Most of the time, we are too busy, too tired, or too distracted to address question of why things are the way they are. Some people proactively discourage the question. Yet the question why transports the mind beyond the here and now, and into the world. We aim to understand things better, more completely, more deeply than we presently do. We look for the greater scale of meaning which explains the things we do, and why things are the way they are. If asked, told, or compelled to do something, we also need to know why we should do it. That knowledge figures into our perceptions of things, our behaviour and habits, and eventually our whole way of being in the world. We need knowledge as surely as we need food and air — as Aristotle teachers, “by nature, all men long to know.” (Metaphysics, 980a). The power of knowledge is decisive: as Nietzsche said, we can endure any what if we know the why.
Without knowledge, we are machines; with knowledge, we are human beings.
Why is your life the way it is? Why is the world the way it is? Set aside whatever else you are doing right now, and think about these questions. You may have a demanding job and a needy family and a large social circle, and thus a lot of work to do. But you are never too busy to do your own thinking. Ask yourself why are you doing whatever you are doing. Ask why you consent to do the things you are asked, told, or compelled to do. Are others relying on your help for some purpose that you share with them? Are you being promised rewards, and are you actually receiving the rewards you are promised? Is there some higher purpose or goal that you are aiming for? Is that goal realistically achieveable?
When you discover an answer, ask yourself why that is the answer. And to that answer, ask why again.
This process of systematic questioning can have a twofold effect.
One is the commencement of social and political emancipation. For the process of systematic questioning eventually encounters social and political authority. We can, and should, question our social, cultural, economic, and political arrangements, and the way powerful people use their power. Systems of oppression of any kind, be they religious, racial, sexual, economic, political, or even interpersonal, always have a core of doctrines to protect. If any of these doctrines have anything about them that fails to correspond to the facts of reality, or that has faulty internal logic, or is in any way nonsensical, we can use the systematic why to try and find it. Examples are not hard to find: for instance the doctrine of the inherent intellectual or genetic superiority of Caucasian men and the corresponding inferiority of women or non-Caucasians. Another example is the doctrine of the laziness and stupidity of the poor. A third is the doctrine that some way of doing things is inevitable, or perfect, or mandated by God or by nature. Examples of the latter can be found across the whole political spectrum, from the Libertarians and Capitalists of the far right, to the Communists of the far left. Those who benefit from a system of oppression cannot question that core: not only does it sustain their privilege, which by questioning they stand to lose, but it also configures their reality. They may be unable to understand themselves and the world without it. And without that understanding, they lose their own souls. Thus when deployed in the public sphere, the systematic why eventually encounters political resistance: those with something to loose will claim that some things ought not to be questioned. At this point, the systematic why becomes more than simply investigative. It becomes provocative. Should the systematic why help to create life-affirming change, it becomes liberating.
The second effect of the systematic question is philosophical and spiritual. For eventually we encounter the insidious endlessness of the question ‘why?’ . No matter what answer we give to the question, it is always possible to ask it again. Any parent of a small child knows this: the child asks ‘why’ over and over again, until the parent either orders the child to stop, or admits he doesn’t know. The persistence of the question in children is perhaps further evidence of how much the human organism needs knowledge, as much as food and air.
The point of asking ‘why’ again and again is to reach a higher point of view. We can continue to ask the question until we reach a cosmic scale. We can eventually attempt to understand things at the highest, deepest, most comprehensive level. For convenience, let us call this level of questioning “the God’s eye view”. Looking upon things from such a view, we hope to learn a few things that can explain everything. Yet from that view we soon find that the question can still never be fully or completely answered. No response to the question ends the cycle; no answer is ever the final answer. Even at the God’s eye view, it remains possible to continue asking the question ‘why?’ In this way, our highest values exhaust themselves, and empty themselves out. Or to use Nietzsche’s phrase, “the highest values devalue themselves”. The question that cannot be answered perhaps has no answer. Then the way is open for the terror of nihilism.
We become overwhelmed with nothingness. So it may be tempting to descend from the God’s eye view and return to the safety and familiarity of the earth — for instance by saying that “it all works out in the end”. But alas, my friends, what we really learn by observing the world from God’s point of view is that the end never comes. Even at the highest level, we have still not yet reached the highest level. It is not that we never learn the answer; rather, it is that every answer (if it is a good answer, an answer which reflects sound logical principles and observable reality) opens up new avenues of wonder which admit of more turns at the question why?. We learn that for any given explanation of things, it is always possible to ask again the question ‘why’, and thus be carried to a higher or deeper scale of meaning which renders the previous scale merely local, merely particular to some given time and place. Certainly we find that the previous scale of meaning is not demanded as universally necessary by nature, or by reason, or by divine decree. In this way, even the philosophical aspect of the question is also socially and politically liberating. It enables us to see that things could have turned out otherwise and can therefore be changed.
I have asserted that the basic question why is endless. Yet if ever we come to a place where the cycle may rest for a moment, at peace with itself, perhaps we may justifiably call that place sacred.
What are those places in your life?
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