Why?
19 March, 2008

It seems such a simple thing, sometimes, to ask a question. Just decide on the specific area for which you require an answer, formulate a sequence of words that will encapsulate what it is that you want to ask, and then open your mouth. But it is never that easy. You occasionally want to ask about something that is not quantitatively or qualitatively definable. Sometimes, you want to ask why.

Why is the gateway to an ocean, a vast expanse of water populated by a million different species of motivations, emotions and influences, feeding off each other in an endless churning ecosystem of thought. And that why, which seems solely to be directed at the asked and not the asker, always demands another, even deeper and more complex, question. Why do you want to know? You see, why is an interrogation of the deepest kind. The desire to know someone’s motivations implies that you believe that your ordered and rationale mind is capable of judging whether or not another’s mind is even capable of order and rationality, of making a valid decision. Judging whether their mind is up to the job, is at your standard of thought. There is always the possibility inherent in the question why that you will feel that the other person’s reasoning is insufficient and open to ridicule, leaving their why as not good enough. Oh dear, you’ll have to try again.

Of course, we are asked why ever since childhood, and a child is, in its first instance, the only one capable of giving the sole honest, true answer: I don’t know why. The reality is that our mind’s are so complex, and decisions are often made in such a small time frame, that we come to a conclusion about an issue based on an instant summation and balancing of every related, and unrelated, experience that we have ever had, regardless of whether or not the result stands up to scrutiny. In other words, we rely on our instinct. Or, more simply: just because.

Hardly very impressive when someone asks us that damning, cruel why. The childlike admission is soon beaten back with an insistence that there must be more too it than that, and the child panics, trying to come up with a whole host of plausible, but essentially incorrect, reasons why they chose to do something, until their interrogator is satisfied. And thus begins the habit of a lifetime, trapping us in an endless cycle of making decisions, which theoretically get better as we gain more experience, picking out reasons that we think would sound plausible, and then trotting those reasons out with total, if misplaced, conviction over their veracity and acceptability.

If we recognise all of that, then why do we want to know why? Why do we wish to insist on scrutinising the decision processes of others when we know full well that our own are so flawed? For one thing, we want to insulate ourselves against query and criticism. If you are interrogating someone else on their motivations, then your accused has less wiggle room for turning the question back on you without sounding petulant and evasive, which is especially handy when the finger could be pointed either way. Another reason is that we want to feel superior. Either we know someone is incontrovertibly wrong and fancy rubbing their nose in it or we are feeling insecure and want to offset that with a little grandstanding. Or both. And then there is the secret reason. The one we never admit. We want to learn from what other people say, or don’t say. We are never convinced that we have identified the correct reason when asked why, largely because there is no one, sole, correct reason, and so we go through life trying to amass as many different excuses as possible for every conceivable occasion, so that we won’t be caught out.

A friend of mine once said that all statements are political, the most political of all being: I love you. To tell someone that you love them, he said, was to insist on something, to impose a view, to try to fix something in place. And to demand an answer, preferably almost identical. Being a he, he found that concept objectionable, as a lot of men do. Men like to think of themselves as wisps on the wind, adventurers just stopping off on their way to their next slice of excitement. But they aren’t, and that’s why they have mid-life crises. They wake up one day with a paunch, a bald patch, a mortgage, debts, two kids, a wife who is bored with their juvenile laziness and a bad back. People like that don’t have adventures, they reason, sadly. So, let’s make one. That isn’t the only reason, of course, and that is certainly not the one they would say if you asked them why. They would probably say they don’t know, but that is largely because they are feeling childish.

That digression aside, my friend had a point. Except that he missed out one crucial thing. Not only are all statements political but also all questions. In actual fact, questions are far more political than statements. To question is to judge, to impose, to sit in authority, to attempt superiority. And, well, it just isn’t fair, if you aren’t prepared to be questioned back. So, next time we want to ask the question why of someone, we should ask ourselves why we want to know. Perhaps that might stop us from asking, and if that ignorance makes us a little wiser, maybe it isn’t such a bad thing.