Question everything

If you'll allow my inner political science geek a little space: John Stuart Mill wrote in On Liberty that progress and social growth in a society depends on allowing unpopular opinions to be heard so we can consider their value. It allows society to continuously re-evaluate values, laws and standards, and will hopefully reveal both where we are going right and where improvement may be possible. For this reason, free speech (and its assistant, free press) is an absolute necessity in a society that values progress and improvement.

( Politically geeky details )

If this is healthy on a society-wide basis, I wonder if it might be healthy on an individual basis too. Perhaps systematically challenging our beliefs, our morals, our very understanding of ourselves and the world will keep us mentally flexible and result in personal growth.

So, I am trying to figure out what questions I need to ask myself to get the right effect. They need to be questions that provoke a reaction in my gut: disgust, excitement, passion, something. The best questions may be the ones I don't want to ask, but it is hard to even think of what those might be.

I figure everyone's precise provoking questions will be different, for they have so much to do with challenging deeply held, personal beliefs and perceptions. But, generally, questions would be about religion and spirituality, relationships, beliefs about money and work, politics, memories, lifestyle choices and beliefs about the world that all of these things are based on.

It will take a lot of thought to come up with the right questions, much less give the answers the consideration they deserve.

*And not to forget the people whose hard work and sacrifice resulted in slow change.