The new and ever-changing culture of the world is telling us to stop looking and asking and just hurry along to the unknown end. We don’t have to. We can stop, pause and have the belief that something can be questioned. 

You can do it now as it does not matter how far you’ve been pushed, the years you’ve lived in darkness or the wounds that have not closed. It is still not too late to ask questions and find the right information.

With free thought and untainted answers, we can find the truth in whatever is lurking in the darkness. This is obtaining knowledge. We live in an era where knowledge is at our fingertips, yet we stumble along being told what the truth, is whether the truth being told is true or not.

Questions are useful tools and we should continue to believe that the only stupid questions are the unasked ones. Questions allow us to propose our own ideas and help to understand the priorities of others.

When we ask, we open up a dialogue between ourselves and others. It encourages collaboration and can help us to gain beneficial new perspectives. Asking questions helps us to better understand a situation and make more informed decisions. 

Who, what, when, where, why and how should be based on knowledge instead of feelings, habits and impulses. We all know, though often it is hidden, what is right or wrong, and if not, just ask.

Question everything and understand why we are doing what we do. How we do that is about technical issues and what we do is usually known. Why reflects beliefs, reasons, purpose and objectives of an institution. Responsible answers to questions help to improve the quality of what we do. Observations combined with curiosity and questions help us to learn why we do what we do.

We also must decipher what it is that we are being exposed to. Social media and mainstream news are not always delivering the unbiased truth. Often it is far from this as the truth and agendas do not always balance themselves.

Social media and mainstream news are like the Rorschach test. The Rorschach test is a projective psychological test in which subjects’ perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation. This test is to examine a person’s personality characteristics and emotional functioning.

To say the least, the Rorschach test, with its 300 different reported interpretations for each blot, is slightly controversial. The Rorschach blots and the answers are kept secret. 

Like social media and mainstream news, people can look at the digital blots in the palm of their hand, invent meanings and have emotional reactions to what are sometimes purely illusions. These found delusions exist only in the looking perception of the delusion.

We no longer have the Walter Cronkite type of reporting that delivers factual information without a panel telling us what we are being told as they add their opinions to what was heard. We need to revert back in time and look at Aristotle’s theory.

Aristotle, who made great contributions to logic, was born in 384 BC. His concepts for question and explanation were function, classification and hierarchy; he used these concepts to explain everything. While modern man emphasizes laws and rules, Aristotle emphasizes the search for an accurate definition in terms of their essential properties.

Function

Only human beings have the capacity for rationality. Aristotle concludes that the function of the human being is the activity of the soul in accordance with reason. Reason is what makes us unique. For Aristotle, what it means to be a rational being includes the ability, habits, wisdom and judgment that enable us to bring a complex self into order as it unfolds.

Classification

Aristotle was not the first observer and classifier, but he was the first to systematically record a methodology for doing so. He was a great observer of nature and he formally described and classified hundreds of species. The system he established was based on obvious and visible physical features. 

Hierarchy

Hierarchy is an arrangement of things on a scale from the least to the most valuable. Aristotle believed that everything has an essential nature expressed in its definition and the most important things are its function or goal. 

The highest development on earth is human reasoning or intellectual contemplation. Aristotle believed that the heavenly bodies were gods with greater powers of understanding than humans. He believed that at the highest point, there was a god that was pure in thought, pure actuality, instead of potentiality. 

The idea that everything develops according to potential entails that all things have a purpose or goal. This is different from our modern conception and the push for causal explanations. Instead of asking why, Aristotle asked how. The answer to this question is given in terms of the purpose of the thing or the part in question.

We, as humans, are conditioned to want comfort with no problems or issues that will interrupt our natural movement so we no longer ask. This has become the flow of being and doing that is found in the unwritten guidance of social norms. With the slightest bump or pause in this prescribed way, humans are overcome with stress, building to drama-filled anarchy. 

This clumsy state of disorder seemingly must be shared with each passing person in a display of just how wretchedly miserable things are making your life. This is not living with a free mind, which is far from the parameters of social norms. When you no longer live with the acceptance of what is happening in the now of the moment, it puts a complete halt to the drama in one’s life. Asking and understanding are reuniting you with the perkiness of being. - dbA

You can find more of the unfiltered insight and the Art of Dan Abernathy at www.contributechaos.com. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel, The Intrepid Explorer!