Questions Most People Fail To Ask
Introspection With Fate
There are questions to help us to think beyond our current paradigms and challenge assumptions, leading to deeper reflections and greater understanding of the world around us. Asking deep and unconventional questions can lead to unique insights and stimulate meaningful discussions.
Here are some questions that many people may fail to ask that can be making all that difference:
1. Mind and Methodologies
2. Self-Dynamics
3. Group Dynamics
4. People, Society and World
5. Fate
Mind and Methodologies
Shallow thinking, like a little learning, can be dangerous.
The way we change our minds about reality, changes our life. - Re: The universe in our mind, 2014–12.24
As Buddha said "what you do not know will one day kill you", it is ignorance by insufficient or incomplete know-how, know-what, know-why, know-when and know-who, and, thereby, unsound solution. The hypocrisy of willful sloth to we bear with unsound solutions, in the light yet we cannot tolerate unsound minds, is clearly, of an unsound mentality and mindset. From a reckless move that overturns the car, crashes the plane, to a trivial blind logic, code bug or hardware routing that cause the nuclear meltdown or lock disengage with a satellite, an loss or damage which will haunt us for as long as we live has to be averted as diligently as we expand our ascendancy to steer fate itself. - Re: Who dares to be like God?, 2014–12.31
People seem to rest with the premise "we can never know everything'. Now, how do they know that? Did they use some math to Q.E.D. it or construct even an experimental Turing machine to attest it? If it is based on historical observation, how would it be `never`, as in `never never` or `never ever` or just `ever since never`? Would they be able to read the future and say `never`? Would it be `never` be possible that human can graft further layers beyond the 3-layer brain, or expand our cognitive abilities by extending cerebral modules, to have `never` attained enough to know complete or approaching `everything` within the observable universe? Or is their `everything` a parameter of quantity approaching infinity, and we have to be exhaustively chasing eternity? I have no qualms thinking further or beyond, but if the premise put forward is merely a bad mentality, I think I have overshot beyond a shallow statement; and I fear, that mentality has asserted an obituary for a possibility. -, Re: Who dares to be like God?, 2014–12.31Realism is derived. The reality we construct from what we `know` is merely a distorted and gravely limited form far from real.
Reality magnified will make that desire too far from real. It taunts and torments your desire. Thence, that unresearchable intensifies your pain greatly — a pain yet unreal and exaggerated and yet valid only to what your delusion will haunt you.
The usage of money is a matter of the mind. The dollar is not linear to satisfaction. Satisfaction is the product of the mind out of order and form of the real.
Ideals and ideas are the constructs and seeds of the Garden, the pre-creation. Eden is creation.
1. How do our fears and insecurities shape the decisions we make in life?
What happens when just before you are getting really angry, you see the irony and parody of things? Will that spark a laughter and an epiphany?
2. How might our perception of beauty change if it were entirely disconnected from physical appearances?
3. What is the true value of human life, and how do we determine it?
4. How might our lives change if we prioritized experiences and memories over material possessions?
5. If we could see all the possible outcomes of a decision, how would it affect our decision-making process?
6. What does it mean to live a meaningful and fulfilling life, and how do we achieve it?
7. Would people think clearly about the reasons why children are brought to this world?
To be responsible to our children is to work on the world which we have brought them here, not squander their future. The Christians believe that God built the world in 5 days, before he brought the baby Adam on the 6th. Sadly, people didn’t prepare enough nor could answer the question “If you kid were to ask you, ‘why did you bring me here?’”
Do not bring children to this world by default or de facto. Bring them by perspicacious design. — 2014–02.07
8. How would our perceptions of success and happiness change if there were no societal expectations to compare ourselves to others?
9. What if we actively practiced gratitude for the things we often take for granted?
10. What if we treated mental and physical health with equal importance in our daily lives? Does positive thinking really work or is there something else more pragmatic?
Be reminded that chanting witchcraft over your `Lo Hei`, `Thoughts and prayers` and/or `Sending positive vibes`, or similar wishful thinking do not really make any real magic, it only turns you into a fool if not a frog, if this is the only magic it makes; and just as you teach your kids, be a good example — do not play with your food and make a mess. — The New Year Resolution Grinch
Positivism and negativism are both misplaced and mis-positioned. It is in strategic thinking that we see the polarities in everything and find ways to exploit the uncertainties of things to pry open the under-developed opportunities.
11. How would our sense of identity change if we couldn’t rely on our memories to define who we are?
12. If we could communicate with our past selves, what advice would we give them? If we could see into the future, would it change the way we make decisions in the present? What would it be if we were born in a different country with different parents from a different ethnicity and culture? Who would we be?
Use a culture to cook a habit … your perspectives and paradigm.
13. What is something good for humanity and for people around me that I am not doing, or even thinking about? What is something I can and should do — right now?
14. How does our understanding of mortality influence the way we live our lives? How would we change our minds to live as quality beings with immortality?
15. How might our perception of time change if we didn’t measure it in a linear fashion?
我感觉被时间推着往前走 (I feel like I’m being pushed forward by time).
16. How would our understanding of the universe change if we could experience it beyond our 5 senses?
17. How does the language we use influence the way we think about ourselves and the world?
18. What if we redefined the concept of work to align with our passions and interests rather than financial gain?
19. What if what we have been told and taught are false and/or wrong?
In our current traceable history, humans could claim that in our 300,000 year history, there are 3 phases: Humans were hunter gatherers for 97%, farmers for 2.9% and industrialists for 0.1% of human history.
20. How might our understanding of human interconnectedness change if we saw ourselves as part of a larger cosmic tapestry?
21. What are the unintended consequences of our most well-intentioned actions? What are the unthoughtful events that can careen all that we work on to nothing?
很多人在骑驴寻马之时, 忘了黑天鹅的存在. (Many people are riding donkeys on a look-out for stallions, but they forgot the existence of `black swans`.)
22. How much do we know about science and nature to know what nature really is?
If you put energy into space, matter pops out and anti-matter “decays” almost instantaneously (or does it go to the other `side` and moves in reverse time?). If space is replaced with matter, a hole is mended or replaced by matter taking that `space`, does it mean that time is an illusion or space is an illusion? As matter decays, time seems to exist because of its entropy. So if there is no matter, there is no time? If we apply energy to space, matter pops out. What does that mean?
Space seems direction, because on `our side`, time moves `forward`. So matter interacts with space. How is the relation of energy on `our side` so as to which we define as `positive energy`?
23. How do people live through the Holocaust and beyond?
The world of sufferings are untold. The human will and innovation to live through it teaches us of the ways of overcoming.
If I can walk through the gas chamber, empowering the person beside me to wage war against death; if that candle of inspiration does not extinguish in that gas chamber, it will be a breakthrough in life. — 2002–09.05
Self-Dynamics
Times of great loss or personal failure break weaker people, but the strong of heart can bend with fate. To endure hard times — or even grow and benefit from them — it is essential to tap that deepest stratum of personal identity — purpose, which is deeper even than fate. It is purpose that writes fate. Build an incorruptible fortitude, fuel by hope, by even the harshest realities. Throes harass the mind to failure. It is the mind that fails, not reality.
Fire evaporates water, and water puts out fire. Change often causes conflict; conflict brings about change. Not all order is good, not all chaos bad. Re-order in chaos, like the phoenix, have the courage to radically change and renew who you are.
There is no such thing as failure. There is only sweet and sour reality, and more is learned from the sour, oftentimes, than from the sweet.
In dusk, words will have little effect on all others, since your influence will be at a low ebb, and they will drain you of vital energy. Recovery is an art. Self-recovery is an art.
The objective of rest is recovery, and since recovery requires some mechanics of regeneration, rest is usually left to the `natural` and spontaneous in which we lack the understanding of.
Focus on 2 things: happiness supported by personal stability. Delights sprout quickly. Bonds to knit properly in time. Relaxed effectiveness, gentle influence, small crafted forces towards a steady course of least resistance that persist to produce lasting results. Don’t wear yourself out. Find enjoyment in everything. Discover slight steps of progress that will accumulate towards great feats. All obstacles dissolve in time.
1. When the mental energy low, how to enhance this if due to emotional fatigue/ boredom?
2. How to keep your sanity afloat in a crisis and existential vacuum? How do you unfeel your misery? How can our minds be independent of events and `climate`? These questions can save lives.
Our definition may not change, but our valuation and evaluation of our definition can change the way we suffer or be spared from the illusion of suffering.
No matter how violent your storms are, the world goes by and moves on. The frail human form has to transcend the present form. It is too frail and too myopic. Let the inner and outer storm pass, as it happens, prepare for the next launch. Look for ways before the next spring, it may set the twist of fate in which you can write a story beyond what your pessimistic sight can see.
Step 1: Do not punish yourself …
dysphoria (δύσφορος (dúsphoros) 'grievous'; from δυσ- (dus-) 'bad, difficult', and φέρω (phérō) 'to bear'): a profound state of unease or dissatisfaction.You cannot empty your mind, but can you flood it with other thoughts that will bring it to a conducive state?
Don’t suppress it, surpass it, redirect and reuse it. Distract yourself by solving a problem, e.g, quieten a ticking clock in the living room, create a Mood Board, etc.
How does it make sense of our own existentialism when Natur has dictate it’s design, even by the way we feel about it? Our presence may be a trivial significance? While the simple parts that is construed as `simple` by our minds into a fabrication of complexity which our minds deemed to be `complex`. All these are governed and set under a threshold of capacity by the laws of physics.
We cannot help feeling about it, but we can only remind ourselves that we were once non-existing.
Lost `touch`/ disconnected? Looking for inspiration in the wrong places? Natur has pre-written the human story as a subset of the universe or universal agenda. The pen of neurochemical and neurophysics are written by the same hands by the laws that write the fate of the universe.
3. How to do something lightly related to leading yourself to happiness, and gradually draw yourself over?
4. Anxiety gives an illusion of a feeling that we are all running out of time. How do you deal with a `child that is raving inside you`?
My younger daughter went on a raving tantrums again, I decided to help her focus, and I helped myself focus when helping her. — 2014-08.16
5. When we run out of resources, how would we source from the under-examined and un-explored?
Group Dynamics
There is one obvious thing that most people don’t seem to get is that the wellbeing of a person is not the responsibility of that particular person but the conditions that are built up around him/her by the communal well being of the group.
Magnetize yourself daily. Create the mirage that people want to see, yet stay in your own governing cardinals to ensure you are on track, and un-derailed. The jellyfish may seem frail, but it is amendable and bendable in short time. Always have a multiple polarity and multiple directional state for fast reaction.
Change by smuggled, stealth, incremental steps subconsciously and sweetly. Understand the chemistry of sociology, i.e. catalyst, gain the energy to cross the threshold, bind and break.
Humility is self-effacing invisibility.
Yet, do not confuse excitement at climax due to the adrenaline rush with success. Success is not a psychological state, but a matter of optimality attained. If being popular among humans is a defined goal, and when achieved it is a success of matter — a trivial one at beat, because it is relatively small compared to a real feat at far unachieved or underachieved, as it was not even conceived. If your success has more of how people see of you and how much they like you, you have forgo the real crude power that governs the universe, commanding the winds and tide apart from courting the trivialities of human games how other people feel — about you.
Leave a hiatus — mutual/ shared moment independent contemplation.
1. How would our relationships be affected if we were more transparent about our vulnerabilities and insecurities?
2. How does the way we interact with technology affect our relationships and emotional well-being? What would it be like to live without the constant influence of social media and the internet?
3. What if we could fully understand the perspectives of those we disagree with? What if we approached conflicts and disagreements with genuine curiosity and a desire to understand, rather than to win?
Do we forget to take into account others or do we discount others fallaciously?
The methods and paradigms may be different but the pursuits and objectives can be orchestrated to complement and supplement mutually in harmony.
4. What are the consequences of constantly seeking external validation and approval? How might our relationships be different if we embraced vulnerability and open communication without fear of judgment?
5. Why do people live so short and yet live so miserably?
Life need not be a time of riches. However, it must be a life of values. The real tragedy is that most people can’t tell the difference. Perhaps because of that they value the wrong things and miss the crux and focus. What if they begin to ask the right questions? Will the questions find that turning point to story of their fate?
People, Society and World
Rights, whether of safety or freedom, are not what we are born with, it is what we work to maintain or retrieve when they are never there to begin with.
Apathy breeds ignorance. Ignorance drifts into alienation. From alienation springs enmity. There are no good results when humanity is divided by parochialism.
1. What would the world look like if our basic assumptions were entirely different? What are the underlying beliefs and biases that influence the way we perceive and interpret the world?
There is no uniqueness as there is no randomness. It is an illusion of the human mind unable to apprehend combinatorics and dynamics.
What happens if you let your bias make your perceptions? With the same flaw, you will be penalized for your decisions. I use my journals to trial myself everyday. Before we make any moral assessments, do we apply the same acridity to ourselves?
2. What if we prioritized preserving nature’s ecosystems above all other economic considerations?
3. If frustration is the base of all violence, won’t violence be obviated if there is no frustration?
4. If we discovered intelligent extraterrestrial life, how might it change our understanding of ourselves?
5. How could we design a society that promotes equality and inclusivity in its very core?
6. What if our society embraced failure as a necessary and valuable part of growth?
5. How would society be different if we didn’t have the concept of money? What is money? How does it really work?
6. What if we approached education by focusing on cultivating curiosity rather than standardized testing?
7. What are the ethical implications of advancing technologies like AI, genetic engineering, and virtual reality?
8. How does the way we treat animals reflect our values and empathy as a society? If we could communicate with animals, what would they tell us about our impact on the planet?
9. How would our society change if we were to prioritize empathy over efficiency? What are the sufferings have we neglected or ignored and/or are we ignorant of?
我们不应该让孩子们以泪水告诉界他们被辜负了. (We should not have children tell the world that they have been let down with their tears.)
10. What if we prioritized environmental sustainability over short-term economic gains?
11. What if we can stop criminals at childhood? How would we do that?
Fate
Forces are hidden and bespeaks a coming event.
Nothing is irretrievable, only conceivably irretrievable. The universe conserves and contains itself. The entropy is merely its way of hiding and reconfiguring itself. — 2014–12.27
1. What role does chance play in shaping our lives, and how much control do we really have?
2. What would you do if the situation is crippling?
3. How can our mind operate well under hardships?
Compounded events like multiple negative feedback from people, unable to accomplish tasks, etc. How do we remain resilient under socio-corporate environment intimidation? In the midst of a hardship, such as when we are unable to apprehend a direction or solution to find a cure or treatment for a family member, that can dragged us down terribly for the day.
It takes up time, effort, ending in futile results and enervated emotional burnout. There was no energy left to focus and tune the emotions. How can this be mitigated or fend against?
This is a common question I get. It is a game of fate and the mind. This is a book on its own.
4. What if the question you seek becomes meaningless because the person or matter at its base is no longer there?
5. What if you would have to pay a high price to seek the question?
For those who understand the way of the game of life, there comes a point of time when we have completed a phase, we have to pause and even turn back to help the rest to reach the game. In which, we all will start all over again in symbiosis for the next game.
The more we are aware of our problems, the worse it seems to us. People tend to accept the problems they can’t solve, and the pathetic consolation is to obscure it to oblivion … pretending that there is a reason for the incompetence and the inaction. Once the mind decides it to be impossible, it decides to stop to seek for the solution earnestly and sincerely. The possibility narrows and the focus is hijacked. What goes beyond and is missing from the 5 stages of grief is — resolution. People seem to rant and settle for status quo — the lack of will to act, the lack of courage to expand one’s insight and foresight. The focus is to be aware that there are solutions and not settling for mediocrity.
These questions can lead to deeper self-awareness, introspection, and a greater understanding of the complexities of life and our place in it.
A moment of neglect, a lifetime of regret. Vigilance in insight, foresight and instinct.
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