A question mark has the shape of an upside-down fish-hook. But why so?
Following a long investigation (a few minutes today), and interviews with specialists in the field of question marks (one; myself), I’m happy to announce that I have solved such mystery.
The logical fallacy called begging the question provides a first clue. To beg for something is more often than not done with the palm of a hand facing upwards. Hence, questions that are begged for will come from above.
What is there above us? Thin air. When someone propounds a strange idea that same one is told, “You must be out of your mind.” And that leads to conclude that relatively strange ideas don’t reside in our brains. Also, an inspired person has to breathe the ideas in before being able to exhale them onto others. Zen philosophy can also be called here to support this concept, “Free your mind” (to make room for the good ideas to get in), while Yoga bases its principles in breathing in and out, just to make sure that in the end we have inhaled the best of ideas.
The world of ideas is then above us and we have physical access to it.
This explains a bit why people jump in the air with joy when they come across a great idea.
Happy people or people in love feel as if they could fly (into the world of ideas; thin air). Arguably, happiness is a state of mental vacuity, or at least a state of repeated exclamation marks.
Exclamation marks, by the way, are just tiny dots thinking very highly of themselves. Then again, they might well be tiny dots producing very large ideas from the top of their heads.
Questions that are asked or not at all also tell us a lot about specific persons. A person who has some interest in your ideas will throw many fish-hooks into the air above you. And if no questions come your way, you now know what to think of it.
So there it is.
For the sake of keeping the atmosphere free from pollutants and their toxicity, and not to free-fall under the gravity of assumptions or ignorance, I beg you, at the same time that I’m trying to convince myself of the very same: throw questions into the air.
Be aware though. Some of the fishy ideas we'll catch might prove to be too large for us to swallow them. And that some fish bones might get stuck in our throats...
