Troubling Questions

—Lucinda J. Garthwaite, ILI Director

“What do we owe one another?”

This was the last of three questions that ended an essay in The New Yorker this week, by physician and researcher Dhruv Khullar. Khullar was wondering on the page about ways to navigate an enduring Covid-19 endemic. He also asked, “What level of disease are we willing to accept?”  and “What is the purpose of further restrictions?”

Khullar referred to these questions as complex, and they are, because who is “we” here?  And how does this undefined we factor cultural, let alone political differences into our answers? What if you’re willing to accept a level of disease I’m not willing to accept? What if your restrictions seriously inhibit my capacity to thrive?

I’ll be honest, these questions scare me. But does that mean they shouldn’t be asked?

This week, a dear friend of mine cried as she said to me, “Can we even ask questions anymore?” My friend has always considered herself progressive, literally and politically.  She’s found belonging among those who question the status quo.   As the pandemic took hold, she’d asked earnest questions about intersections between capitalism and medicine, about the tensions between collective well-being and harmful isolation.  She’s wondered aloud about the lack of attention to all the ways, besides a vaccine, to take collective care of each other in a pandemic.

Asking those questions -- just asking those questions -- lost her friends, drove her to isolation, left her open to harsh judgements and social media name-calling from the community to which she had long felt she belonged.  All that was before she came out as having decided against the Covid vaccine, instead taking up other ways to mitigate the possibility of harm for herself, her family and, importantly to her, for others.

My friend understands that her critics are afraid. She understands their fear, respects their decisions.  And she’s also afraid - of systemic greed, of tightly held truths devolving to tyranny.

I’ll be honest, her questions scared me, too. They pointed to too many doors I was afraid to open, and threatened to topple ideas I’d counted on to be sturdy.  But I love my friend, and I trust her, so I sat in my fear and asked her to tell me more.  In the end, though we have answered her questions differently, I’m no longer afraid of them. In fact, they have widened my vision.

But I see that others find her questions dangerous, and so in the service of careful thinking I need to ask, is there such a thing as a dangerous question?   A quick online search reveals what I suspected; I’m far from the first person to ask that question, and the answers are as various as you can imagine.

I’m not going to try, at least now, to tender a definition of dangerous questions of my own. (I’m eager to think about it though, and invite readers to add your thoughts in the link below.) I’m more concerned with the liberatory worth of punishing those who ask questions that seem dangerous, that elicit fear.

When questions spark fear, it feels like trouble.  Fear demands attention from the fearful, and deserves it, I think, but giving attention is different than giving power.

Attention says to fear, thank you, yes, I see you, I appreciate your warning, I’m on alert, I’ve got this; you can sit down now. 

Giving fear power says, do whatever you need to, to make the threat go away. The problem with that is that questions, even scary questions, maybe especially scary questions, are absolutely necessary tools for liberatory change.  Transformation thrives on questions.  

When questions spark fear, it feels like trouble. When questions are forbidden on pain of punishment, we’re in trouble.

So how to navigate the arguably real possibility of harm in questions? How to convince fear to stand down? 

I’m reminded as I often am recently (and I know I’ve referred to this here before) of adrienne maree brown’s We Will Not Cancel Us (2020), at the end of which she writes, in part, “While all harms are not equal, even the most heinous require a way home. . . .we must become more and more comfortable with what is wild in each of us. The contradictions, the ways suffering shapes who we are...”

brown is writing in the context of the contemporary Abolitionist movement, advocating for a shift away from punishment (e.g. prisons), to deep accountability.  She’s lovingly calling on her colleagues in the movement to reconsider their own punitive behavior toward each other, and toward those with whom the movement has differences.

I think there are some answers here to Dhruv Khullar’s question, “What do we owe one another?” (I don’t of course know what Khullar means by “we,” but I mean it, here, universally.)

Even if I can’t shake a conviction that a question is harmful, it seems to me that a commitment to a more socially equitable and nonviolent future requires me to do the work to become more comfortable with the questioner, the wild in them, the contradictions, the real possibility that their suffering shapes their concerns.

I’m working on shaking that conviction as much as I can, though, because, for me, as uncomfortable as I get with some questions, as genuinely threatened as I sometimes feel, I’ll take all that in the service of a transforming world.