Koko and Jeopardy

Koko is a western lowland gorilla who was born on July 4, 1971, at the San Fransico Zoo. He was trained by an animal psychologist, Penny Patterson. She believed that the gorilla could be trained to communicate far beyond what was seen in the past. She decided to prove her thesis by teaching Koko how to communicate using sign language. She succeeded over four decades. Koko learned over a thousand words.

Koko became famous particularly in the world of wildlife conservation. He was featured over twelve times on the cover of The National Geographic Magazine. When he died his obituary appeared in the New York Times. The reason that she captured the world’s attention was that she could sign poetry and wrote essays so the line between Homo Sapiens and non-human primates were blurred.

But there was one thing that Koko never did even once. She never asked a question.

The stock market is booming largely because of AI. You know what AI can’t do. It can’t ask a question as a significant part of its process. Its process is more geared to finding answers.

The importance of questions as we try to discover meaning in our lives has been increasingly downplayed. We believe that what is important is getting the answer right.

Right now, one of EA’s alumni is winning on the tv show, Jeopardy, by getting all the questions that are thrown at him right. I join others in our school community that are really excited by his success. I have two high school classmates who call each other during Jeopardy and seek to get more answers right than their fellow classmate. They have been doing this for years.

Jeopardy holds the attention of its viewers like few shows have been able to do. You may be surprised that it has been on TV for 62 years. As a culture we are in love with answers.  

Answers are based in the left side of the brain which deals with logic, facts, and the concrete. The right brain contains questions, creativity, and ideas still not formed.

Trump is a left-brain person where he wants answers. He can’t figure out what to do when the answers can’t be given. He freezes although he is good at finding answers of anything and everything that would benefit him. Have you ever heard him ask a question that benefits others and not him? Biden, on the other hand could see the vision of what constituted a democracy which is something that was the great idea of our forefathers and what it would take to keep it when it is under attack. But he forgot about kitchen table issues and the facts of what Americans were having a hard time with everyday life.

Part of what is driving this rapid transition to only be concerned with answers and not questions is that there is not enough solitude to raise them. One of the key issues, in my opinion, is boredom which finds relief by checking constantly on your iPhone or other social media. We have the disease of FOMO, the fear of missing out. It comes as well with the increased violence that permeates our evening news every night. What fills that void is a lack of meaning that comes primarily through asking the difficult questions that produce meaning. Solitude is different from loneliness which has been dominating our culture. Solitude exists in a place where we are free to ask the questions that don’t have ready answers that lead us to a deeper spot in psyche and soul. Young people are tied to their phones and the next noise that connects them to what?

So, what kinds of questions am I advocating? Rabbi Hillel asked, “If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself alone, what am I? And if not now then, when?

When the Head of School, then Jay Crawford, and Charles Latham, a teacher so brilliant he could teach most courses at the school came to hear me preach to decide the position of Chaplain at EA, One of my central themes that many years ago was a quotation from my favorite poet, Ranier Maria Rilke. “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” (Letters To A Young Poet) The question has been foundational during my life.

In the Christian tradition, Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”

If you are brave enough and you stand before the Creator what three questions would you ask God? and in what order? I have a great number that I want to know about. What about you?