“Intuition” and “Enlightenment” are bedfellows

Both of these are very interesting words indeed, because they lay down, together, at the rare crossroads between logic and spirituality: on the left, we have hard-coded fact, and on the right, what gets called magic.

I like how “Enlightenment” belongs rightfully to many people: the Age of Reason is commonly known as part of the Enlightenment era, and yet, there are many enlightening experiences tied to religion which might be considered quite unreasonable by scientific means.

Similarly, “Intuition”, as defined, speaks of the truth without a “reasoning process”; not necessarily sans “reason” per se, but a quicker way to get from A to B without explaining how. Enlightenment, of course, falls into that same camp many a time: metaphorically, if there’s a light shining on your face, I don’t need to repeatedly remind you how bright it is. It is.

User interfaces, good ones at least, are often referred to as being intuitive: a shortcut for saying,

“I found it easy to use and things work the way I expect.”

One might have an enlightening experience as a result of such a well-designed UI, and intriguingly, while we may call the steps leading up to the final product a well-thought-out one, the architects did the thinking so the user didn’t have to — which doesn’t necessarily denote stupidity, but rather, less wasted brainpower.

I love both words dearly, and care even more about using them effectively.

Tagged as: General, Ideas