I grew up in a rather strict household where the idea of ”questioning” anything was virtually unthinkable. Kids were "meant to be seen, but not heard,” and adult life was dominated by a ”duty” to follow and obey societal norms and practices.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, I remember seeing ”QUESTION EVERYTHING” bumper stickers when I was at University, and I also remember a fair number of students who seemed to take that to extremes… extremes I often found rather annoying, in a ”Stop making noise simply for the sake of making noise!” sort of way.
Which brings me to the heart of how I ended up with today’s musings on questioning.
What should we question? And at what point does the notion of ”questioning everything” go from having purpose and meaning, to being little more than an attention getting device?
After walking around on this planet for a little over 60 years, I have arrived at the point where I follow more of a ”question stuff that doesn’t MAKE SENSE to you” philosophy.
Whereas I by no means think we should take the spoon feeding of the public media at face value, I have grown weary of questioning every single little detail of everything. What purpose does that really serve... aside from perhaps annoying some people.
Perhaps the more significant adjunct to that is learn to research, analyze and think for yourself before you just arbitrarily pitch a fit and question why something is the way it is.
Sometimes, I can’t help but think that the tendencies towards extremism in our times — with very little room for a moderate middle — amounts to people either being mindless sheeple or strident firebrands who are intent on compulsively stirring every proverbial pot they encounter on their way… both of which often stem from a lack of foresight and critical thinking.
People increasingly just ”Google that stuff” and even that is sometimes in doubt.
As a thought experiment, perhaps some who read these words are inclined to say ”I can’t believe you’d use Google as a reference for reliable information!”
To which I’ll respond ”I can’t believe you didn’t pause for long enough to recognize that ‘Google that stuff’ is merely a metaphor for relying on random search engine results, rather than thinking through the intention for yourself, thereby proving my point…”
Not a blaming statement, just a pointer that we often get trapped inside our cognitive biases, which are filled with psychological triggers. But then I am also old enough to remember when we’d call tissues ”Kleenex” and making copies ”Xeroxing.” "Googling" is a verb. Check the dictionary...
But let’s get back to what we should actually question, rather then embark on a debate on semantics and precision of language.
There are a lot of things in the world we can readily work out for ourselves, without ”questioning” them publicly. Or, at least, we can close in on the deeper questions, rather than the superficial ones.
”Why is broccoli so expensive?”
Well, probably because the price of fuel — hence transportation — is really high, because the broccoli comes from 1000 miles away, and due to the time factor there is also storage, which leads to spoilage, and then the broccoli ends up on a corporate supermarket shelf where the top level management is concerned with making investors happy through their profits and EPS levels.
But why is my local farmer’s broccoli just as expensive?
Because of greed. Not the local farmer’s greed, but those investors’ greed, which also makes the local farmer’s cost of living higher than it used to be, so their broccoli is more expensive.
But why?
Maybe because we’re all obsessed with always having ”more money.” Not saying that from the perspective of being able to afford our lives, but from the perspective of having created a sense of existence where ”having more _____” has supplanted such things as family, inner peace, contentment, friends, life joy and other factors as the primary motivators for being alive.
In a sense, we love things more than we love people.
Of course, this is an exploration we can go a very long way with. My musings ends back at the point it often does... over generations, it seems we have trained human nature to become something less psychologically healthy than it once was.
And the reason why questioning is such a hot button topic is perhaps that some part of our subconscious senses that we are going down a wrong path.
Are we? Have we?
Thanks for visiting, and have a great week ahead!
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Created at 2024-09-30 00:16 PST
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