Why do we accept things at face value?

     After continuous vain efforts of thinking of a beautiful question I ultimately could not conjure anything worth questioning. I was at a dead end. Although my lack of imagination may seem unfortunate, I believe otherwise. Some people may find this assignment easy. Maybe they decided to question something abstract, but I simply struggled with its concept. I didn’t want anything simple, but I didn’t want to question something that I really wasn’t interested in. After the lecture regarding religious studies and beautiful questions, I became slightly intrigued. Religion provides the opportunity to form numerous amounts of endless questions regarding faith and truth. However, I felt more of a connection with the lecture regarding aliens and life away from Earth. That specific lecture questioned the widely accepted notion that human beings are the only beings in the entire galaxy. It was questioning the status quo in a way, challenging the idea that Earth is the superior planet. From this, I was inspired to do the same. I started to question a beautiful question. This thought stemmed from a  vague question: Why do we accept things at face value? It’s interesting how society has conditioned people to have certain ideas and beliefs about certain things. Alien is an example. For a long time, it was a preconceived idea that human beings are the only life form in the entire galaxy. However, now there are individuals like Jill Tarter, whose curiosity has broken through these preconceived ideas. Another example is the idea that if a woman doesn’t want to have children then there is something psychologically wrong with her. From my Women Studies class that I attended at Georgia State University, I have found that statement to be false. However, some women still believe this thought. Why? This is because society has conditioned us to accept these statements. Regarding my beautiful question, I am also curious why we accept Berger’s criteria of a beautiful question at face value? In Berger’s introduction, he stated that numerous inventions or start-up companies can be traced back to a question or curiosity. As human beings, we observe, learn, and ruminate over various subjects or actions because of curiosity. Berger later stated that, “one of the most important things questioning does is to enable people to think and act in the face of uncertainty.” I agree wholeheartedly with these statements, and I have no issue with the thought of a beautiful question. However, I chose my beautiful question because deciding that Berger is the one that determines if my question is beautiful enough is something I disagree with. We all have questions. Why worry about if it’s beautiful by someone else’s standards?