“We go about our daily lives understanding almost nothing of the
world. We give little thought to the machinery that generates the
sunlight that makes life possible, to the gravity that glues us to an
Earth that would otherwise send us spinning off into space, or to the
atoms of which we are made and on whose stability we fundamentally
depend. Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the
important questions), few of us spend much time wondering why nature is
the way it is; where the cosmos came from, or whether it is always
here; if time will one day flow backward and effects precede causes; or
whether there are ultimate limits to what humans can know.”
-Carl Sagan from an introduction to A Brief History of Time By Stephen Hawking
After
hearing and reading your peer's reactions during class about the listed
quotation, what new insight can you add to this quotation analysis?
Please respond. (Blog Response Due By Thurs., Aug. 24th at 2:30p.m.)
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24 comments:
I believe we do go throughout the day giving little thought to the world, but at the same time we choose to. People want simple lives, they choose to focus on now and what’s next. I think the pressures of everyday life pushes us to become too distracted to really ask why. To an extent we do know the basic knowledge to things such as why we are held down to Earth and so on. Then again there are those who push the boundaries, and those people are the ones going to space and creating technology far beyond us.
We are so consumed into our culture that we numb ourselves to give passion towards the planet. We rely on materialism which causes us to destroy the planet through wasting its natural resources. We ignore the fact that the sun and gravity and the natural aspects of the planet is what gave us life. We lose our ability to think and wonder like we did when we were children so we just accept the physical world the way it is without putting our own consciousness into why the physical world acts the way it did. Many people are also to afraid to think on their own because their beliefs will conflict with the natural process of the planet.
It seems to me that a lot of people lose their sense of wonder and curiosity. Personally, I have always been curious and have wanted to learn about the world and how or why it does what it does. But I often ask someone else what they think is going on with a particular topic, and they simply say, "I don't care." It seems to me that everyone is more involved in their social lives than anything else. Then again, why would it matter to them? They aren't concerned with things like that, and why would they? But it seems natural for people to concern themselves with things that don't affect them. A lot of people concern themselves with the worries and problems of other people. They gossip and spread rumors because they are easily entertained by things that don't concern them. Maybe curiosity wasn't lost, just redirected.
today it seems like a lot of people don't wonder about things that are out there. I find myself thinking about whats for lunch and so do many others. I think that the human race has really lost its sense of adventure. People used to want to be astronauts now everyone wants to play sports for a living.
Most people don’t think about the big questions because things like gravity and sunlight have always been there. We get up in the morning and think about our day not the sunlight that brings us our day. Children don’t have to go to work and get things done. They also haven’t been alive as long so they’re more likely to ask the questions. I also feel that we don’t think about it because we’ve been in science class for years. They tell us how gravity works and tell us what the sun is made of and where the stars are and why leaves are green. We have information about these things from some class, and we no longer think about it because we don’t need to. Sure we don’t know everything about it, but we know enough to satisfy us, or we become scientists. Children are more curious, and I think we lose that over time from having useless information thrown at us all the time.
At a young age, our initiative to learn is crushed by all the tests they give us and other people that may be jealous making us not want to learn or ask more questions. Our society crushes people that are smart by teasing or bullying because they aren’t as smart. Those are the people that ask more about space, atoms, and nature. People don’t realize that we need to be asking more questions and finding out more so that we can learn as best we are able to instead of putting down those who do. Questions we need to know are the ones we aren’t asking. We only know that the Earth isn’t flat because someone contradicted it. The questions that seem stupid or little are really the ones we need the answers to.
People like to know what they are doing and where they are going. People in the world dot like change, they don't like to do or try new things, and because of that they are scared to ask questions. Kids don't care what people think of them, they have not realized that everyone is judging everything they do. So because they are not aware of what is going on around them they ask every question that comes to mind. If people can open their minds and just ask the tough questions then other people will wonder too. The people that do ask questions are the most knowledgeable people in the world, because they keep asking questions to get answers they don't know. You have to fail to succeed and you cant succeed if you don't have failure.
I think that today people lose their adventures spark as we go to school and go to work and focus on conforming to society. Most people think about their needs and their small life, people don't take the time to wonder at the natural world. The mysteries the science has not solved yet. I hope that as people become more aware of the lack of knowledge people begin to question.
Most people, including myself, don't think of big concepts too often through out a normal day because we are all focused on what is going on in our daily lives. We are in a routine and we mostly think about what we are doing in that day and how it effects us. We don't stop to think about abstract ideas that effect things other than ourselves. I think we don't ask big questions or even think of them because we are more focused on getting what we need to get done in our lives rather than trying to solve things out of our control.
I think in today’s society we get so caught up in our own daily lives that we don’t realize what’s going on around us. Children ask us the simplest questions that we may or may not know. But why don’t we ask those simple questions too? Sometimes I think we’re afraid to ask those simple questions because we are afraid of what the answer is going to be.
I remember one instance when I was little, during a family gathering one of my cousins asked my mother a question that, though she knew the answer to she didn't know how to answer it so that a child would understand it. He asked, "What is lightning?" she had to ponder because she knew that a little kid wouldn't be able to understand that the clouds and ground act as an extremely large conductor and lightning is the release of the stored electrical energy. She decided the best way to explain it to him was to say that it was like really fast fire. It's these moments that we look back upon later in life and laugh but we really should use these stories as inspiration to challenge our thinking and discover new ideas, we should use these times to learn.
I totally agree with Johnny, I think that as we get older and pass through the various educational systems, we lose sight of what it means to be a child. And by that I mean, we lose the ability to think about mysteries and problems in the world from the vantage point of a child. When I was about 5 years old, I asked my mom why the ocean made waves all the time. And since she knew I wouldn't understand what it had to do with the Moon, she told me it was because Poseidon needed to move around a little bit. And I think that conversation is what sparked my interest in Greek mythology and the Gods and all that. But as a five year old I totally believed what she said. And I wish that growing up, and the school systems didn't take away that wonder, the desire to learn why things happen. Because there are so many things we still don't understand, but being 'grown ups' keeps us from thinking about things as objectively and outside the box as little kids.
Though out time our imagination and our curiousity dim/decrease. Queasions that we have a a child or the reasoning for things we do dailey dont go through our heads. Because of habits and society frowning on that curiousity as an adult we dont think about things like that. Our focus is more on things we do everyday that we might not know things about or why they are like that but wiht the "adult mind" dont look in t or pay attention too. If we all could be more accepting and open our minds we could eventually go back to that adventurous mind that kids have.
Like it said, children don't know enough not to ask the important questions. I feel like after we learn the answers to our important questions, many people assume that's all they need to know and stop asking questions about the world and simply accept it. We don't look at our surroundings as closely as we used to when we were asking those questions, our own knowledge often keeps us from expanding on it because we already know the big answers.
Personally, I believe that the modern American school system is mostly to blame for our generations inability to inquire about such "simple" things. I mean, I talk about how high school corrupts creativity all the time (I even wrote about it in the last issue of last years paper)-- as children our curiosity is encouraged, yet as we reach middle school and high school, we are given a syllabus of what we need to know in order to be successful, with no room for other things. We are taught what is "necessary", which doesn't always include the most basic understandings of the universe as we know it, and how all of the things in that universe work. Thus, we stop asking about these things as it becomes less and less relevant to our lives. So, you know, essentially, I can have these questions, but no where to ask them, and no one who really cares to answer them for me. That, of course, is pretty messed up, but c'est la vie.
I don't know how a CD works. Oddly enough, I think about this a lot, and I believe it connects with this question in a large way. I am incredibly naive. My eyes are just that, my eyes, but when you look at it from a scientific point of view, millions of rays of light refract and send multiple colors so I can see my surroundings, which sounds more like a Syfy film than reality. I'm using this example because if I don't even understand the human body, then how am I supposed to understand how a CD works? The simplest things remain simple because if we were to understand them, maybe life wouldn't be simply curious. Not knowing everything isn't the end of the world: maybe it’s the beginning. “Stay curious, stay wild, stay hungry” - Hannes Broecker
As a society we are to focused on what we have now and content with what we have now that sometimes we don't look ahead to the future, but rather want to live in the present. We sometimes don't understand that technology can be damaging. As people we are very materialistic and geared more towards what we can have and towards what we do have. I feel like we could make the future better with technology, but at the same time I think its doing more harm.
I think that I can say that even though our species pays no attention towards the scientific aspects in our life such as gravity, the sun, etc., we still manage to acknowledge these aspects in one way or another. We as people haven’t become so blind as to the fact that gravity exists or that the sun provides heat, instead we just manage to ignore because it is considered that of the norm. It doesn’t mean anything to not question these things because as we grow up we are taught all about how they work and what they are. We fully understand these aspects making it common knowledge. As a species we have evolved not only physically but mentally. We have stopped asking questions about what we already know and started focusing on questions we don't know. Just because we don’t acknowledge something doesn’t me we don’t care. But why ask the same questions over and over each day when we can learn something new. Our curiosity hasn’t diminished it has just moved into other areas.
We are so consumed with the need of materialistic things that we don't consider where it comes from or if it is harming the environment. We don't consider how our acts are destroying the world we live in when really it should be a priority, we can’t live without it. Its probably because we convince ourselves oooh it's just one water bottle it's not gonna make a difference. But meanwhile there's millions of people choosing the easy option to just throw things away instead of recycling. We numb our thoughts on what affects our actions have ,probably from the guilt we might get from realising the truth. Children tend to be instantaneous meaning they don't worry, think things through or emotionaly numb themselves. They don't worry about whether their actions are good or not. They don’t have a filter so they tend to think about everything and question everything.
Newer generations tend to be focused the more materialistic side of things while the older generations are focused more on the environment and the beauty of our world. I think this happens because we have been brought into a world with very advanced technology and it has been seen as a necessity for kids and young adults nowadays while for our parents and their parents, they were brought into a world with none of that and they were able to admire the outdoors way more than we were. The bad part about getting older and having more knowledge is that you begin to have less curiosity about everything that goes on around you and the crazy but smart questions don't tend to come out as often. Those type of questions can lead to answers about things we haven't even begun researching yet but kids don't even realize that. In order to find out more about everything that goes on around us, more people have to begin asking questions and thinking more about the little aspects and details in our lives.
Throughout life in my opinion people just grow through the stuff, rather than keeping their childish questions at hand. People in their lives are told to grow up and go through the stuff that everyone goes through. Get A's, get a job, be responsible, etc. Stuff like that makes it so that we don't keep that type of intellect that any type of child does. It's not that we are losing it through ourselves, it's because people are rubbing it off on us.
I think that our creativity and sense of adventure gets lost in translation as we get older. I don't think that it is completely lost I think that it is just changed or altered, we become curious and interested in more things or more complex things. I think that this quote makes it seem that as we become older we loose our creativity and sense of adventure but I tend to believe that its just changed or shifted a little bit, not completely gone.
In my opinion as people grow older the game of life they play does not change, only the rules do. We stop asking the creative and abstract questions in life that we once craved answers for but rather we start conforming to the societal "norms" and begin asking the questions that you're suppose to ask, that any "normal" person is suppose to ask. Some examples of this shift in questioning include asking yourself what political party you associate with, what doctor you should go to, what tv channels should you pay for, etc. We become more complacent and more compliant as life goes on and lose touch with(but never completely loose) our child-like sense of wonder.
As humans, we are naturally curious about things, so we naturally ask lots of questions and seek answers to those questions. However, when we are young, we ask about simple topics like how the world works, and we use our imagination to make sense of this complicated, simple world. When we grow older we lose that imagination and that curiosity and get caught up with our jobs, our social lives, and other small stuff that pulls us from our natural questioning, curious state of mind.
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