Questions

Do you ever ponder why?

Most people will look at this question and probably say, why yes, I do ponder why. I ponder why about a lot of things. I question many of the things in my life. One credit I must give to the human race: we humans surprisingly are capable of many diverse thoughts. Some are black and dreadful. Some are pure white and blissful. Many are are in between. To question is in human nature. We ask, we ponder, we debate, we continually fight against the current of life to get our answers.

Amazing. So much turmoil in our lives.

What I mean when I ask this question is... do you ever wonder why we ask why? Do you ever stop to wonder why it is we have this capability to question. So many people ask so many questions. Questions on life, the arts, people, scientific quandaries, philosophical conundrums, political and economic issues.... how many questions in our life time do we ask? Too many to count, to be sure.

What I find fascinating is this: in my experience (and this is only within my limited scope of things) is that so many skip over this question. Why we have the capability to question. To ponder. To reach out and imagine universes in the soft tissues balled up inside our skull. Most people simply marvel at the ability we have to imagine. Most will attribute it to God, and I believe they are correct. But I believe there might be more to it.

If you consider the possibilities, they really are endless. We have this capacity to wonder. Why? We never really just stop and think about it. We take it very much for granted. We come to decisions, draw conclusions, make assumptions, do all of these things without considering the tools we use. If we did not have these tools, we would be mindless drones. But... why do we have this ability?

There is a saying: Why should not be in a Private's vocabulary. It is a military mindset. The meaning is that lower ranking people should simply do what they are told. The higher ups are meant to think about the missions to be carried out... the lower simply execute. It is a great way to structure an organization, no doubt about it. I understand the methodology completely. However, I want to connect this to modern-day life. Are not so many people we see simply just privates? Do they not simply live their lives, use the tools they are given, and execute their missions? Ask your friends and family. How many of them ask the big questions in life? Questions like why we are here, what is our purpose, what effect do the relationships we enter into have on others, how can we make change in our world... so many more I cannot even express. There are some, but of the 6 billion people on this planet, I would say few really do ask these questions. Few... but more than there have been.

Since the dawn of the Age of Aquarius (the coming of the modern age and the new century, for those of you who don't know what that means), many more people are starting to ask these questions. The problem I see is they are coming up with quick answers to them. Many in history have asked these questions, and you can see a trend. There are many more Gallileos, Da Vincis, Teslas, Einsteins in the world today. There are many more people who think like Jefferson, Socrates, Sun Tzu, Confucius. Many of them are out there; that is why so few actually stand out. That is why our news is bogged down daily with some new group, discovery, revelation, solution to our problems, etc. But the thing is... I think they are only looking "skin deep" as it were.

Has anyone else noticed the progression of man? We jumped, literally leaped, forward in knowledge in the past few centuries. It took us countless years to go from cave dwellers to full fledged cities. It took us millennia to go from warring tribes to trading countries. It took us centuries to go from believing the earth was flat to understanding physics.

How long did it take to go from the passage of a letter to the now instantaneous forms of communication we have? A century? Maybe? At the year 1900, the automobile was barely set onto the ground, a fascinating piece of machinery for only the rich and famous, able to go maybe 30-40 miles per hour. We now have vehicles that travel many times the speed of sound. We have the ability to see far into space. In how long? Less than a century. We went from computers which took up an entire room, able to do only the work of a normal modern calculator to.... what? I do not even know. I own a piece of machinery that can fit in the palm of my hand and hold up to 250 hours of video, play games, tell time in countries around the world, and double (with certain modifications) as a phone and a modern laptop. Look at the iPhone.

The thing I am trying to point out is this. We have all of these great and wonderful advances. And honestly, I think it is fantastic. But I feel a gnawing need to ask the question... are we thinking about what we are doing? All of these answers and solutions that everyone comes up with (and this goes for evangelists and scientists alike)... are they really thought out? Do we really think about why we have these capabilities? What we should do with them? You have all seen Jurassic Park. Remember when Jeff Goldblum points out how those scientists simply created dinosaurs, then before they knew what they had they patented it, packaged it, then tried to sell it. Are we not doing the same with knowledge? Look at the internet. Can you say pop-up?

Are we, as humans, looking at the real reasons why? Why do we do these things? Why are we finding all of these things? Why is the base of human knowledge doubling every 72 hours? Why are humans the way we are? Why?

Ask yourself. Wonder. Ponder. You have the capability... now question the method. Question your method. So many people berate me for this. "Go with the flow, man." "Relax. It will all come together." Now, in some situations, they are correct. I do stress too much. At times, I relate very much to Atlas. However... those are only in personal situations. I see people every day who do not question why. People who just go with the flow. And I am deeply worried that perhaps, if we do not stop and think about where we are being taken, we are liable to hit some white water rapids.

Think about it.