slave to one's self.

There are people who stand up for themselves. There are people who stand up for others. And still, there are people who refuse to stand at all. Who among them is right, and who among them is wrong?

After careful consideration, I find myself still at a loss for answers. And really, I began wondering, is the fault of the consideration in the lack of an answer, or in the intrinsic nature of the question?

Surely, if at least one among them is right, then the answer would've already come out through the thousands of years of philosophizing and psychologizing. That, obviously, is not the case. The soft sciences and the soft areas of introspective study are still at a loss of answers on almost everything we might want answers to. We still don't know if religion is the answer, if fighting back is proper, or if at the end of it all, there really is no reason why we exist, aside from what seems to be coincidence.

But then again, how can the intrinsic nature of the question be wrong? If the question were wrong, then the same thorough process of thought that has enveloped (and some might say, even characterized) human history must have discredited them already. If they were wrong, and consequently answerless, then they should be as silly to consider as "whether or not the sky smells purple".


And further still, (on the third alien hand, if you will), there seems to be the religious acquiescence of knowledge. It's not our place to learn; we are (after all), not God. Or maybe, we can quote the scientific quest of ever-expanding knowledge. We will learn... eventually.


Faced with this overwhelming amount of uncertainty, no one can really concretely give any answer to anything (philosophical, at least. don't take it too literally). The wise man therefore knows that he knows nothing, the passionate reasons only his reason to be, and the philosopher questions his questions.


Indeed, at the end of it all, there are no conclusions to arrive at. There is, at least in the immediate period of time, no answers to the great questions. All that we might want to say and state are merely a report of our observations, biased by the great questions we think them to be answers to. The paradox is that there are no great questions except the questions which question themselves.