A civilization cannot survive for long if it stops asking the right questions.
I used to think there were no bad questions. Kind, overly kind, teachers even suggested this was true. Enough years of examining self and seeing my flaws showed me that this was not, quite, right. There are bad “questions.” Bad “questions” are insincerely asked.
Sometimes as a student, I would ask a “question” that merely was a way of showing how much I knew, or thought I knew. “Given Taylor’s views on Timaeus, that the dialogue is a conflation (insert windy words here). . .what are your thoughts?” Call this the Pompous Ass Question. Some political reporters have made a career of this sort of “question.”
Other questions are insincere because they merely reduce to a form of edutainment. If I ask a question and do not care what the answer is, if nothing will change not matter what is said, then this is not a genuine question. Learning can be fun so the Fake Question has entertainment value, let’s see what this teacher says, but the style of the answer counts far more than the answer! The Fake Question also may prod the teacher into an answer that will drain time in class so the insincere student can escape the dangers that might come from learning. At other times the Fake Question combined with the right knowing looks, signals that the questioner is smart and intellectual. He or she is the “right sort.”
Other bad questions simply set up a lecture. This is the kind of question that asks: “Why do you believe in God” only to have stock answers ready regardless of whether they fit the answer or not. A certain kind of “apologist” does this as well: “Given any answer, I will respond with my prewritten, memorized response.” The question was just a setup up to a lecture. The Telemarketer Question is insincere, because merely a setup to get the sucker, I mean interlocutor, into the branching answers that some guru has taught the questioner. Like any good telemarketer script, the question is simply an invitation to controlling the conversation to close the sale.
The worst sort of question is the Attack Question. The questioner does not wish to learn, but is attempting to entrap someone into giving a dangerous answer. Sometimes this “wrong” answer can be used to fire up a mob to kill Socrates. Meno begins his conversation with Socrates with such a setup. Jesus got a good many of this insincere questions, where the leaders tried to trap him into giving deadly answers. These bad questions are prelude to violence, either verbal or physical.
A civilization in decline begins asking insincere questions. The elites do not examine themselves sincerely, instead asking Pompous Ass Questions that show each other how much they know. Others spend a lifetime ignoring philosophy, but cultivating an educated image through Fake Questions. Education, philosophy, and religion are commodified and hawked with Telemarketer questions. No matter what the answer, the solution is to borrow for this credential, this book, this video, click on this brand building website. Finally, the enemies of the fakery, the grift, the pompous, find those who like Socrates and Christ ask real questions and shut them down. The questions are attacks that imperil.
The only hope is, at that moment, for good people to refuse bad questions. We have to stop. We have to ask what is on our hearts, expecting to listen, with the possibility we will change. That is how the just city can come to be.
*Based on a devotional for a Junior class on Meno at The College program at The Saint Constantine School.
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