What Happens When People Don't Ask Questions?

Special Features

BY ARLENE HARDER, MA, MFT

Everyone is curious about something, even if they don’t know how to formulate a question about it. Everyone would like to understand themselves better, even if they haven’t been taught how to be introspective. Everyone wants less conflict in the world, even if they don’t know how to go about making that dream a reality.

We're born with curiosity. A little child will drive her parents crazy with a thousand questions. She'll keep asking until she receives a satisfactory answer. Unfortunately, something happens after many of us grow up; we lose that sense of intense curiosity.

There are several reasons we're reticent to probe for more information than we're given or to delve deeply into why we believe as we do:

In school the focus is on learning the "correct" answer rather than on asking questions.

We don’t ask questions because we're afraid if we do so we'll be thought stupid for not knowing what we think we should have learned long ago.

Every day we are bombarded with so much information we're afraid that if we ask questions we'll get more information that we don't have energy to absorb.

We have accepted a religious or philosophical point of view that claims to have all the answers and any further questions would upset the comfort we have in what we already believe.

What Happens When We DO Ask Questions?

When we don’t ask questions or when we just accept what we're told is true, we are at the mercy of someone else’s opinions and the facts they use to support those opinions. Yet at the center of most of the world’s conflicts, in which we are embroiled whether we want to be or not, are firmly held beliefs that don’t take into account, or recognize, the value of other points of views.

When we are able to push ourselves beyond what we assume we know and what others tell us is true, and when we explore whether or not the opinions of others make sense to us, we can see the world with new eyes.

The willingness to question our most cherished assumptions is the first step in finding a new perspective on the conflicts and extremism that divide us today. Just as a pebble thrown into a pond creates ripples that spread out in wider and wider circles, people who ask interesting, fun, and challenging questions of themselves, and of others, can form the nucleus of an energy that can turn the world around.

The more we are willing to go beyond easy answers, the more likely it is that we will find common ground with others. Also, knowing that others are asking the same questions we are asking, even though they may arrive at a different conclusion, connects us all in a new way.