“Is there a pill for questions?”
I have yet to be asked this question - presumably because anyone capable of formulating such a wild question is already showing themselves to have intact “questionification factor.”
What I have observed, particularly of late during covid, is the seeming inability of some people to ask questions. Which leads to the puzzle of what factors may block or enhance question-asking.
Human beings are made up of multiple layers, from the physical to emotional to mental to spiritual. Is it generally presumed that mental or spiritual problems, such as an inability to ask questions, has a mental or spiritual cause.
However, psychiatrists and many other professionals (school teachers come to mind) are acutely aware of the influence of physical factors on the mind. With psychiatrists, a variety of drugs are used to alter mental function. With school teachers, a trip to the schoolyard to “run off” excess mental energy.
“Hey man, I can see the molecules in my fingernail. Did aliens build the pyramids?” This is a caricature of the effect of marijuana on some users’ minds - the expansion of awareness and loss of mental filter on what is correct to say/ask. Some people describe the effect of hallucinogens as removing the “consensus reality” blinders under which our minds normally operate, which relegate talk of aliens (or angels) to the realm of the unspeakable/unthinkable.
So, hallucinogens touch on the issue of how our bodies, via brain chemistry, influence our ability to ask questions.
I will leave the question of “how did covid stunt our ability to ask questions?” open for now…
J-M, this is a wonderful post but no comments? Let me be the first. Questioning is the essence of being human. The Canadian philosopher/theologian Bernard Lonergan wrote that if a dog has nothing to do, the dog goes to sleep; if a person has nothing to do, that person asks questions. And Irenaeus noted that the glory of God was a person fully alive, which included doing nothing so as to make room for questions. Also, Richard Feynman come to mind, ‘I’d rather have a question I couldn’t answer than an answer I couldn’t question.”