The big questions

McKenna Snow
Class of 2024

(1/2022) When someone asks you a question, the way you answer depends firstly on the type of question being asked. The types of questions can vary dramatically, from, what did you have for dinner yesterday, to, can you "name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each"? This second question is taken from the 1895 test that kids had to take to pass the eighth grade. Do most people these days know the answers to these questions? Given that one question on the test was, "Give four substitutes for caret nuä," I’m going to go ahead and guess that most people are like me, and don’t know the answers.

The questions are from subjects like geography, history, and math; that’s all good and well, but are these subjects the only sort of ones that people should invest in learning about? In the context of all these questions, from the "what’s 3+3" to, "list every state capital," there’s a very specific type of question that few public institutions, back then or present-day, have taught people to approach well: these are the "Big Questions," like, is there an objective meaning to life?

Judging from the questions in the eighth grade exam, it doesn’t seem that the kids then were being taught how to think about these Big Questions much either. Largely, we are left to fend for ourselves on these questions, do our own research, and make our own opinions on it. After all, science can’t test and prove questions like if God exists or not, so why teach anyone how to think about a question like that one?

If I were to ask you if there is such a thing as objective morality, or what determines "personhood," what might you have ready in your back pocket to answer with? Would you use any curriculum resources from eighth grade? What about twelfth?

We are taught how to answer questions in the hard sciences; we are even taught how to analyze a beautiful poem or novel according to a given prompt. But on the Questions that really have weight to them over the course of our life, we have been implicitly taught to shy away from them in a public setting because science and material proof allegedly have little to do with answering them.

This 1895 test, and standardized public testing these days, both reveal a startling truth: we have been left to ourselves to answer the biggest questions of all. These curricula largely say, "these topics have little empirical or tangible evidence to work with, so we are not going to teach you anything about how to think about them with yourselves and with others." Now, I am not criticizing public institutions that don’t teach a sort-of "what to think"; I am calling to attention the fact that these public institutions teach us very little about how to think and talk about morality, religion, philosophy, or any of these other "subjective" matters. It’s not about the "what to think" they are not teaching: it’s the "how to think" that they do not teach.

The problem is that curricula like these implicitly declare that there is nothing objective to teach about Big Questions, the answers of which matter enormously to us. Instead, curricula heavily dependent on the hard sciences foster a deep relativism about Big Questions, leaving everyone on their own in the journey to find the Questions’ answers. We have been taught shockingly little about how to approach these questions, both on our own and as a whole society, and there have been consequences. Consider all the bickering, name-calling, arguing, and deep divide between disagreeing groups. We know very little about having a conversation with the people we disagree with, especially on the most important topics.

We should not treat the Big Questions as though our decided answers are inconsequential to others around us. What we believe affects one another, and the way that we live it out affects one another. We should encourage conversation about the Big Questions, because they matter the most. Their answers matter far more than if I can name "four substitutes for carat nuä" off the top of my head.

If we don’t know how to talk about them, or if we are too afraid to ask one another about them, we should start learning. Where our curricula taught us little about how to think, we can learn how to engage in dialogue that challenges ourselves and others. We can offer new perspectives and give charitable interpretations of the other side’s opinion, but we shouldn’t stop there. Don’t be intimidated by relativism’s ironically unapproachable stance. Approach it and ask if it is the code we should all live by (but if relativism claims to be the true stance we should universally take, is it self-defeating since it proclaims nothing we believe is objective?)

The Mount’s core curriculum is a place that is counter-cultural to this relativistic mindset; it draws on ancient and modern philosophies and theology courses, challenging students to approach Big Questions head-on, together as a class—in which most come from differing viewpoints—instead of shying away from them. Liberal arts curriculums like the Mount’s equip people to become comfortable talking about the Big Questions. I deeply appreciate its efforts to embrace challenging topics and to seek the truth. It has shown me the importance of rejecting relativism, pursuing the truth in deeper questions, and showing the goodness of science and that which is empirically verifiable—but teaching me not to stop there.

Go seek out the truth about the Big Questions, maybe even with the very people you disagree with. Go find common ground with them to start on. Don’t be afraid of disagreeing, be afraid of giving up in the pursuit of answering the Big Questions we were never taught to handle. Don’t be fooled by relativism’s charade that says when something isn’t immediately empirically verifiable, it isn’t worth your time. The Big Questions are out there with answers, and they’re worth learning how to think about them, how to talk about them, and how to find their answers. Their answers are worth a lot more than if you can name the Principle parts of a verb.