunderstood.
When Nina Simone laments not being understood, she verily had suffered because of it. It is not enough to write and sign about it. As Dana Meadows emphasizes, the channels of distributing information are not the most powerful means of moving the load. You have to change the paradigm. You have to shift the mindset.
It may be difficult to reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into, but once that threshold is crossed, the chips fall into place. The one doing the explanation may not know when they have achieved transformation until it is manifested in the other party. All the while, they hope not to be misunderstood; a delicate dance.
Ideas and people
What’s understood ain’t gotta be explained
But you don’t understand me, so let me explain— Lil Wayne
My sister once told me that what the world does not understand, it breaks. Those it cannot break, it kills.
When you’re not understood, you are clearly misunderstood. Sometimes explaining yourself works against you, especially if the claim comes from a significant figure. For instance, Kendrick calling Drake a paedophile is difficult to defend by coming out and saying you are not one. Yet, not speaking up may have others believe that the claim is true. Misunderstood 101.
Ideas, too, can change over time. Does this mean they were misunderstood or that there were layers of it that were never peeled? Consider evolution. Darwinian evolution is different from the Modern Synthesis. Darwin didn’t know about genes, but he knew about the heredity of traits. His biggest issue was that heritable, outlier traits should dissolve over generations of mix-up and reproduction so that quirky traits should reduce their quirkiness. Essentially, diversity should reduce over generations. However, diversity loomed. Mendel’s laws of independent assortment were not known at the time.
How then did we move from an improvement of Darwin’s ideas to factions within the same school who argue vehemently while claiming to be Darwinian? Richard Dawkins believed in gradualism, while Stephen Jay Gould advocated for punctuated equilibrium. Can we say that they misunderstood each other? How can they continue bashing each other’s ideas if they haven’t understood them? Or is it a case of misunderstanding Darwin’s ideas?
Misunderstandings can in themselves be used by businesses. Sex is a good example. We have little knowledge about the role of sex among humans, despite our claims. “Little” might not be the preferred word choice, but it keeps us grounded in testing our ideas of the act.
For instance, the female orgasm continues to be a mystery. Women don’t orgasm as frequently as men during sex. Penetration is hardly the only way a woman can get pleasured. Women who climax during heterosexual encounters are, as a first approximation, outliers. Businesses take these outlier examples and promise that they can make women orgasm. There is little surveillance and follow-up, so they continue to make these promises. Every generation brings a new cohort of women to exploit. Business continues to boom. Meanwhile, an informative book by Emily Nagoski will only have a single release and possibly get lost in the pile of written work. Magazine issues continue to sell at every issue. Nagoski’s masterpiece likely tapered in sales years ago. The idea of orgasm thus continues to be misunderstood, and people continue to make a profit from it.
I could use the same argument for mental health. We don’t have lab tests to validate one’s mental health status, unless the condition is organic. What we have are questionnaires and a diagnostic statistical manual that changes every other year. Advocates of mental health continue to mushroom online, and influencers virtue signal to preserve their audiences. How can we tell who’s being understood or misunderstood? The patients who think they are patients? Or the practitioners who may or may not have good intentions?
I have been a subject of misunderstanding for the longest time. It started when I joined medical school. Many people believed I went to Alliance, a top school in the country. I didn’t. Explaining myself doesn’t usually help. I cannot walk around with my result slip to prove people wrong.
Others claimed that I am a womanizer. I later discovered that I have traits that would pass for a classical womanizer. Does loving a good conversation make you a womanizer? A shameless flirt? Or just someone who listens actively and is interested in stories? Everyone has a story. Few people have an audience for these stories.
The one that got to me was that I was a snob. I was joining a new class in my third year of medical school, after a year out. Those who sat close to me thought I was a snob. I didn’t know the people. In contrast, they had known each other since their first year. Isn’t keeping to oneself normal in that regard? She later confessed her thoughts after we became friends and erased the label.
Being misunderstood is more common than we can claim. The AI spring may be the right time to crack open this problem. Here’s how:
Good communication requires experience with good communication. The best place to find that is in a book or written work. Whether the reading culture is catastrophically declining is somewhat ambiguous. What is clear is the countless hours spent online and on social media. Therefore, unlike books, more time is spent interacting with articles that do not nurture good communication with the reader. When these individuals reach out to AI platforms, seeking free therapy, they get just what they want, but with poor articulation. Without the proper descriptions of oneself, they misunderstand themselves and assume the AI platform gets them, transforming their misunderstood selves from a flimsy idea into a concrete one. They then label themselves as the AI did and use it to defend their actions, especially when it registers to their friends as odd.
Being misunderstood is more serious than we can easily claim. It is not a problem that can just be swept under the rug.
In other kingdoms
But I know you don’t understand
’Cause you thought Little Wayne was Weezy, but Weezy is Wayne— Lil Wayne
As a lover of evolutionary biology, you can bet that I have to speak about other living organisms. My favourite example is fungi. Introductory classes paint fungi as odd creatures, saprophytes that feed on dead and decaying material. It hardly surprises us that we, too, have to kill most of our food to eat it. Anyway…
Even among fungi naturalists, there exists a cohort that once believed that some fungi were imperfect. Imagine that. A label of “imperfection” implies that there is a perfect version. According to these naturalists, the perfect fungi sexually reproduce. Those that did not were imperfect. Thus, they were called fungi imperfecti. Highbrow claims such as these further imply that the naturalist knows what the perfect version ought to be.
In essence, when you encounter evidence that contrasts with your ideas, you should not assume that the evidence is wrong. It is evidence. It usually means that the framework one uses needs an update, not that it is pristine, without blemish. Black swans exist as evidence against the claim that all swans are white.
As a misunderstood lot, fungi are hardly featured in popular scientific works. To my knowledge, the only author who tried to do justice to their veritable contribution to the biosphere is Merlin Sheldrake. His book, a must-read, covers just enough to make anyone interested in the fungal world.
For instance, all vegans have to pay their respects to fungi. Fungal root symbioses, responsible for over 90% of plant species, could have been impossible without this misunderstood kingdom. Honey fungus is expansive, covering large acres of land, with one particular example having lived for over 2000 years. This fungus existed before Jesus wept. What’s more, it is the largest organism, larger than a blue whale. Talk about being misunderstood and yet being the largest, most visible organism.
Fungi allowed the transition of plants from the sea to land. They break down rock to deliver minerals to plants. This is the basis of the root symbioses. Lichen, which covers all the shorelines of most continents, are a composite organism, comprising algae and fungi. They were the primordial inter-kingdom handshake that started the march of greens on land. And yet, lichens, too, are misunderstood.
Perhaps the most misunderstood fungi of them all are the ones that supply plants with food, offering nothing in return. Typically, plants have an agreement with fungi. Plants package light into starch and deliver it to fungi; fungi, in turn, break down rocks to deliver minerals to plants. However, there is a small group of plants that only take from fungi without giving anything back. Some biologists call these plants thieves. But are they? Or are they also being misunderstood?
Voyria, for instance, has beautiful petals. When you break their fragile stems, you don’t find the widely spread features of xylem and phloem. You see mycelia. The transport channels are fungal. They are also located in the dark crevices of forests, where sunrays hardly penetrate. And yet, their flowers continue to attract birds and insects, which would never have found their way into such dark corners.
Insects and birds enrich these dark places. Some drop pollen and others drop fecal matter, all of which will enrich the soil and benefit the fungal networks. So, are these plants thieves really, or are they misunderstood agents of life’s diversity?
What I’m trying to say is…
To be misunderstood is to live. And in some cases, it can lead to death.
Boltzmann had a fantastic theory about the statistical interpretation of thermodynamics. When he thought the world didn’t understand him, he took his life, so we’re told. Alan Turing, the genius behind the cracking of the Enigma during World War II, also killed himself because he was misunderstood.
That we can all be misunderstood means we should give each other the benefit of the doubt. We need to be more understanding and generous in our interpretations.
And as Simone laments, to the bold voice that tries to defend their ideas, we hope that they don’t get miserably misunderstood.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube