Your personal universe is big and it contains many assumptions and ideas that you take for granted. Here are 100 questions that you can ask yourself to shake things up a bit.
- What do we mean by “universe”?
- What do we mean by “world” and how is it distinct from our planet Earth?
- What services does Earth provide to our world?
- Who created the world we live in now?
- Is it possible for an individual to make the world better?
- What does it mean to make the world better?
- What is money?
- Why does having money matter?
- Under what conditions does money become useless?
- Why are human beings required to “earn a living” or earn their right to live when every other plant and animal on the planet just lives?
- What are scarcity and abundance?
- What is doing more with less? How does it affect scarcity?
- Do we create artificial scarcities?
- Can a digitized item (like a song or movie) be scarce?
- If you had a machine that could make just about anything (like a replicator in Star Trek), what would you count as your personal possessions?
- Do we have any machines like that now?
- Who or what creates change?
- Is change the same as progress?
- Is it better to embrace change or fight it?
- What is a tool?
- What is thinking?
- What does thinking look like?
- When do you let other people do your thinking for you?
- What is design?
- What is design thinking?
- What is the purpose of business?
- Is capitalism a natural system?
- Why do some people make jobs and other people have jobs?
- Do some people have advantages over other people?
- What advantages do you have over others?
- What is discrimination?
- Can you be discriminated for as well as being discriminated against?
- What is power?
- Does great responsibility really come with great power?
- Do some people live at the expense of other people? Who?
- What is a nation?
- What is race?
- What is success?
- Is it natural that some people are successful and others are not?
- What is wealth?
- Is there an upper limit to monetary wealth? Could we all be billionaires?
- What is the common wealth?
- What is knowledge?
- What makes a trusted source of knowledge?
- What does it mean to not know something?
- What does it mean to be wrong?
- What is synergy?
- What is differentiation?
- What is integration?
- What does it mean to have an integrated mind?
- What does it mean to have a flexible mind?
- What is justice?
- Why do we have laws?
- What is fairness?
- What is industry?
- How is craft different than industry?
- Why are the arts valuable?
- What is conservative?
- What is liberal?
- What is responsibility?
- How would things change if energy were cheap and abundant?
- What do we mean by standard of living?
- What was a medieval king’s standard of living compared to yours?
- Is it better to make yourself irreplaceable or obsolete?
- Do people change?
- Do people improve?
- What is marketing?
- Is everything “natural” good for you?
- Is everything “synthetic” bad for you?
- Are we born good or bad?
- What is the average person? Is anyone actually average?
- What is a “normal” person?
- What is mental illness?
- Are emotions a good source of knowledge? What kinds of knowledge?
- Can we all agree on anything?
- Are humans evolving? Toward what?
- What is freedom?
- What is innovation?
- Do limits destroy or enhance innovation?
- What does it mean to own something?
- What is love?
- What is hate?
- Are love and hate feelings? Actions? Decisions?
- What is physical?
- What is metaphysical?
- What is the purpose of religion?
- Do human beings have a special function or role in universe?
- What does it mean to be a good parent?
- How can we avoid passing our own limitations on to our children?
- What is learning?
- What is teaching?
- What are values?
- What are your values?
- It’s said that the world has a lot of problems. What do we mean by “problem”?
- Who is to blame?
- What is security?
- Is the world getting better or worse?
- Who is it getting better or worse for?
- Is war inevitable?
- Is peace inevitable?
