We were asked to write an essay addressing the similar question "What do you want to know?" in class. Here's my response:
What do I want to know? How about what that question’s supposed to mean, for starters. Seriously, I sat there looking at it for about a minute. What do I want to know? In regards to what? The meaning of life? My grade on the Physics test I took Friday? (Actually, I’m pretty sure I already know what I got on that) The identities of the numerous RESTRICTED missed calls I keep getting on my cell phone? However, in hindsight, none of these accurately describe what I really want to know, since I have a pretty good guess for each of them. The first is obviously the Hokey-Pokey, the second is D minus, and the third is the military trying to recruit me. No, if I had to pick something that I’d really want to know, it’d be: If Star Wars fought Star Trek, who would win?
Now I know what you probably want to know: why the heck would I pick such a dumb question? Surely, if Deep Thought from the Hitchhiker’s Trilogy did exist and I could ask him one question, it’d be something more poignant, more pensive, more revealing? Well, I say nay. I’ll bet the other members of my class pick much more probing questions, and I bet I’ll encompass at least 80% of them in the next five parameters:
1) Self Help questions, like “What’s the secret to Success?” or “How do I get rich?” This is a waste of a question, since chances are you won’t want to do everything it says you’ll have to do to become famous, and even if you do, you might then go watch Citizen Kane and see what you’ll be in thirty years. Congratulations.
2) ‹ber-philosophical questions, like “Can there be true love?” or “Is mankind good or bad by nature?” These questions can seem really important, right up until when it’s answered and you realize nothing has changed. Say the answer is, “Yes, there can be true love.” Woo hoo, now you know. Has anything changed?
3) Life Altering questions, such as “Is there life after death?” or “Does my God exist?” Problem with these is, there’s usually a really, really, bad answer you’re hoping you won’t get. And that answer is usually the one that all the evidence is pointing towards. Receive your answer, and kiss your peace of mind good-bye forever.
4) What If questions, like “What if I had accepted that promotion?” or “What if I had never been born?” This question class combines the problems of all the other three classes: The answer tells you nothing, changes nothing, and usually has a really bad answer that 9 times out of 10 you’ll end up getting. Your next question should be “Would I be happier right now if I hadn’t asked that?”
5) Impatience-spurred questions. By this, I mean questions you would have learned the answer to on your own if you waited just a little longer. This includes, “What grade will I get in AP Calculus?”, or “Is my wife going to divorce me?” Seriously, come on: you can ask ANYTHING you want, anything in the whole world, and you ask about something that you were already going to find out? Good going, you just wasted your question.
As you can see, my question dodges all the major pitfalls of the Pandora’s Boxes listed above, while still being extremely interesting, at least in my opinion. While all the rest of you develop existential crises and start wishing you’d never asked what you did, I’ll be in my room happily moving on to the almost-as-interesting question of Stargate versus Battlestar Galactica, subspace rifts included.
