Oct 16, 2016 08:23 PM
Every question is a sentence. Every sentence is a speech act. Every speech act is an outcry---a viscerally felt call for alleviation. Therefore every question, and indeed the very act of questioning, is an outcry for an answer--and a request to an answerer. Questioning assumes answerability. And since every answer is also a speech act, it also assumes an answerer...a comforter...a Thou that hears and provides certainty in our state of confusion and fear. What is the nature of this Other that is assumed with every outcry? What happens when noone answers? When the baby cries and cries in the night and noone is around to answer. It cries itself to sleep. And it learns to stop crying. Hence the social pressure not to question. To buck up and man up and just endure the ongoing confusion of our lives. Big boys don't cry. To just go along with the crowd and quit questioning and not complain. To walk about in a daze of detached apathy and alienation and numbness to the senselessness we see all around us.
“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being