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The Importance of Questions, and How

They Make The World Go Round.


You have to adventurous enough (and humble enough) to enter the
know nothing zone of constant questioner.

By Charlie Pike

A seed that blossoms into a flowery truth: that is the


nature of the question. Given the right care -- some
drops water here, a few rays of sunlight there -- and a
question can bloom into something beautiful, reaching
its petals into spheres of influence previously hidden by
the hard shell of the seed.
Asking a question can provoke thought, invoke power,
uncover meaning, and explain the inexplicable (to name
a few).

One day, Warren Berger sat down at his desk, cracked


his knuckles, and got to work, looking for these hidden
petals, wondering what they could truly do. His findings
are documented in his book, A More Beautiful
https://books.google.com/books/about/A_More_Beautiful_Question.html?id
Question, where he presents the true "power of =CyLBAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage
&q&f=false

inquiry" that lies in the delicate, shapely petals of the question.

Berger starts by examining the value of inquisition in todays society:


http://www.clker.com/cli
part-gray-quotation-
marks.html As expertise loses its shelf life, it also loses some
of its value. If we think of questions and
answers as stocks on the market, then we could
say that, in this current environment, questions are
rising in value while answers are declining. Right
now, knowledge is a commodity, says the Harvard
education expert Tony Wagner. Known answers are
everywhere, and easily accessible. Because were
drowning in all of this data, the value of explicit
information is dropping, according to Wagners
colleague at Harvard, the innovation professor Paul
Bottino. The real value, Bottino added, is in what
you can do whit that knowledge, in pursuit of
query.

Berger is not alone in this assumption that the stock of questions in education is
rising. In his book The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria explains that
while other educational systems teach you to take tests, the American system
teaches you to think. The embracing of active questioning, of learning to
think, explains why so many entrepreneurs, inventors, and risk takers come
from America.
https://fareedzakaria.com/books/the-post-american-world/

After examining the value of the question, Berger turns his head to the power
of inquiry, looking at why our ancestors first questioned, and how even now
questions can be used to revolutionize our perspectives:
We make that judgment about whats known
based on everything weve experienced already
and as ONeill notes, the more we see, hear, touch,
or smell something, the more hard-wired in our brain
it becomes. We routinely default to the set of
knowledge and experience each one of us has.

This works well under most circumstances, but when


we wish to move beyond that default setting to
consider new ideas and possibilities, to break from
habitual thinking and expand upon our existing
knowledge it helps if we can let go of what we
know, just temporarily. You have to adventurous
enough (and humble enough) to enter the know
nothing zone of constant questioner.

Jonathon Nolans HBO Series Westworld, the storyline is


grounded in this conscious expansion due to questioning
as the programmed hosts begin to question their reality as http://www.imdb.com/titl
e/tt0475784/

they struggle to understand their role in and beyond the


park.

Berger then goes on to explain how to get into the


mindset of productive questioning, similar to how a
vacationing Edwin Land invoked productive questioning
with the help of his daughter:

To question well in particular, to ask fundamental


Why questions we dont necessarily have to be on
vacation, accompanied by a precocious three-year-
old. But at least temporarily, its necessary to stop
doing and stop knowing in order to start asking.

The doing part would seem to be more in our


control to stop than the knowing yet it might
even be harder. In a world that expects us to move
fast, to keep advancing (if only incrementally), to
just get it done, who has time for asking why?

http://www.anotherindian.com/chennai-transforming-public-spaces-pop-art-galleries-wall-celebration/people-looking-at-art/

Having a blank mind, free of bias and preconceptions, is also something A. O.


Scott finds helpful when critiquing. He outlines this in his book, Better Living
Through Criticism: if we pause to figure out what is happening before our
eyes, we may yet catch a glimpse of that rare. . . subjective [universe].

Finally, Berger turns his head to the questions of questioning:

Robert Burton, the aforementioned neurologist who


writes about the certainty epidemic, the
widespread tendency of people to question less than
they should, says that even when people do ask
questions, theyre often relying on those same
unreliable gut instincts and biases. Everything
thats ever happened to you or occurred to you in
your life informs every decision you make and also
influences what questions you decide to ask. So it
can be useful to step back and inquire, Why did I
come up with that question? Burton adds, Every
time you come up with a question, you should be
wondering, What are the underlying assumptions of
that question? Is there a different question I should
be asking?

This type of inward questioning is prevalent in philosophy, as Thomas Nagel


explains in What Does It All Mean: The main concern of philosophy is to
question and understand very common ideas that all of us use every day
without thinking about them.

https://pixabay.com/en/question-mark-note-duplicate-
2110767/

This look into A More Beautiful Question gives us only a glimpse of a


questions real capabilities. If youd like to learn more, pick up a copy of
Bergers book either online or at a store near you. And if youre on the fence
about it, simply ask yourself why.

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