Which do you think is more important: understanding other people, or understanding yourself?

Question

Also, did your religion influence your answer?

Answer 1

This is the most challenging question I've seen in Yahoo!Answers in some time. Understanding yourself is key to achieving personal happiness. However, understanding others is paramount to harmonious social relations and avoiding conflict. Given that conflict has a way of harming many more people than just the immediate opponents, I would have to vote for understanding others as more important. We live in a world where war has become too destructive and too expensive to maintain. We should all be doing more to promote peace.

Religion did not influence my answer because, based upon my understanding of history, religion is one of the biggest sources of conflict and personal misery ever.

Answer 2

What's the point in understanding other people if you don't have an understanding of yourself? Others' ambitions aren't going to be your ambtions, something that makes another content may not work for you. You have to understand yourself to have any kind of purpose/direction in life. You should never stop trying to understand yourself more fully.

I'm an atheist, and I don't think that religion really affects this question ... except that I feel sometimes the more traditional religions can hinder this process by claiming they have all the answers and not encouraging you to search your own mind.

Answer 3

I believe both are equally important. Because if we do not understand ourselves as individuals who are unique and different than other people, then we will not understand why certain persons act one way toward us and others act totally different.
We also have to understand other people and their differences; culturally, academically, personality, etc. Then we can know how to better relate to them and as an individual person as well.

Answer 4

In understand-how your self, there's a freedom in that. There comes the means to be objective approximately my faults, shortcomings - humbling stuff - that i does not understand or "get" if i did no longer understand myself. and that i do no longer think of that i could understand human beings if i grew to become into so wrapped up in my own rubbish that i did no longer understand my attitude and could no longer understand theirs. i think this is a vote for understand-how your self. besides, who needs to get into the top of somebody like Jeffrey Dahmer? you may under no circumstances get out or be so twisted after examining him which you would be no sturdy for your self, fam. and acquaintances anymore. in user-friendly terms a theory on examining whack jobs.

Answer 5

i think if u understand urself, then u will be able to understand how u react to other people. changing how u react could then help u understand those people. its good to not be so self centered and try to understand others. and yea it kinda did influence my answer.

Answer 6

I think in order to understand others, you must understand yourself.Compassion for yourself as well as others is a gift!!

Answer 7

I think that understanding yourself is a good start.

Yes, because I believe that we all need to make our own decision about the faith we want to pursue.It is a good thing to try to understand others, but you cannot have faith for others. They need to make their own decision.

Answer 8

If you really deeply understand yourself- you will have a much easier time understanding other people.

Answer 9

That is the paradox of the world !! we try to understand others, we try to change others...and we try to find fault in others..

What we do not know is that we have to understand,change and find faults with ourself

When we understand ourself...we understand all

Answer 10

When you understand yourself you will understand most people.
What it all boils down to is, we all just want to survive.
Just plain ole common sense.<><