Unanswerable questions 1
It has been a while since I last touched the characters on my keyboard to direct them into a blog post. January 2024, to be precise, more than a year ago. It is not that I haven’t been writing. On the contrary, however, to add a few words to the ocean of stories felt useless. And with the content explosion of ChatGPT, words seemed destined to drown instead of forming a small cork to discover the sea around you. The unanswerable question, “Is there still any point in writing?” kept popping up like a fox in the night. Till it was answered recently.
In 2024, the letters Albert Camus had written to a former German friend during World War II were published in Dutch. During my secondary school and university years, I was a huge fan of Camus. However, as the eighties evolved into the nineties, the need to create a living and the rise of dance music pushed all activities that challenged my intellectual skills, other than finding the next party or job, into the background. Camus faded away.
A few weeks ago, I uselessly roamed the tax-free area of an airport, trying to stave off boredom and the time until the next flight. In a bookstore, my eye caught Camus’ name, and after the impulsive purchase, my eyes once again were glued to his words, written long ago but still so relevant these days, like this one:
“Our great values eventually weary us. We become ashamed of the mind and sometimes imagine a happy barbarism that would grant us a truth without effort.”
It struck a nerve, answered an unanswerable question and resulted in this blog post.
What it says to me is that our core values haven’t been discussed in mainstream media for a long time: the division of powers by the trias politica, the value of an independent press, and the need for a scientific approach to prove whether something works or not. Real challenges have been answered with false positives and easy answers. Unanswerable questions were transformed into easy-to-digest statements that created false certainties, which were presented as unchangeable truths. However, certainties eliminate many options.
Undeniably, the world looks less peaceful than it did in the late 1990s and the first part of the twenty-first century. A completely new world emerged, the digital world. What seemed confident is no longer certain. There is a famous saying: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Learn to live with it, but also discuss it. An easy truth doesn’t exist. Actually, it would be boring if it did.
And the answer to my personal unanswerable question: “Is there still any point in writing?” Let’s discuss. Many people dislike writing, and for them, AI is a relief, a blessing, and a source of ease. For me, writing is fun; fighting, catching, and moulding the words is a source of joy, so why not a series about “unanswerable questions”?
