Did you ever notice how young children are always asking, "Why"? It seems that asking "Why" is a universal characteristic of young children. Way back in human history, Darwin came up with the idea of having young kids ask "Why" as a means for them to explore and understand their world. I don't know about you, but is seems to have worked very well. Did you ever notice that these young kids seldom ask "What"? They seem to mostly ask "Why"? The other thing that you find is that after kids start school, they ask "Why" a lot less and shift more to "What". Even parents encourage this change by trying to make their kids smarter by having them answer "What" questions. An example might be, "What is the capital of California?" This same pattern goes on and on and the questions about "Why" just fade into the background. Would it be a lot better if the parent were to ask, "Why is the capital of California located where it is?" I think so. This brings me to the whole point of this blog.
Because we and our kids stopped asking "Why", we are lead down some very illogical paths. Try this one. What is the murder rate for Blacks? Knowing the murder rate does little help understand the problem. What if the question were "Why is the murder rate for Blacks so high? Many people would answer that the cause is that they are "poor". That may be true, but is does not answer "Why". If you can not answer the question of "Why" the murder rate among Blacks is so high with "poor", then is is most likely that "poor" is not the answer for "Why". Is this getting a little boring, it might be.
Next, let's ask, "Why are many Blacks poor?" Eventually when we find the answer to "Why", we will also find the "cause". I think that we all know that the way to solve a problem is to find the "cause" and the "cause" is the answer to "Why". If we don't keep asking "Why", how do you ever think that we will find the "cause" of anything. This is what little kids try to do as soon as they learn how to communicate. Why are they so smart at that young age and us adults seem to be so dumb. We know a lot more "what", but we don't know much about "cause'. I am not going to answer the "Why" so many Blacks are poor here. I leave that to you. All you have to do is to keep asking the question "Why" until you get the right answer and that will be the "cause". If we would ever get serious about the "cause" of most of the social problems of Blacks, there might be a chance of making things better. I don't mean to pick on Blacks. They are just a good example of how not asking "Why" has made their situation worse.
Act like a 2 year old for a change and start asking "Why" a lot more. You will find that you, like the 2 year old, will get a lot smarter and just might start thinking about how to solve some of our social and economic problems. It worked for thousands of years and it still works.
