When the Question Lives

A reflection on why asking questions is the pulse of human progress, and why some societies fear it.

- Abid Hussain Rather

Dostoevsky once said that a time would come when intelligent people would be stopped from thinking, from asking questions, just so they wouldn't offend fools. It's a chilling thought.

Foolishness often survives because it demands blind acceptance. It doesn't like to be challenged. When you start to question, you begin to search, for truth, clarity, and understanding.

And that can be dangerous to those who benefit from silence.

If we really think about it, all of human civilization rests on questions. Simple, urgent, sometimes childlike questions. Who am I? Who are you? What are clouds? What is the wind? Why does it blow, and why does it stop? Why does the sun always rise in the east? If the Earth is spinning, what stays still? If all human brains are built the same way, why do some people seem to think faster, or deeper, than others? Who decides what it means to be insane? If iron sinks in water, how can ships float? How do civilizations rise and fall? How does a thought become a belief, and how does it later grow into a scientific fact?