The Huh? of the Future

What is a Super PAC?

What does the Supreme Court mean when it says that it recognizes corporations as people?

Why is heroin so popular right now in quiet suburban communities?

How much does it cost to dig a well in a Third World country? And how much is one month's data plan on the most inexpensive smartphone?

What is our current minimum wage?

Is Amazon's new Lending Library the beginning of the end for our current Public Library system?

Why aren't windshields covered on anybody's bumper-to-bumper warranty plan?

Will my generation remember enough of its history to not repeat the bad parts of it?

And will yours?

...

I don't know either, gentle reader. But I want to know.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World poses the conflict caught in the teeth of knowing too much and not enough. It displays happiness as an end while struggle is personified as the one thing to be avoided at all cost. In fact, World Controller Mustapha Mond goes so far as to liken the ideal population to the iceberg model, where seven-ninths of the population float safely below sea level. They live in the murk, and they are happy there.

I want to be part of the two-ninths. Or better, I want to raise the seven-ninths upward, to breathe the fresh air. I want to struggle. Together. I want to read and read and read and then discuss things, with defensive mode flipped off, and then go back and read some more. And I want to trust the fiction that I have read, because human nature hasn't changed. Because what motivated people in Othello and The Moon is Down and My Antonia are the same things that motivate our family, our bosses, our world leaders. I want to trust the fiction that I love, because it allows me to see my reality with sharper focus. Because I have seen many things already, safely in the pages of my books, or on the screen of my e-reader (yes, I can be a fancy pants now too, I suppose), like gazing into the proverbial crystal ball.

It is not our place to know everything. But the only way we will impact the world around us is to first know something about it. Personally, I am a fan of more than just "something," aren't you?

Go find the answers. Go ask the unasked questions. Go be the expert.