It
is all about a question about questions
Today’s 19th May 2021Times
of India Chennai edition centre page is very interesting because it is imbued
with the importance of questions:-
Starting with its Sacredspace quote,
"I
beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to
love the questions themselves. Do not search for the answers, which could not
be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point
is, to live everything. Live the questions now. And perhaps then, someday far
in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into
the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke. Followed by two articles:-
1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-edit-page/why-is-it-so-wrong-to-ask-questions/
2. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/toi-editorials/ask-tough-questions-learn-why-did-the-severity-of-indias-second-wave-take-modellers-by-surprise/
Subsequently, in its global page quote gives a subtle clue as to how the answer can emerge through this quote of Charles
Baudelaire, “Nothing can be done except little by little”.
We see the evolution of present trend from question-rich and answer poor environment
to answer-rich and question poor environment.
Too many seem to be in the mould of Tom Stoppard, “My
whole life is waiting for the questions to which I have prepared answers”, than
that of James Thurber, “It is
better to ask some of the questions than to know all of the answers” or think
like Richie
Norton, “Questions
open a space in your mind that allow better answers to breathe”, or as Voltaire, “Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers”, or
as Richard
Feynman, “I would
rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be
questioned”, or as Claude Levi-Strauss, “The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers,
he's one who asks the right questions.”
We need to question this trend as to why? How?
We need to try to answer them. As Susan Greenfield writes, “when you try
and find an answer to a question, you are on a quest, a journey with a very
clear goal: each step is sequentially linked in a linear path that eventually
leads to a specific and different destination...This is how a thought process would
differ from raw instantaneous feeling, through the sense of a narrative over
time. It is this experience of the goal-directed passage of time that I have
suggested gives each of us a unique life story and the events and people within
it a unique meaning. As T.S. Eliot
so eloquently described it in Little Gidding:
We
shall not cease from exploration
And
the end of all our exploring
Will
be to arrive where we started
And
know the place for the first time.
This last line is the whole point, the
original place is actually now somewhere different. The very effort we invest
in the journey of discovery, in the time spent joining the dots and making
connections across networks of neurons, gives an importance, a significance, to
what we learn, so that we see things in a new way….we are in a reverse
scenario,……where our brains are saturation bombed with answer but where it is
not hard to be distracted not lose sight of what we wanted to know at the
outset”.
Nicholas,
D., Rowlands, I., Clark, D., & Williams in Google generation II:
web behaviour experiments with the BBC. Aslib Proceedings conclude that “the
propensity to rush, rely on point-and-click ,first-up-on google answers, along
with the growing unwillingness to wrestle with nuances or uncertainties or
inability to evaluate information, keeps the young especially struck on the
surface of the ‘information’ age, too often sacrificing depth for breadth”.
Neil Postman, “Everything we
know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal
intellectual instruments available to human beings.” Besides, as Mehmet Murat Ildan writes, “You don’t have to
answer every question that comes to your mind because some questions are like
‘matryoshka’ dolls; once opened, new ones come out!”
The evolution of human answering mechanism has been from faith to
fantasies to facts but have any of these helped the questioning mind to have
real experience or experiential wisdom that could wipe away all our ignorance?
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.”
Criss Jami, “Doubt is a question mark; faith is an exclamation point. The
most compelling, believable, realistic stories have included them both.”-
As Milan
Kundera, in The Unbearable
Lightness of Being writes, “Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones
that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly
serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a
barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no
answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human
existence.”
Shannon L. Alder, “Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It
happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your
whole life.”
As Vera Nazarian writes, The
Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration “It's a fact—everyone is ignorant in some way or
another. Ignorance is our deepest secret.
And it is one of the scariest things out there, because those of us who
are most ignorant are also the ones who often don't know it or don't want to
admit it. Here is a quick test:-
If you have never changed your
mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the
basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are likely
ignorant.
Before it is too late, go out there and find
someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers
certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a
basic honest conversation. It will do both of you good.”
Everything that has ever existed and continue to
exist or anything that has happened or continue to happen quiet often has its
own inherent logic, principle, purpose, value, strength etc. In addition they
are or act as some pieces to fit into the jigsaw puzzle of life.
These two
important factors:-
1] Inherent
logic and
2] Being
part of the jigsaw puzzle of life which keeps moving in its evolutionary path
are attributes of almost everything.
Unfortunately the whole or complete picture of life
is yet unknown to many of us [if we are honest and humble enough to accept] but
not unknowable. This unknown mystery is so because of various factors of which
the two most glaring are our chronologically limited mortal body frame and the
limited abilities and perceptions of our mental frame and this prevents us from
simultaneously perceiving many things at both the micro as well as macro level.
But despite the limited existence of our individual
body and all the limitations of our mind, we as human beings have explored the unmapped atlas of life enjoying,
experiencing and enlightening ourselves in the process. Life as whole has been
constantly reciprocating us with both sweet melodies and bitter tragedies in
the course of our explorations and experiences.
Life has manifested its splendor through the
excellent contributions and developments leading humanity to the zenith of
advancements and enhancement of living conditions as well as pushed humanity to
the nadir of existence because of some destructive and decadent activities.
The destructive and decadent activities are not only
the tangible material ones but also the psychological ones, social ones
and so on.
“Language was invented to ask questions. Answers may be given by grunts and gestures,
but questions must be spoken. Humanness came of age when man asked the first
question. Social stagnation results not from a lack of answers but from the
absence of the impulse to ask questions” -Eric Hoffer, Reflections on the Human
Condition, 1973
But asking oneself too many questions may
indicate some complex. Miriam Toews says, “Perhaps depression is caused by
asking oneself too many unanswerable questions”.
Asking obviously puerile questions connecting irrelevant factors must be avoided because
at the outset they sound silly as Edsger Dijkstra gives a classic example, “The question of whether a computer can think is
no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim”.
Question about questions 'Language was inv...- Mind Map (mindomo.com)
https://www.mindomo.com/mindmap/question-about-questions-language-was-invented-to-ask-questions-answers-may-be-given-by-grunts-and-gestures-but-questions-must-be-spoken-humanness-came-of-age-when-man-asked-the-first-question-social-stagnation-results-not-from-a-lack-of-answers-but-a80e84e2b98526a2e0d3eaa665ce1214
