Unanswered, Unanswerable Questions…?

And we add to that, “Questions We Don’t Know About”.  Or, rather, questions we don’t know yet that we could or should be asking.

Since the dawn of history man had already amassed a lot of answers – the primary reason being the fact that we asked a lot of questions.  However, and this seems to be the perplexing part - instead of depleting the repository of our collective queries more questions are raised for every answer generated.  It is akin to peeling an onion where the onion gets bigger instead of being reduced to the core.

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

― Socrates

It is the young children who truly exhibit that trait when they pepper their parents for answers because indeed they know nothing but, alas, beware the day they become teenagers because by then they know everything.  Fortunately, or we hope so anyway, after all the bluster of youth, they’d come to the realization that they actually know less than they thought they did. That is the only passage to adulthood, thus lowering for a bit the threshold to maturity.  If they fail to make that transition, that is, by continuing to believe that they already have all the answers then they will have committed the biggest blunder of their lives – failing to ask any more questions.

First, we begin on the lighter side of {un}answered questions. By now we already know the myriad answers to, “Why the chicken crossed the road”?  There are as many as there are clever people and even more from smart alecks.  The chicken has no idea how many of the folks actually spend time to come up with the answers, which is likewise bewildering to many farmers.  One farmer made the observation that it is always city folks who ask that silly question because from among his circle of friends, nobody knows of any chicken crossing any road. On the other hand, poultry raised chicken has not the slightest clue what a road is.  Nevertheless, the question continues to endure.  And each generation begets different answers.

Then there is the greatest mystery that ever straddled the world of philosophy, metaphysics and quantum theory, “When a tree falls down in a forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?” You see, the question first surfaced sometime in 1710, ascribed to Philosopher George Berkeley, then appeared as a magazine topic in 1883, Scientific American later gave it some prominence and renowned Physicist Neils Bohr and Albert Einstein both chimed in with their own visions of it as it related to their fields.  Believe it or not, the whole issue of whether the “unobserved world functions the same way as the observed one” was debated not in the fringes but way inside the prominent circles inhabited by scientists and philosophers alike.  We can understand philosophers dipping their fingers into it but classical scientists as well?  Well, it gets into quantum physics, where the mere act of observing affects the outcome of events or the behavior of particles.  I am in no positon to discuss those but just so you know.  We do know they make a sound from a GEICO commercial, known for its whacky TV ads, where one lady was asking another about whether a falling tree in the forest made a sound when no human was around. The next scene in the ad showed the tree groaning and moaning about its predicament after hitting the ground.

So, what should be in our list of questions worthy of idle musing?  First, what is unworthy of any kind of debate is the one waged between the sexes.  King Arthur from the Broadway musical, “Camelot”, on advice from Merlin, gave up on the whole idea of trying to understand what a woman is thinking; Henry Higgins’ brutal honesty got him nowhere with Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” and the eternal ire of the feminist movement. Notice, I am quoting fictitious characters. That is the safest way I can detach myself from the debate; get it out early and never to discuss it any further. I’ve been told that the guy with a T-shirt that said, “I don’t Google, my wife knows everything” later took it all back and burned the shirt.  That settles that.

Where is everybody?

That, by the way, was a very serious question asked by Enrico Fermi, renowned nuclear physicist of Manhattan Project fame, both Fermilab and the sub-atomic particle, fermion, are named after him. When confronted with the idea that the numbers so overwhelmingly favor the existence of intelligent life forms all over the universe – many possibly far more advanced than we are and the estimates dictate that many had mastered space travel as to have explored every section of the universe - Enrico Fermi wondered that if that were true, then, “Where is everybody?”

Well, if they’re out there they may be too scared to come near our world after carefully observing us from a distance.  We had been noisily announcing our presence since after we’ve transmitted the first telegraph messages, followed by radio, TV sitcoms and now all the chatter from social media, so they know we’re here! That may have done it.  We will forever remain isolated.  The other possibility is that they may already be among us; which explains the strange behaviors we see from some folks or why some of us do strange things.  With apologies to anyone out there near Alpha Centauri in case you’re scanning the Blogosphere with your sophisticated algorithm.

Will It Be Possible Some Day to Live Forever?

The answer is actually another question: Why?  Also, “Is one average run-of-the-mill lifetime not good enough?”

Seriously, let’s make this one other thought experiment.  Let’s say you were born in 1054 A.D. and had been living since through the present day. You will have seen the rise of China’s Song Dynasty, when Spain was under the Caliphate of Cordova, the rise and fall of the Byzantine Empire, the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the plague in Europe, the colonization of the Americas, Africa and many parts of Asia, the U.S. Civil War and many other localized wars, the potato famine in Ireland, countless earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, more famines in diverse places, WWI and WWII, the Korean and Vietnam Wars … and you’re here now. Somewhere along the way, perhaps earlier than you could possibly have tolerated, you would likely have opted for an exit. How many miles would you have had the stamina to walk, train for battle, go through many generations of children, traveled on horseback, but went for a very long time without indoor plumbing … You get the picture.  We ask ourselves today.  Would you really want to live forever?  How many times have you gone on vacation when during the last three days of it you wanted to go home?  Think centuries of history and you’d know at some point you’d want to rest.  This is one great example of, “be careful about what you wish for”.  I say that the Creator made sure we get to see our great grandchildren at the very latest of our existence but not much more.  That is yet the greatest benevolent act of kindness from God.

If Congressional Politicians’ Favorability Ratings are in the 10-15% Range, Why Do We Keep Electing Them?

 A great question … yet to be answered.

This was supposed to be a serious discussion but where did the time go?  Well, perhaps a more profound musing at some other time.