~ The Questioner ~

 

"The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute. 

The man who does not ask is a fool for life."

- Confucius

There is something that needs to be discussed before moving forward, and that is the importance of questions. Wisdom is nothing without questions, but questions can still be quite powerful, even without wisdom, and as I hope to have made clear, knowing how to ask with wisdom is a lot more important than knowing how to state with intelligence.

Do not misunderstand: Intelligence is important. It can be pretty useful for your everyday lifestyle and its duties. It makes the ordinary things much easier, but when something blindsides you and hits you square in the jaw,he only way to get back up again is through wisdom. Most people today seem to focus on having boatloads of intelligence and trying to use it as a compass to help guide them through life without ever getting knocked down.

 

Listen to me. Life is a tricky and sly son of a bitch. You might slide by him once, maybe twice, but every time? No way, boss. You’re going to get hit eventually, and when you do, it’s essential that you have the leg strength, the technique, and the finesse, to stand up again and to do it with style so that all those around you will know, you are not the type of soul to be messed with, or doubted on, even for a second.

Let’s talk about the 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic for a second. We all know that the instant this “pandemic"  hit, countless of us lost our shit. We frickin RAIDED the stores for every last nickel and dime’s worth of toilet paper. Today, most of us look back on these previous actions and laugh. What on earth could have led us to such extremes? 

Well, the fact is that we were all forced to ask questions we KNEW we didn’t have an answer to, and it was KILLING US, both literally and metaphorically. Covid was a complete blindside for everyone involved. None of us saw it coming, though some may have claimed to. There are many questions in life we can’t answer, but some of the ones that almost everyone avoids, every day, are:

 

“What’ll happen after I die?”

and

“How could I live with myself if I ended up killing somebody?”

 

Very few people consistently ask themselves these questions, and almost nobody believes they’ll ever need to find an answer. Most people, when they don’t have the wisdom to think about it, just give the first quick answer they can. “I’m a rather intelligent person. If I don’t have an answer right now, it’s probably not even worth thinking about it.” Or, to sum it all up, when I ask you if you know the meaning of your life, you say, “I don’t need to. It doesn’t matter to me. All I need to do is live my own life. If I keep in good control, then that question should never be a problem.”

Here’s the thing. The questions above related to Covid-19 DID matter, and there was absolutely no way of denying that or avoiding their possibility. You had no control. Even if you tried to gain some, everyone around you would have just treated you like the devil himself, due to their envy. The key, my dearest readers, was to find the balance; not to know what statements to make, but what questions to ask. Sometimes, it’s better to appreciate a good question, than to get lost in search of an answer. My friends, we all must relearn to accept, and even welcome, our own ignorance. Only when we start to accept the fact of its existence can we begin to move forward and conquer it; with a realist's fervor. We must do this, because while ambition can lead you a mile high, delusion will lead you six feet under, and ignorance is the catalyst for more delusions to come than you could ever fend off.

For me, my questions were simple. There were only 2 big ones:

 

1st: How can I best avoid any and/or all suffering, so that I can be a stable support for the people I care for?

 

Well first, I needed to think of my odds. To me, it seemed that there were only 2 options:

1. Getting Covid is inevitable.

Or

2. Getting Covid is only a possibility.

 

If #1 was true, then suffering was inevitable, BUT it was going to be held off until the future. So, the answer seemed quite clear. I needed to keep my potential sufferings out of the present, and in the future, for as long as I was capable of.

If #2 was true, then there wasn’t even a 100% certainty that I would suffer in the future either, and so suffering, out of fear during the present, would take any other percentage, all of which are lower than 100, even 99.99, and raise them, because my present fear would be a certainty, all the way up to the 100%, and when that never even NEEDED to be the case.

In truth, for both situations, being scared of my imaginary, or real, future, would only make my chances of suffering, rise to 100% or above, as with #1, I’d first suffer a 100% chance of fear, and then a separate 100% chance of Covid. Depending on how much suffering you consider “100%” in this situation, as a cap limit, you may say there’s even more than 100% due to just Covid, but if you claim that there are worse sufferings in the world that should be included too, well that just puts Covid into perspective, now doesn’t it?

Knowing this, I simply came to question #2: 

 

If fear is going to be unnecessary and bad, then how can I stay calm?

 

And.. Well, simply read what comes next. I trust that you can figure it out from there.

Covid knocked us all down, but some of us got up quicker than most. These people may not have seemed intelligent to you. Not all of them were, but they all, almost certainly, had some degree of wisdom. When the intelligent man says,

 

“Oh my god. I’m about to die.”

 

a wise man asks, “What do I need to do so that I can keep on living?” 

 

and then…. He waits there. He just lets the answers flood into his mind, brainstorming and including every possibility, even the crazy ones. While hesitation is nothing but poison, patience is often a remedy. To wait out of courage and hope, may lead you to great success. To wait out of cowardice and fear, will lead only to your doom. There are only two types of questions - real questions, I mean. I’m not talking about a persuasive question or a rhetorical one. When it comes to real questions, there are only two types: Those that are dumb, and those that make you feel dumb, at least a little. I prefer the latter.

But how can we use these questions wisely if all the questions lead to answers? Aren't answers considered a form of intelligence to you, Author? It's simple, you just never STOP on an answer. This allows for freedom and flexibility of thought. It’s my favorite generator of serendipity. This contentment with simply focusing on a good question, especially one that bothers you for not knowing the answer to it, is a good thing because it forces the question into the back of your mind. It is often believed to have led great minds to find the solutions in their dreams or while walking down the street. 

Those people you hear about in history? The ones who were walking, saw a bird poop on an old man’s hat, fly away, and then, after seeing all that, discovered the next big hit, or the craze that made them a millionaire? Yeah, I’d bet that most of them had been asking themselves the same question over and over again. They were slightly frustrated to be sure. It made them feel at least a little dumb after all, but that need to escape, that slight discomfort, is what leads them - and you - to great empowerment and revelation.

You should always stop on a question, never an answer. Make the question the priority, the focus. Never allow yourself to think that your answer is the answer, at least not right away. When it comes to finding justifiable solutions and understanding a bit more on “knowing how to think” (the essence of wisdom), you’ll need to learn the value of time, but aside from that, you’ll find plenty of tools in Menu 4: How Can We Be Certain?. 

The second big thing you need to know about the power of questions is their role in freedom and liberty. If you don’t know how to think or how to look for good information, then you will always be at the mercy of those who command and “inform.” I say “inform” in quotations for obvious reasons, but just to be sure that you understand: Many people in the world claim to be an informant for you, only as a tool for manipulation. This world is obsessed with knowing What to think after all, and in a reality such as this, where uncovering those Whats is a challenging task, most people take whatever “intelligence” is given to them, with no fact-checking or anything. This means that whatever is told to them by their designated “informants” is almost always considered the truth, even when it isn’t.

If you can’t ask, “Why should I do this?” or “Do I have to?” Then, whenever someone tells you to do something or says, “This is what you have to do.” You will have no choice but to listen to them. You don’t even know how to question them, after all. 

It's natural for wisdom to lead to intelligence, but it is very unnatural and very difficult to make intelligence lead to wisdom. Questions need answers, and so questions often lead to answers, but many people feel that answers no longer need any questions. If you can uncover How to think, you will naturally uncover What to think, but if you’ve only ever been told What to believe throughout your entire life…? Where is the wisdom supposed to come from, then? Where will be the birth of those questions? To parody Nietzsche: Curiosity is dead, my friends, and we, in all our intelligence, are the ones who killed it.

Most of us have been given the short end of the stick in the United States. The best piece of “intelligence” I can provide you, the best “answer” to the problem, is that "answers" just aren’t good enough, and, quite simply, wisdom is still very much required. If society has already told you what they know to think, but you have no strategies to find out more, where can the societal progress come from then? If everyone thinks the same and has the same limits, then who will expand those limits? Without a doubt, there is no progress towards a brighter future, and someone sees the ignored dimness in the corner of the room. There is no progress towards a better future, without questioning our present, without seeing the gap, the darkened spaces, within our knowledge. How can you find the solution to a question you aren’t asking, and who will fix things if no one knows what problems need fixing? 

Think on it. I will not be giving you an answer.

Just. Think.