Druidry and Asking Questions

For many people, Druidry is as much a philosophical path as a spiritual one. I’m all for asking questions, and for pondering things, but I think it’s also important to ask questions about the questions.

How much time should we spend on questions that we know cannot be answered? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? There are questions you can kick round forever and never answer. You might argue bitterly with people who disagree, thus adding to the total sum of misery in the world. 

Philosophy doesn’t have to be abstract. There’s no need for it to be irrelevant. One of the best and most powerful questions we can ask is the one favoured by small children – why? Why are things the way they are? Why did this happen? Sometimes it helps to carry on and wonder what it means, but not always. The quest for an abstract or spiritual meaning can be a distraction sometimes. The important question might not be ‘why did I see a thrush today, what does it mean?’ but ‘why do I not see thrushes every day?’

It’s always good to ask if things are inevitable or not. We get so used to our own human structures that we collectively take them for truths and realities. Countries are just ideas, as are currencies. The five day working week, nine to five is just an idea, it’s not our natural destiny as people. Who we include and who we exclude, what we allow and what we deny, what and who we treat as important, what and who we throw away… there are so many questions to ask.

Whatever improvements you want to make in the world, part of the process involves convincing people – yourself included – that change is possible. People can only imagine change is possible when they aren’t persuaded that the current state of things is inevitable and natural.