Pseudo Random

... and it doesn't mean squat!

When protagonists of the universe went in search of the ultimate answer to the question of the life, the universe and everything, the answer that they got was 42. Pretty insightful. However, the answer made the inhabitants a bit inquisitive and they made a giant computer called earth, third planet of a small unregarded yellow sun far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy, to find the ultimate question of the life, the universe and everything.

As the story goes, the earth was destroyed minutes before the question was about to be computed, so we never could find out what the ultimate question was!

Douglas Adams was pretty correct.

People in this world know all the answers to their life, the universe and everything. Pity, few actually know the right questions. As a result, they remain unhappy despite of having small green pieces of paper and digital wrist watches.

I have come to realization that every person with an IQ higher than room-temperature knows everything about things that matter to him/her. So, as a matter of reasonable expectation, it should be fair to assume that one has enough data to come to answers about daily doubts and tribulations. But then, why are so many people unhappy ?

What really makes it sound depressing is the realization that mostly people are unhappy about daily issues ranging from "baby-sitter who's late 3 times a week", to "cursing the job and boss 576th time in last an year" to "pondering on dumping the bitchy girlfriend yet another time in last 3 years", to "Should I kill my mother-in-law ?".

When the people go to their best-friend for answers to their woes, the answers they get are the same they've known themselves all along - "Change the baby-sitter, after all another one is only $3/hr more expensive", "If your job sucks so much, why don't you change... the industry is booming you know", "Dump her man, she ain't so pretty to put up with these troubles everyday" and "yep".

Sometimes, people finally act on the conclusions, sometimes they just sigh, ignore, and walk down to bar to get ready for yet another day... "She's often late, but because of her sick husband and saved life of my kid once", "Yeah the job sucks and my boss too... but I like the work", "I would have, but she is only one who stands beside me no matter what" and "as soon as mother-in-law-cide is legalized".

So if the answer doesn't lie in the answers, where is it ? Have we been looking all the wrong places all the time ? Was it wrong in the first place to look for the answer in the box of answers ? Does it lie somewhere else ?

... or did we just not know how to ask the right question in first place ?

It's always garbage in, garbage out. We can always find the right answers. They'd be mostly the correct answer to the question we asked, but that does not mean that the question itself was correct. If we wish to find the right answers, we would need to learn to ask the right question first!

That's it ? So why doesn't everyone do it ?

The problem with this world has always been that everybody from parents to teachers to religious heads tried to answer questions -- mostly with an authoritative touch that screamed "Don't you dare ask more questions... just do what I say because I say so!", Yeah right! We have never been taught how to ask questions, let alone how to ask the right question... may be because once a person learns to ask the right question he no longer needs a figure-head to run to find the answer. The data is all there, given the right question, one can always find the right answer! Thus the authoritative figures vanishe in a puff of smoke the way god can be made to disappear in a puff of logic.

Keep computing the ultimate question to the life, the universe and everything. Watch out for the Vogon bulldozers that hang in the sky pretty much the way that bricks don't! And most of all, your quest for right questions will astound you, so "DON'T PANIC".