Here are questions I’ve asked people in the past few months which tend to make them uncomfortable:
“So what?”
“Do you ever change your mind when presented with new information?” (My friend Mike asks a nice variation on this: “Tell me about the last time you changed your mind about something important.”)
“How do you define ‘white’ and ‘black’ in a multinational company? What if I decide today to identify as a black woman?”
“Will this matter to you in 3 or 30 years?”
“If it doesn’t matter how much money the government prints, why bother to collect taxes?”
“When was the last time screaming at someone persuaded them to love you more?”
“Are the forces that drove cycles of ice ages and glacial retreats still at work today?”
“Why do stories about sea level rise in Boston never mention sea level falls in Oslo?” (The North American land mass is sinking; there are other areas in the world where the earth is uplifting.)
“What is the difference between loving humanity and loving unlovely individuals?”
“What are you willing to sacrifice in this situation? Your pride, perhaps?”
“Where the line between community safety (or integrity) and individual liberty?”
“What are we shocked at behaviors which are endemic in human history?”
“Why not make the minimum wage one million dollars per year?”
“Does this situation deserve unrestrained fear?”
“What would be risk-free in a universe where the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is true?”
“I’m intrigued with the idea of insisting leadership teams be representative and inclusive. Would that extend to a balance of liberals and conservatives, say, in college faculty? Whites and Asians in the NBA?”
“Do you care who gets the credit for this good thing?”
“What questions are we now not allowed to ask, and why not?”
I ask these questions not to be snarky or clever, but with a genuine intent of exploring ideas. The point of questions like these is to challenge overly simplistic assumptions. Questions are useful to sustain conversation.
Notice in many of these questions I’m hoping to help people explore a limiting principle. How do you know when you’ve gone too far? Where do you draw a line, and why? People with agency – the ability to make decisions – need intelligent and wise frameworks to decide on limiting principles. The Ten Commandments, for example, are a set of limiting principles.
