C³

Questions are mind openers. They can expand your perceptional world. After all, why would you question anything if it weren’t for . . the expansion of your previous world? Something felt too narrow, too confined, too limited. You question it, relating to previous experiences with questions which indicated just that: a gain in space. New ways of seeing something you had gotten used to or something new you actually never saw before. Or felt, thought, touched on.

Can questions make you happy or are they also a possible threat? Can they bring you into trouble? (there you have it, all those questions!).

Actually most people think questions should be avoided if they are not of any practical use. Inertia of mind and body seem to suggest that to stay out of trouble you go with the routine, you do what you are told to do, you repeat what didn’t get criticized yesterday. Just function. Be part of the crowd. Don’t question the rules, don’t ask yourself if those rules have any validity, don’t ask whose interests are behind those rules and, especially, don’t ask if those interests are also in your best interest. Hide, put your head in the sand and shut up.

This is the recipe for slavery, of course. In that scenario one is completely dependent on the will of the few who define the rules and declare them to be ‘normal’ or even ‘natural’ to give them some pseudo validity and otherwise feel fairly safe because they are in control which is what they worry the most about.

So, in order to avoid your soul aching and protesting too much you create fake questions. The purpose of fake questions is to solidify the Status Quo and to protect your inertia.

Fake questions ask: isn’t it good to follow the rules whoever implanted them? Isn’t it good to just follow authority? Isn’t it good  that our politicians rule every bit of our lives because, after all, every common citizen ought to have nothing to hide, right? (This leaves out the notion that control works only ONE way, since there is no transparency on the controlling side – they have all the means and use them to hide anything they want. They just cry: security! And that is supposed to be an argument.)

Fake questions question anything that could threaten the Status Quo of anyone else’s life. Fake questions satisfy the fear of the person already so fearful of herself that aggressive projection towards others have become second nature to her. Fake question never expand one’s horizon. They never question authority but frequently question existential rights of minorities or anyone else considered to be weak. And since they are paired often with low self-esteem they question your very own right of existence.

Aren’t those foreigners bad for our country? Why do we need artists? Or creativity? Why should we be more conscious and wake up from our slumber? Aren’t we already god-like? Etc.

Fake questions protect little gardens of fake security instead of expanding one’s horizon. Those little gardens have to be presented with a huge amount of self-importance, which is actually the basis of any fake. Fake questions indirectly foster violence because they support fundamentalist righteousness.

What are useful questions then? A laconic answer would be: everything else. Everything that questions unhappiness for happiness. Suffering for fulfillment. Hate for love. Violence for peace. Control for self-organisation. Anger for joy. Prison for freedom.  

A practical question in this direction?

How far would I want to go?

What is my next step?

What am I scared of?

 

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 14th, 2009 at 8:41 am and is filed under Cultivation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.