Chapter 0: BARD GATE–
Howdy, pard. Welcome to the Bard Gate, through which wisdom-seekers & fools alike may pass en route to some smidgin of wising up. (Or not, as the case may be.) This fool believes we might both raise our sights & deepen our understanding going forward. Belief is one thing, knowing another, & best to be clear about which is which in our efforts to unify the two by thinking ahead, a process never complete–until all mysteries are open.
Until then (a presumably timeless or at least time-transcending conception), understanding may expand & transform with no end, awareness of what’s not known expanding at a higher rate than that of what’s known. Awareness of what’s not known can even be considered a necessary condition for taking steps to find out more, any search for answers prompted by awareness of the questions. As a general principle, the beginner learns any field or subject primarily by learning its questions, both those with & those without accepted answers, the field’s history wrapped up in the history of its questions.
New advances may come by answering existing questions &/or by posing new ones. What distinguishes this from that in any field or situation? Answers to what questions might clarify whatever the subject being dealt with? What questions might I come up with for answers of interest?
In fact, this could be YOUR FIRST QUESTION: WHAT QUESTIONS DO I HAVE/ SHOULD I ASK/ MIGHT I FIND MOST USEFUL, INTERESTING…? You will notice that this is not a Mr. Wizard site with known answers to common questions, often trivial. Our questions are less likely to have commonly accepted answers, or be easily subject to known tests & experiments.
Here, on the Bod-Library branch website (Bod-Library.org) is where QUESTIONS directly pertinent to all of us are explored–at three levels of pertinence: the BIG (BURNING) QUESTIONS that affect us all directly (e.g., our own nature & reality’s; nature of the world, mind, life & self); KEY REALITIES OF HISTORY-SOCIETY-MEDIA (how things actually seem to work, especially the last 60-75 years); QUIRKIER topics (of language, learning, markets, arts & culture.)