What I Consider The Biggest Question

People generally think they know what are the big questions.  Things like, "Why are we here?"  "What is the purpose of my life?" "What is the true nature of reality?"  I think questions are great because they lead to thinking about answers (if not generally, at least quite a bit) and thinking about answers is pretty much why we aren't running from lions in Africa.  I have actually addressed some of these questions on this blog.  However, I have my own big question that I think for practical purposes is the biggest question.  It is this:

"What is it like to be someone else?"

I think this question gets to the heart of why there is conflict in the world, and what we can do to stop it.  I think it is the basis for effective communication.  I think it is a starting point for consensus.  I think it underpins the sort of love that works, if I can say it, practical love.  The most important thing that humans do is communicate, and you cannot communicate without a shared understanding.

Most of us think we have a good idea about the answers to this question, and that default position is that people are pretty much like ourselves, just in different circumstances.  We look at a ridiculously wealthy CEO engaged in the game of getting the most amount of money and imagine ourselves transported into that position and say what we would do.  We would be less selfish, giving to the poor, funding the arts, living well but not in a manner we presently find obscene (or perhaps we would take all that money, buy an island and transform it into a James Bond-style villain lair).  We look at a creative genius and think how wonderful it would be to create and share such beauty if only we could, when often such people have tortured lives.

This default position is pretty good, as far as it goes.  people have vast amounts of things in common simply based on the fact that humans are arranged in the same way, and have some nearly universal experiences.  We rarely think about how much we have in common with other people, instead focusing on the differences.  Osama bin-Laden was a religious nutcase dedicated to fighting for a culture rich in violence, misogyny, bigotry, and ignorance, but when he was sitting on a toilet having a crap he was having an outwardly universal human experience.  The truth is that the similarities far outweigh the differences.  Osama bin-Laden's intellectual ideas were about as far away as possible from my own but the majority of his experiences were the same as mine.  He wanted to be married, be amongst friends and like-minded people.  He got hungry and thirsty.  When he got tired he wanted to sleep, and I am sure he had nights where he couldn't.

The default position works well for the basics that make up humanity.  I think we understand pretty much what seeing the color red is for most people, or what it is like to be hungry, or cold, or frightened, etc..

The default position breaks down when we get out of the rudimentary basics of the human condition.  What is it like to be raised in a culture that rejects modernity, critical thinking, or change of any sort?  What is it like to have all of your information about how the world works come from ancient religious texts that no-one you know questions?  Do you or I have much of an idea?  What is it like to be sexually abused so that you feel a pervasive sense of disgust about yourself and don't feel worthy of happiness?  What is it like to deliberately sabotage any efforts of your own to succeed?  What is it like to simply not be curious?  These questions are legion, but do you ask them?

There are many people who simply give up when faced with this question.  They say that it is impossible to know what is going on in someone's head.  Other people give up because it is much easier to simply label others and stop at "idiot" "evil" "weak" "hateful" "ignorant."  I think that probably the question doesn't occur to most people.

I am not interested in giving up and I really hope you aren't either.  I studied psychology in college partly because this question fascinated me, and partly because I had a clear example of what the consensus of society considered successful and the unhappiness that accompanied that example.  I then went into social work where, if you actually are interested in helping people, the ability to understand how somebody feels is a prerequisite to helping them.  You don't help a person with the delusions of paranoid schizophrenia by simply labeling them "crazy!" and calling their delusions "stupid."  You need to try to imagine what it would be like to have those delusions, to feel that they aren't delusions, to start from their position, not yours.


How do we do this?  How do we know if we have succeeded?

Big questions.