Uncensored Questions

I lay awake for a while pondering the first dream (See "Interview for Questions" below.), then drifted off again and had a very short snippet of a dream. In this second dream I saw a two-tab file system superimposed on an image of the brain. The first tab was labeled “Pain”. The second tab was unlabeled. On the face of the lager area of the folder beneath the tabs was the word “Tolerance.” It was unclear if it was on the folder labeled “pain” or on the unlabeled folder. That was all the action this dream contained.

Still asleep, I perceived that this was a model of how we begin instruction for the very young. The “Pain” tab was actually labeled according to what we strive to avoid. We want the youngsters to experience happiness, curiosity, and comfort as they approach a new body of knowledge. The word “Tolerance” stood for the inclusiveness we strive to achieve. Not only do we work to include all learners, we also want all learners to include all their classmates. Therefore we help them filter out any words or questions that may cause discomfort to their classmates.

This all seemed good and normal and definitely not new or insightful. But suddenly, I saw that in doing this, we were actually cutting off a segment of the good questions they might have later asked. Key point! If we are brought up to self-cancel any questions that might offend or cause discomfort to any individual or class of people, then some of the most helpful questions may die before they are born.

To assume that every culture, every ideology, every individual presents equally valid ways of approaching life is to tacitly state that nothing can actually get better; no correction is needed by anyone. And the only way to believe that no corrections are needed is by believing that no mistakes have been made; that is, every culture, ideology, or individual gets it right the first time. Therefore, there is no real need to teach critical thinking nor to engage in discussion. Education itself is not possible. In contrast, we know that education is needed. Mistakes have been made. There are better ways of doing things. Progress is still possible, even desirable.

If people grew up learning to silently cancel any questions that might cause discomfort to a neighbor or challenge another person’s practices, they would unwittingly lose some of the very questions that would have added depth and breadth to their pursuit of knowledge. They would injure that deeper ring of honest, high-quality inquisitiveness (which was the focus of the first dream.)

Our daily walk must include uncensored questions, just the way the Lord or genetics or situations give them to us. Intelligence guides our search for answers, and wisdom vetoes many of our options, but we need to respect all our questions, even the rude ones.