Asking "why" corrupts your observations

[blankisomeone]

I realized that whenever I'm observing a phenomenon, be it life itself as it IS right now (the phenomenon of life itself regardless of content), or someone's behavior, the moment I ask "why?" it touches off an avalanche of biased assumptions, corrupting the observation process.

Thoughts?

Edited April 26, 2021 by blankisomeone

[Moksha]

11 minutes ago, blankisomeone said:

Thoughts?

Asking for thoughts = asking why 

Thoughts are devilry. Peace is being.

[blankisomeone]

25 minutes ago, modmyth said:

And if you ask yourself why asking why corrupts your observation process, what do you come up with? What thoughts and what feelings and sensations?

Why does asking why corrupt my observation process?

Hm, what comes up is... I cannot answer that, because it kills my observation process! It has the potential of smearing pure observation with all kinds of wacky assumptions.

It feels like I could sit here in observation mode forever and never ask why.

Edited April 26, 2021 by blankisomeone

[Thought Art]

@blankisomeone That is a good observation.

Perhaps it isn't the why that is corrupting it though, but your current system for observation as a whole. You unconscious system of observation.

Maybe asking why can be an aspect of observation, and likely it seems should be. But, we want to be meta aware of our observations so we don't get lost in concepts. 

[Megan Alecia]

But that would be the death of understanding, aka idiocy. 

[Nahm]

@blankisomeone

Because there isn’t an actual observation process. 

[4201]

19 hours ago, Megan Alecia said:

But that would be the death of understanding, aka idiocy. 

If you are asking why, you aren't in a state of understanding. Otherwise why would you ask if you already know why?

Does constantly asking why grants understanding? In a conversation with someone else, asking why can make them create an explanation for you and listening to it can lead to some understanding. If you were stuck constantly asking why though, you would never listen and never understand.

Sure someone's explanation can be helpful (or not) but your own explanations are made from the same POV of the one that receives it, so it's really not useful. No insight will ever arise from self-explaining why things are the way they are. Of course asking why can lead to you going forward and be willing to answer that question and do whatever it takes to answer it, but none of what it takes to answer the "why" is "asking why". If you want to understand why a banana is yellow you can start learning about pigments and chemistry and figure out what pigment is in the banana that makes it yellow. None of this requires any asking, you could just do it for fun without even being bothered by not knowing why.

Edited April 27, 2021 by 4201