Pat Thomas This is a unique moment in our history. Everything is changing. Everyone is worried, everyone is overwhelmed, everyone is confused. Everyone wants answers. But if you want answers you have to ask questions, and asking questions is a skill that many of us – overfed on the bounty of the ‘information age’ – have largely lost.
The global Occupy movement is showing us a deep, collective desire for change. At the moment it’s on the leading edge of that energy, just out of reach of articulation and grappling with what it is, what it stands for and where it wants to go.
Chances are, even if you haven’t pitched a tent outside a bank in your city, you may be grappling with the many of the same concerns.
Albert Einstein is generally credited with saying “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” You’ve probably heard that one a lot lately. But in order to start thinking new thoughts we have to start asking new questions.
Whether we are aware of it or not, we ask ourselves questions all day, every day. “Can I sleep another 15 minutes?”; “What do I want for breakfast?”; “Can I make the 8.15 train if I leave now?”; “I wonder if he/she will go out with me?”; “Should I have worn a different outfit?”
The busier our lives get, the more short-term the answers we seek become. In fact, a lot of the questions we ask ourselves are designed to get us through the next hour or so. They don’t require much in the way of time or a considered response; they don’t tax us too much but rather just keep us ticking over. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way; we all have to live.
But the world is an increasingly complex place and we are all personally, and as citizens of the planet, under increasing pressure to make sense of an awful lot all at once.
To ask a different question is to begin a personal quest. Questions have a way of creating momentum, of moving us forward. Questions define and refine our thinking and our philosophy of life; they are the basis of our search for the truth of things.
The art of asking a good question goes right back to Socrates who believed that there were six types of useful questions. These were for: conceptual clarification, to probe assumptions, to probe rationales, reasons and evidence, to question viewpoint and perspectives, to probe implications and consequences, and to question the questions themselves.
Now would seem a good time to put some Socratic teaching back into our schools, to help arm our kids with the tools they need to face the future with confidence.
If it all seems a long way from ‘what should I have for breakfast?’, it probably is. But don’t despair. There are lots of ways to shift focus. Most of us already know about taking a breath and counting to ten – even if we don’t always practice it! Finding time each day for mindfulness and reflection – a space to ask for help and guidance – is also beneficial. Therapy helps. Journaling does too. A friend’s shoulder to cry on does as well.
There is also a unique web-based project called Infrequently Asked Questions. The project features two virtual decks of cards with more than 100 questions each. The CultureShift and InnerQuest decks prompt the user with the kind of questions each of us needs to ask when we find ourselves on the threshold of a new challenge – whether personal, cultural, technological or philosophical.
They work like Tarot in that we often draw the cards to us that we need – even if their meaning is not always immediately apparent or the answer immediately obvious. But unlike so many ‘oracles’ which offer easy answers and benign reassurance, the IAQ decks are firmly grounded in the notion that we already know the answers. Accessing them requires only that we ask the right questions.
The IAQ decks exist to promote reflection and critical thinking and to give us an opportunity to consider our opinions and beliefs, feelings and assumptions more deeply.They can help us break out of difficult conceptual frameworks both personally and collectively.
For example, almost everything we are exposed to has some sort of cynical sell behind it.
A concept like family, for example, is used by every group trying to get some leverage. Protecting the family (personal or collective) is used as call to action for the environmental. But it is also used as a reason for war, a reason for staying in a damaging relationship, a reason for covering up everything from child abuse to illegal, unethical behaviour in the corporate ‘family’, and an excuse for the hard sell of billions of dollars worth of useless, even harmful antibacterial hand washes for your kitchen and bathroom.
Asking the right questions breaks through the cynicism of these frameworks and helps us get closer to what is really going on. It provides the tools for us to think about our issues and challenges, both personal and collective, in less conventional ways.
Questions are a manifestation of curiosity and curiosity builds awareness, appreciation, and understanding. They make the mind active rather than passive, make us attentive to new ideas and open up new worlds and possibilities.
IAQ is a game – but it also has a serious purpose, because the time has come for all of us to get more curious about what’s going on inside and outside of our own lives.
- Pat’s previous AlterNet post is here.
© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.
