Seek and Ye Shall Find
And now let’s delve for a moment into the obvious connection between seeking and finding.
One can’t confront something, so one turns one’s attention to anything else… to divert it from that. In one’s map there’s a forbidden area, and to stay away from it one’s movements have to be less free, more confined and twisty.
And then, for how these things go, what one can’t confront tends to multiply, and the resulting reduction of one’s freedom of looking and moving becomes increasingly stringent.
The less one is willing to confront things, the more they get complex from one’s point of view.
But if this is true, then probably the reverse as well is.
One confronts problems to solve them: one searches for causes, and the answers are supposed to get one somewhere. But when you investigate why something, how do you size up the why you come up with?
There are three types of whys: false whys, worthless whys, and real whys. The difference among them is: where do they get you when used? Based on the why found, you act: if the situation worsens, it’s a false why; if the situation remains the same, it’s a worthless why; if you slap your forehead and start to realise why this and why that and to figure out and plan what you can do, you start doing it, and the situation improves, it’s a real why. A real why has two key features: it is the missing piece that reveals the puzzle, and it brings to mind what can be done.
And this can be seen in terms of complexity, too: a false why sinks into further complexity, a worthless why sheds no new light, while a real why opens a door, and the more it opens, the more the situation becomes simple, clear and manageable.
In other words, the real answers, the real whys, are basically simple. After all, if an answer itself adds further complexity, is it an answer at all?
Hence, when something appears complex and difficult to you, you can do something about it; it is not unchangeable, but it depends on how much you are willing to confront it.
And so, not only you’re entitled to know, not only you’re up to it, but you’re also going to find it less and less complex and difficult as you confront it and find the real whys. As the saying goes, seek and ye shall find.
Seek and Ye Shall Find, 2
On the other hand, missing out the real whys is far from being consequence−free, as it opens another door: that through which the wrong whys get more and more accepted and hard to unmask, a cage more and more tight and hard to escape.
In short, appearances are deceptive, and some courage proves to be a wiser investment.
Finally, someone calls our times the age of information; it could be said that in our history there is an ancient age and a modern age, and the difference lies in the ease of access to information: yesterday we went to the information, today it’s the information that comes to us. Once our limited and thus precious energy had to be invested in digging out the truth from the scarcity of data of the material universe; now it has to be invested in digging out the truth from the overabundance of data of the human universe.
Once we had to risk our neck and take the world by the horns to pry each datum out of it, today all we have to do is be diligent enough to sift the congestion of data besieging us, while comfortably seated in front of the internet, in the media, in libraries, public archives and the alike.
In the ancient age the problem was ignorance: most of the time our troubles were due to our lack of knowledge, such as touching the fire, a natural element; in the modern age the problem is the breach of trust: most of the times our troubles are due to someone’s lack of rationality or ethics, such as bugs and backdoors in software, and social engineering in the media.
What did not change indeed are the shady reasons for some to oppose or sabotage our quest.
Therefore we still have to go out and investigate; what has changed is that, while yesterday we had to risk our neck too, today we just have to keep our spine straight and our eyes open.
So, let’s see that we’re up to our good fortune of living in the modern age.