Big questions

September 2, 2010

I’ve been struggling to find a real direction for what I want to do for a while now. Seems like there’s a lot of guidance and suggestions around the web for finding your passion or your aim, but that’s not exactly the issue I’m having; rather, I simply have too many things I want to do all at once.

I’ve found that my quest to find a good direction (or two) revolves around big questions about the world and how changes in our lives will affect us in the future. Lately I’ve realized that I want to know what big questions other people have, too; maybe we can find some way to approach them together.

Here are a few of the questions that rattle around in my mind quite a bit.

  • How can we learn to recognize bias and motives while at the same time encouraging research and reducing mistruths in news and other communication?
  • How do we balance an increasingly documented and data-centric world with our need and rights to privacy?
  • How can we encourage people to understand others’ points of view, even if they don’t agree with them?
  • How does our changing view of friendship as a result of social networking and other tools affect interpersonal skills and our relationships in physical space?
  • What’s the best way to approach law and government in a way that does not infringe on anyone’s religious beliefs or rights?
  • How can we make waste reduction (including packaging reduction, recycling, etc.) a priority for normal people?
  • What’s the best way to balance our energy needs with the risks associated with more productive forms of power generation?

Of course, you’ll probably notice a few common threads in those questions; those threads are my passions. Your questions will probably have some shared central ideas, too.

I’d love to hear what you think are the big questions that should be discussed and debated. If you feel comfortable sharing them publicly, leave a comment or send me a note on Twitter. If you’d rather share privately, shoot me an email. Hopefully we can build a discussion from there.