Blind Beliefs, Whys, Ignorance and Kilo

Whether it is science or religion, most of us prefer to follow or believe blindly as it is a more convenient and easy option.

This whole preamble is to take you on a journey to explain the funny details behind ‘kilo’ as per science, link given at the end.

But instead when we start to question the why? What? And How? We stumble upon lot of interesting information and learn and gain some knowledge.

Without why?  What? And how? Our lives would be unimaginative, dull and passive like inanimate objects.

It is not only in questioning but exploring to seek the answers for these why? What? And how? Whatever source they emanate from and in all possible ways, is what educates and emancipates mankind.

In this process of enquiry, we must steer clear of impenetrable jargons, lukewarm sea of half-baked theories, the illusion that life and its meanings and problems can be reduced to some specific straight-jacket dogma, and delusions of fettering axiomatic certitudes like something is said to be so and therefore, it is so; and a whole lot of other such aspects of the culture of escapism, and indifference and lies.

Of these ubiquitous trinity of why? What? And how?

Let me take up only why here. The word Why is a magical word.

Small children use it to keep their parents talking on and on without end.

Unfortunately, it is not only to keep their parents talking but also out of inquisitiveness.

Inquisitiveness is what produces a wide range of characters starting from an eavesdropper, a scandal monger or a clandestine voyeur or a gossip giant or a spiritual mediator or a social inventor, etc.

So the type of reply a parent gives to a child’s enquiry of a why? (out of inquisitiveness) will produce such a “deep” impression that, the child’s mind would start using the question why to get a particular expected answer and also produce any of the above referred characters depending upon the parent’s reply.

Very often parents tend to give clever replies like a tourist guide who, when once, a lady asked him “How a row of fine rock formation were piled up”, said “they have been piled up here by the glaciers”. When she anxiously asked him “Where are the glaciers?” he replied “Madam, they have gone back to get some more rocks”. Such replies are often the result of ignorance, half-knowledge or impatience or all of these.

I, for one, would rather like to go to the maximum extent possible to find the answer for all the whys that arise in me, for, I believe in what Phenella writes in “The Unwritten Comedy”.

“To be ignorant of many things is expected
To know you are ignorant of many things is the beginning of wisdom.
To know a category of things of which you are ignorant is the beginning of learning.
To know the details of that category of things of which you are ignorant is to no longer be ignorant.”

http://contentwriteups.blogspot.in/2012/07/kilogram-story-how-much-is-kilogram-by.html