Questions and Answers

The story goes that as Gertrude Stein lay dying, one of her friends, thinking that as Gertrude stood on the fine line between life and death she might have some profound insights into the mysteries of life, bent low and whispered “Gertrude, Gertrude, what is the answer?” To which Ms Stein replied: “What is the question?”

While it seems that to ask questions is in our racial genes—and, in fact, one mark of being human is to want to know more than we do—we seem incapable of accepting the fact that some questions have no answers…at least no answers the human brain, astonishing as it is, could comprehend.

But it is the search for answers which drives us forward as a species, and every answer almost always poses a new set of questions. It is our ability to ask questions which separates us from every other living species on the planet. Without questions, what purpose would there be to existence (which, you will notice, is in itself a question)? Answers inevitably lead to change and progress. In fact, answers are progress. Granted, progress frequently has its drawbacks such as global warming and other man-made potential catastrophes which ironically threaten our very existence.

Of all the gifts given mankind, the greatest is wonder…the drive to explore, to see what lies around the next bend in the road. And wonder results in questions, the asking of which is often more important than the answer. If we knew exactly why a rose is beautiful, or what lies beyond the universe, what purpose would there be to human life? Cows don’t ask questions. To have the answer to everything would deprive us of wonder, and make us no different, basically, than cows. Or sea slugs.

No matter how wise we become, it would never be possible too determine the exact number of stars in the sky, or the exact number of grains of sand in all the deserts, or the gallons of water in the oceans because the only constant is change. But even if we had a set answer, could we comprehend it? The current financial crisis is being met by throwing a trillion dollars at the problem. How much is a trillion? Can you close your eyes and picture it? I can’t. Science has estimated there are a trillion trillion stars in the universe. Try that one.

Of course unanswerable questions are not limited to numbers of grains of sand, or stars, or gallons of water in the ocean. There are an infinite number of things each of us does not know about ourselves: how we came to be who we are, why we react to things the way we do, why what pleases us pleases us, and why what angers us angers us. Science—created by man specifically to answer questions—has reached the point where it is moving ever faster than any human can keep up with. In finding the answers to more and more once-unanswerable questions, the answers themselves reach a complexity few humans can comprehend.

Life, as you may have noticed, is a long string of compromises. As individuals, we all must reach an accommodation between what we can know and what we can’t and, like the Serenity prayer says, hope for the wisdom to know the difference. That restriction, however, does not appear to apply to Man as an overall species. The firm assumption that there is no question that cannot be answered has served us well for millennia. It’s just that the questions are getting harder.

Now…where did I leave my keys?

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