It's still there, our ability to wonder about the world. We just don't use it so often...

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.

In the book, the philosopher Albert Knox says “It seems as if in the process of growing up we lose the ability to wonder about the world.” By this, I believe that Knox is saying, as we grow up, we lose our curiosity because we get so used to the world around us, and everything that happens in our life just becomes an everyday habit. I also think that this ‘habit’ is caused by the enormous amount of knowledge and experience that we encounter on the way of life. I do not believe that it is possible for anyone to actually LOSE their ability to wonder, but it is possible to wonder LESS about things. So agree with this statement to an extent.

When we are born as a baby, everything is new to us. We are born into this world without any knowledge other than our natural instincts to eat and sleep. But as we grow up, we goes through the process of experiencing things and questioning/analyzing them so that we understand what is happening, and therefore we are able to apply that knowledge to other things in life. For example, when I was a small child I wondered, why do we need to eat? Why is the sky blue? Since I experienced and learned so many things in my course of ‘growing up’, now I know the answer to these questions. When I was hungry, I couldn’t run as fast as I could before but after I ate, I would feel energized and therefore be able to run as fast before. So I know that food gives us energy. After studying physics, I knew that the sky was blue because sunlight is a mixture of different colours of light and molecules in the air scatter blue light more than the others. Just like this, the knowledge that we gain from our experiences and education from schools/media/parents etc helps us answer questions to life that we couldn’t answer when we were small. But after we gain the basic knowledge and get the basic idea about how the world works, we start wondering less, unintentionally. We get used to what happens in the world and the world itself. But I also understand that for some people knowledge increases their desire to know more. Well, for me, the knowledge that I have acquired through education has taught me that everything (well everything that I have gotten used to and have known so far in my ordinary life) has a logical explanation. So far I have been able to work out a logical explanation to most questions that I’ve had in life by applying knowledge that I already had. So even when I witness something extraordinary that people call a ‘miracle’, although I may be surprised, I may see it as a result of something logical. But who knows? Knox calls this a ‘habit’. He says ‘the world becomes a habit to us’. And I do agree with that, to an extent. However for me, it is only natural that the world has become a habit to me.

This relates to the example in the book about little Thomas. When little Thomas’s Dad starts floating around the ceiling, little Thomas will surely be surprised, but he’s not as surprised as his mother who drops the jam jar from her hand and scream in fright. Knox says Little Thomas reacts this way because he is still young, only 2~3 years old and hasn’t had much experience in life yet so he doesn’t know the certain boundaries of life yet. To him, everything that happens in his everyday life is astonishing. But for Mom, Dad floating around in the kitchen is certainly a lot more than astonishing. It’s flabbergasting. As an adult, Mom has learned that humans cannot fly. Therefore the fact that Dad is floating, is out of habit for Mom.

I believe people wonder less as they grow up unintentionally, but it is also possible to wonder less intentionally. As a matter of fact, in some situations, it is necessary to lessen our level of curiosity. From a certain age as a child, I have always known that there are questions which are better unasked, and things better unsaid. As the old saying goes, “Curiosity killed the cat”. Although maybe a bit too dramatic, examples are shown in movies and TV series where the character finds out something very confidential and as they look further into it, they get implicated in a big crime and end up being shot.Also, asking careless and insensitive questions may hurt people’s feelings. For example, if an innocent, unknowing child saw a disabled person without limbs and asked that person, “Why don’t you have two legs like I do?” it may bring back awful memories for the disabled person. This brings me to think that people are most likely to question things philosophically when in a tragic, sorrowful situation.

Another reason why we wonder less as we grow up may be because we just don’t have enough time for it. Nowadays, people are so caught up with other things in life such as work, maintaining relationships and being themselves that they have no room to think about questions such as “Who am I”, “Where does the world come from”, and “Who made the universe”. To most people, I believe that it is more important to think about what is happening NOW and what needs to be done NOW rather than to think about how we come to exist in this world. It may be that people are thinking – “Let’s leave that to the professionals, and we’ll just get on with what we have to do now”. In other words, relating to what Knox said, people are too comfortable deep down the white rabbit’s fur with their unchanging, everyday lives that they can’t be bothered to take the risk in climbing up to the top and finding out more.

I personally think I am one of those people deep down inside the white rabbit’s fur, but I don’t see it as such a big problem as Knox does. I respect the philosophers in the past for devoting their life to those questions, but to me, living life to its fullest now is important, and wondering about those questions in class time is interesting and good enough for me.

In conclusion, I agree with Knox's idea but disagree that our ability to wonder about the world is LOST. We are just less curious about the world than we were when we were babies because the world has become a habit to us, and because we are too caught up with our ordinary life. But again, in the end, who knows? We are all different.