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Stuff confuses me
As you may have guessed by now, I'm not a particularly intelligent man.
In fact, ask any of my friends and they'd probably tell you I'm quite thick.
At my work I get to handle lots of money. And today for no particular reason I started wondering who is on the back of all the English notes. After about an hour I'd worked out that Charles Darwin is on the ten pound note, Sir Edward Elgar is on the twenty pound note and a man named John Houblon is on the fifty pound note (who I think was the gatekeeper of the Bank of England at some point). But one thing still remained a mystery to me: Who the hell was on the five pound note? I tried working it out by her signature but it is unreadable, I tried working it out by the picture on the note but is was just of the woman surrounded by what looks like children. I asked all my workmates but they didn't know (or care), I asked my family and they didn't know, I asked all my friends but he didn't know, I was at a loss, and it was really starting to bug me, I don't know why it was bugging me, I just needed to find out. At the end of my shift I took out one of my own fivers and studied it very closely, eventually I discovered some almost microscopic writing, and written in the tiniest of fonts was the name 'Elizabeth Fry' written over and over again. I had never heard of Elizabeth Fry before and wanted to know what makes her feel she's good enough to be on my money. I looked her up on the internet but with little joy. All I could discover about her is that she brought in some prison reforms.
I was happy that I'd worked out all the faces on the notes. But after a while this got me thinking about other things that I don't know about. And it turns out I don't know anything.
To this day I don't know how magnetic attraction works. I know WHY it works but not HOW it works. I remember being taught hundreds of things in school: the principals of flight, atomic power, X-rays. All the time we are told why stuff works, but not how stuff works, so we are left not really knowing anything about the physical world around us. I've always thought of physics as a branch of philosophy: always leaving me with more questions than answers. And while I'm on the subject, another thing that confuses me is why philosophy students sit exams. How can you possibly fail a philosophy exam? I thought the whole point of philosophy was that nothing can be proven and nothing can be dismissed.
I guess I'm never going to understand anything. Even when I'm driving my car my brain is plagued with questions: How do planets stay in orbit? How do the gears in a car work? Should I have stopped at that red light?
Every day I feel that I have got 'Just enough intelligence to survive'. Am I the only one tormented with questions all the time? Damn, another question.
Kris?
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