More Than Black & White

I have come to the end of responding to the twelve questions in The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers by Bhanu Kapil. I am now offering my services as a different kind of Agony Aunt—one who attempts to answer unanswerable or open-ended questions. Please feel free to send me what is unanswerable or open-ended, and I will do my best to respond.

“Questioning in Brooklyn,” asks: Is it important to have civilizations?

There is a man that I’ve never met who told me that to ask this question “beclouds reality.” Fortunately for you, I am not as fixed in my response as he is. Instead, I prefer to imagine that these blobs of people are not defined by where they live and how they live. I imagine these blobs as something magical—human beings coming together to make food, to make writing, to make knowledge, to make compassion, to make understanding. But under no circumstances are these blobs of people allowed to laud their certainty. (To laud is to negate the magic.) That said, I do think blobs of people are important because I do believe that many heads can be better than one. For example: Did you know that there are more than two colors? I didn’t. I thought there was only black and white. But along came a blob of people who taught me to look up at the sun, and who taught me to look at a wine glass, and who taught me to look at a bluejay, etc. I could go on and on about all the things these blobs of people have taught me. And mostly, I am thankful. So, in short, my dear Questioning Heart in Brooklyn, my answer is: Their importance is not fixed; it depends on what they teach us.