In Chapter 2, Albert Knox states that "It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world." What does he mean? Do you agree with him? Explain why or why not, using examples from this first section of the novel (pp. 1-120) and your own life experiences.
“It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world." This quote suggests that as humans grow up, their curiosity of the world reduces as well since they believe that they are continuously learning more through every day life and experience, and that these questions are no longer kept in mind or considered as a mystery. These questions unknowingly begin to be left aside as we no longer hold the appreciation towards them, mainly due to the belief that our knowledge about the world is sufficient and that survival is more significant.
According to Knox, human beings are acknowledged to have the “ability to wonder about the world” although most of us just takes ‘the world for granted’ and heads towards the simplistic life. This way of thinking is diverse to the way that children’s think, seeing that we are familiar with most of the things we see, thus we do not get inquisitive with things we have seen in the past. This then links back to the sufficient amount of knowledge we have because with this basic knowledge we are capable of cruising through life without the trouble of questioning the existence of humans and the world. We are constantly being pressured by the society with work and antagonism, therefore forced to withdraw us from the chance wondering. At this point we simply ‘lose’ the ability to wonder against the demanding life.
As we grow up, we simply become too preoccupied with survival and end up taking no notice of these provoking questions until being asked. However, when these questions do come up in conversations, they causes the atmosphere to become awkward and leads to bizarre conclusions of why the questions came up, which is why Sophie was accused of taking drugs during her talk with her mother.
I find myself agreeing with Knox’s statement to a certain extent. Not everyone looses the ability to wonder, as most of us prefer to leave it aside. It is true that all human beings desire answers, this is natural. Alternatively, not all questions are provided with answers. For this reason, most of us rather stop thinking about it and leave them unexplored given that an answer can by no means be established as correct as we “never get to the bottom of it, although there is a solution somewhere” for life’s big questions. This case becomes the most accurate for people who are economically active as they are the ones with the least amount of time to wonder about the world. When people are about to die, their mind begins to fluctuate and they wonder about a lot of things which they would not of have before. This approach of thinking is comparable to they way that a children thinks after they enter the world as almost everything they see through their eyes is something new, hence an enormous amount of questions fire through their heads.
This statement of Alberto Knox can definitely be thought through many different ways but I believe that I agree with it more than not. Wondering about the world goes through everyone, but certainly not all of us go as deep into the questions and wonder constantly. In life, time is vital and in order to spend time efficiently we give and take, and if thinking over a question that you never know when you are able to conclude, we opt to leave it and move on.
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6 comments:
you wrote quite alot there man, yea i agree with what you said. after reading that book, i really did start thinking about my life. did i stop wondering? i think i did. well i hope i dont lose all my imaginations of life. just as what you said, some people mite not lose it, i hope i dont haha
I thing your correct in saying that people would tend to move on if they are unable to solve questions they have had through thinking.
However, we have seen many individuals who are determined and have stayed with their question and eventually figuring it out. Without the inventions and theories our lives would not be as satisfying as it might have been.
hey fernando,
You wrote a lot didnt you. A lot more than you do in geo haha. Well i like how the book has had an effect on you and how you have started to question things around you
I love you,
miguel
Hey Miguel your post has nothing to do with sophies world
Fernando ho
I disagree with you to some extent. I beleive that when people grow up they do not just think of survival they still have to think about whats happening(wonder).what they wonder about may just be different. Let take some extremes. A beggar just about to die from starvation may ask "why does it have to be me". Or during a natural disaster a person may ask "why now".
All questions do not have an correct answer. I believe what we know has an alternate answer which we do not know and it causes our original answer to be incorrect. You say people move on without the answer but I say that we accept an answer and move on and we do not look for alternate answers. I will give two examples. The question "what came first the chicken or the egg" most people just give up on the question and move on. i say this is their answer "it does not have and answer" that is their answer to the question. The next example is "when will the world end" this counts as the univer. this questoin can not be proven. It can be today it can be tomorrow. This question does not have an answer but many people spend their life tiring to find it. So i beleive every gives an answer to every question. they do not "move on" on questions. some people will continue to search for it and some people will be approach a different question.
When I say all questions do not have an correct answer i mean it is only what we believe it is and what we accept as the answer. such as "orange is orange". we have accepted that in are brining up and growth this may not be true in teh sense that orange is made of different elements such as yellow and red. So orange is not orange it is made of a buch of different stuff. But how do we know that bunch of different stuff makes orange. it may be what we beleive as true
I agree with your view that people spend less time wondering because they have less and less time to spare.
However, you also said that people begin to wonder more when their life is at an end. Doesn't this mean that they have even less time than normal to wonder about the world?
I like your use of evidence such as the statement 'We are constantly being pressured by the society with work and antagonism'. I also liked the way you explained how human beings desire answers which you said was natural. Overall, I agree with your claim that we opt to leave questions which can't be answered and moved on.
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