KEW Acid Test: Why Ask These Questions? (Episode 108)

It’s a good question. Why? Maybe we should always be asking why. When we don’t know why we’re doing something, what’s the point? Whether it’s for money. Or for power. Or to get something. Or maybe it’s a more altruistic reason. The ‘why’ we do things is critical and isn’t it crazy to think we might not know it?

It seems to me the tools we have traditionally used to answer these questions, like Religion, Philosophy, and many of the Sciences, have come up short. Otherwise, would we still be asking these questions?

It’s funny, because I don’t know how many people ARE still asking these questions. But I am. And I know there are others.

This is the main reason I do this blog and podcast. I am curious about whether we are doing things wrong.

And the best evidence I have that we ARE doing things ‘wrong’ are our values. We seem to value extrinsic, human-created concepts like money, power, and status over more ‘touchy-feely’, experimental things like love, relationships, and contentment. Of course, this is entirely subjective, but I also believe there is something like ‘global values’ that are dictated by our Natural selves and our presence in the middle of Nature. This is what the Acid Tests are – an investigation of what Nature can tell us about our human purpose.

I guess I just wish we were more vulnerable in our quest. Less individualistic and more communal. More willing to admit we don’t know. More willing to share our thoughts and feelings. I think things like money, power, and status reduce relationships and focus too much on the individual.

This, again, is why I am taking a more indigenous ‘neo philosophical’ approach to asking these questions.

What if I can maximize my naivety and vulnerability to ask whether Nature has any insight? What if I ask these questions simply because I want to know? What if, rather than resisting the change that is happening – the Natural condition – we ACCEPTED that change is going to happen?

It is the Evolution Paradox revisited.

Natural systems change. When we pretend change doesn’t happen we get into trouble. When we forget we are part of a Natural System, we mess things up.

But change is hard. Even if we stop resisting, how do WE change?

I don’t know, but it is fundamental and we need to stop resisting it. I guess I believe that if we stop resisting it, it will happen on its own.

What we resist, persists.

So not only are the traditional ways of answering these questions NOT providing answers, they are leading us in the opposite direction! We are avoiding, rather than embracing change.

Some people think we can tech our way out of our problems. This kind of the opposite school of thought. I think we have chosen technology as our savior. Unfortunately, technology’s main goal is to avoid change or to artificially reduce the consequences. They don’t go away. We just make more shit and burn more oil. We remain in the same place. We don’t have satisfactory answers to our most basic questions, but we have all this amazing crap. It’s like the late E.O. Wilson said,

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology. And it is terrifically dangerous, and it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” 

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