Abstraction

An interface allows you to interact with an object without seeing its inner workings. Hiding an object’s inner workings behind the wall of an interface is known as abstraction.

Even though you don’t necessarily know what’s going on under the hood of a vehicle, you can still operate it by using the brake and gas pedals and other controls. The vehicle’s mechanisms are hidden or abstracted away under the hood. The controls, like the gas and brakes, are the interface that enables you to interact with the mechanisms under the hood. To be a mechanic, one must bypass the interface, the wall of abstraction, to gain direct experience about what’s under the hood. A knowledgeable mechanic knows how the vehicle works.

Metaphors are abstractions that don’t explicitly convey what’s under the hood. To say that one thing is another can help to gain a better understanding, but of course the things being compared are not the same. Metaphors and similes can often abstract away much to make the analogy fit, and it’s not a one-to-one correspondence. It seems metaphors and the like can help with understanding concepts but not necessarily with understanding a thing’s true nature.

For the human, reality is abstracted away. We don’t have to know how it works in order to interact with it. We use our senses, logic, reasoning, and emotions and such to interface with reality. We know what reality seems like, but what is it really behind that wall of abstraction? How can one bypass the interface and gain direct access? Is that even possible for humans? Does the answer lie within science, spirituality, a mix of these? Is direct access the same as transcendence? Would direct contact be too overwhelming? Is it even real?