"Details are for those who deserve them." This phrase might sound very strange to you. You might even be someone who doesn't particularly like detail-oriented people and criticizes them for not being results-driven. I'm not judging you, but I'm writing this post to convince you of something. Details are beautiful, important, and necessary. That's why details are not always readily presented to you in this world. You need to deserve them. And to deserve them, you need to be searching for them. I'll explain this thought of mine in a rather philosophical way, but I won't neglect its connection to reality either. Before reading this post, you might also want to check out my post called The Philosophy of Not Knowing. In this post, we'll look at what it actually takes to say "I know."
For example, think of any topic that you think you know well. Look, the topic doesn't even matter. I'm going to ask you this question: How well do you know this topic? Maybe you can say "I know it very well." Then I'll ask the next question: How did you learn it so well? You might answer "because I worked on this topic a lot." And finally, if I told you to prove to me that you know this topic well, what would you do? You'd probably try to prove that you know things about it that nobody else does.
Now, in the process of knowing a topic well, if you're telling me "I worked on this a lot," you're essentially saying you spent a lot of time. Spending a lot of time doesn't just mean repeating the same thing over and over. It shows that you've examined the subject thoroughly. By examining it, you become aware of the details, and this makes you feel like you know it well. In the final stage, to prove that you know it well, you focus on the details. So in reality, every person who wants to "know well" has to be a little detail-oriented.
There's a concept we call "doing justice to a topic" in order to know it well. So essentially, we can say that by spending time or sometimes money, you earn and obtain the details. As I wrote in my blog post titled "the philosophy of not knowing" some time ago, a person should never be sure of what they know and should always be open to learning more. Because in reality, it's as if we know almost nothing in this world. At least that's how it seems to me. Because details generally don't just sit out there ready-made; they're like a mine waiting to be discovered. In fact, this feels to me like a custom of God. Rather than showing everything openly, it's as if He allows those who seek to perceive.
In life, we tend to think that people who know a little bit of everything actually know nothing. But when we ask what it takes to know a lot, everyone has a different answer. Knowing a lot is a virtue and it is earned by deserving it. This doesn't come through shortcuts or for free. In return for this time or effort, you master the details. A detail can sometimes be a new angle, sometimes something untried, sometimes an unasked question, and so on. That's why the subtlety of progress is not getting stuck on details, but being able to find them, evaluate them, and put them to use. That way, they can shed light on your path.
People actually do this indirectly when they explain things to each other. If you went to a doctor and asked why you have an itch on your skin or pain in your back, they wouldn't sit down and relay the entire body of medicine literature they've read. The reason for this isn't just that they don't have the time; they know that what they say wouldn't mean anything to you. They actually think, "I can explain it, but can you understand it?" Besides, you haven't put in as much effort as they have, and you haven't actually earned the details.
Narrow-mindedness, prejudices, the love of shortcuts, cunning, laziness, brains that decline from disuse, overconfidence... Because of reasons like these, people started to believe they could achieve a lot with little effort. The material side of the matter aside, in a cognitive sense, I think ignorance is not searching for the details. The reasons for not searching can be different; I can't judge people. But when you look around, you see that many products, people, or companies have become "useless" or "no longer beneficial," and we complain about it. I think one of the reasons for this is the weakening of the will to find the ideal. The thing we call the ideal has two legs: perception and understanding at the macro and micro scales. If you settle for only what you see and know at the medium scale, you actually become one of those who don't deserve the ideal either.
The universe is made up of particles trillions of times smaller than us, and the human brain is made up of billions of neurons... So in nature, everything presents us with the necessity of going into the details. Due to the nature of matter, I think what we call knowledge mostly becomes meaningful by going deeper into the details. I might be exaggerating a bit of course; sometimes you shouldn't block continuity just because you want to focus on the subtleties. Too much attention to detail can also lead to perfectionism if taken to extremes. Especially if you're a Gemini like me, indecisiveness can pile on top of that. I can recommend that you always ask the 5W 1H questions without overdoing it. See you at the next post :)
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