“He who asks is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask remains a fool forever.”
— Chinese Proverb
There was a time when the measure of a civilization was not in its skyscrapers or armies, but in the quality of questions it dared to ask. “What is justice?” “What is time?” “What is the good life?” These were not idle musings of idle minds—they were blueprints for how humanity sought to build itself. But in the whirlwind of modern progress, the compass of wonder seems lost. We have mastered algorithms but forgotten awe. We speak in data but rarely in depth. The questions that once made us wise have been replaced by the questions that merely make us efficient.
A Culture of Immediate Answers
We live in the age of answers without questions. Our devices respond within seconds, but our thinking often stops before it begins. The tools designed to expand thought have now made us allergic to complexity. We ask “How to become successful?” but rarely, “What does it mean to live well?” We ask “How to grow fast?” but not, “Grow into what and why?” We are a civilization obsessed with answers and terrified of inquiry.
Modern systems—educational, political, and social—have subtly taught us that asking the wrong kind of question is dangerous. To wonder openly is often seen as naive, impractical, or even subversive. But this is exactly how great civilizations collapse—not when their walls fall, but when their minds close. When we no longer ask:
- What kind of future are we building with our technology?
- Is growth still growth when it costs the earth?
- Can a society be called advanced if it has lost its moral compass?
We abandon the very questions that kept us humane.
Our schools reward memorization, not imagination. We teach children what to think, but not how to think—certainly not why to think. We’ve become skilled at answering test papers, but unskilled at confronting reality. Wonder, which once sat at the heart of learning, is now treated as a distraction—a dangerous one, even.
Yet, every monumental advancement—from mathematics to space exploration—began with someone asking a simple, childlike question:
“What if?”
“Why not?”
“How do we know?”
Wonder: The Soul of Civilization
Wonder is not mere curiosity. It is the soul’s refusal to accept what is without asking what could be. It is both humble and revolutionary—humble because it admits ignorance, revolutionary because it opens the door to change.
To wonder is to stand at the edge of the known and gaze into the unknown—not with fear, but with fascination. Every timeless civilization was built on this capacity. The Greeks asked what truth is. The Chinese asked what harmony means. The Indians questioned the nature of consciousness. The Arab thinkers explored the logic of language and number. These were not religious quests—they were civilizational dialogues with existence itself.
What are we asking today?
The Price of Not Asking
The cost of not asking the right questions is not just intellectual—it is existential. When we no longer wonder what kind of human being we are becoming, we become programmable. We adapt to systems that may be unjust, without ever questioning their logic. We become fluent in survival but forget the language of meaning.
We risk becoming clever machines, but not wise humans.
It is time to reclaim the nobility of asking. We must once again fall in love with the questions that have no easy answers:
- What does it mean to live truthfully in a post-truth world?
- What is progress without purpose?
- How do we build a society where dignity is not a privilege, but a birthright?
- Can we imagine a world where silence is not escape, but insight?
These are not questions of religion or politics. These are questions of conscious civilization. And if we do not ask them, who will?
The death of wonder is not the end of learning—it is the end of becoming.
And perhaps, the beginning of forgetting what it meant to be human.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Chenab Times.
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The author is a lecturer in Educational Technology & ICT at Islamia Faridiya College of Education, Kishtwar.
