We like to think that questions require answers.
That might sound a little absurd, but it’s indicative of an obsession people seem to have with definite resolutions. We think that, ideally, research arrives at conclusive results. We think stories ought to follow a linear progression and come to a clear denouement. We think debates should end with winning arguments that completely demolish the competition.
Life, however, isn’t like that. There are stories that end abruptly. There are people we suddenly lose for no reason. There are questions that linger for lifetimes.
In the final chapter of his book The Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell muses on the ultimate value of philosophy. He says that while physical science offers a definite body of knowledge, philosophy is considerably lacking in any sort of positive results that are of use to mankind as a whole. So why philosophize if it seems entirely impractical?
The value of philosophy, he says, is in its very uncertainty. There are so many questions in the field that are never fully answered, yet the study of philosophy is valuable as an exercise in consciousness expansion. He says that we do not necessarily discover what things are, but philosophy sparks the imagination as to what they might be.
Russell elaborates that philosophy focuses on the questions themselves, “because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great.”
To a degree, I’d say Russell’s reflections on philosophy hold true in a number of other disciplines. The more you do communication studies, for instance, the more you realize that communication in an increasingly globalized world is full of compound nuances and unsolvable questions.
We know, for instance, that the representation of groups such as women, LGBTs and racial minorities in media is often reductive and oppressive. Media scholars and practitioners try to arrive at a fairer presentation of these dissident narratives, but have yet to arrive at a definite solution to the problem.
Why, then, do we keep pursuing these questions? Precisely because the questions are never-ending.
If there were clear answers to everything, there would be no point to things like philosophy. Once you’ve defined the bounds of philosophy and answered all its questions, you’ve killed it. Yet no one has done that, and the questions remain, revealing myriad tensions within tensions the more we try to unravel them.
It is these tensions that haunt us—this calculus of constantly approaching the answer, but always coming up short. These are what keep us in hot pursuit of knowledge. And ultimately, it’s these questions that make life worth living.
Because an answer, in a sense, is a dead end. So keep asking, keep looking and keep chasing the elusive. Maybe you’ll never find it, but maybe that’s where the beauty of it lies.
