Dear Steele: You are right. I ask too many damn questions. I’d like to think they are mostly intelligent, but based on the trend I’m observing in other people; they are probably mostly stupid questions. I know we were taught that there are no stupid questions, but I am now a fervent believer in the existence of stupid questions.
A stupid question is a question designed to keep you ignorant, by either promoting laziness or by reinforcing your inferiority complex. The former type is a question someone asks because they are being too lazy to think, or too lazy to figure it out themselves. They rather ask a stupid question of someone else and have them do the work. The latter type is a question someone asks because they need someone else to validate their opinion. They lack a confidence in their own ability to think so they ask a stupid question of someone else who they essential think for that moment in time is better than them.
So I’m sitting on this Alaskan cruise inside this writer’s workshop. I am surrounded by a group of about 200 people, 90 percent of which aspire to or are already writing self-help books, 99 percent of which are white. I am amazed by how many people do not think, and they have no shame about demonstrating the fact that they do not think. People readily assume others are more intelligent than them, they are easily impressed and they are willing to buy into anything. As my father says, “everyone is looking for a messiah” to save them, or to show them the way.
We believe our “masters”, whoever they may be, have all the answers. But as my girlfriend always says: “masters are not perfect,” and further, we all can be masters. Most of us simply do not choose to put in the effort.
My challenge to myself is to stop asking stupid questions, to think before I speak, and to trust my instinct.