The Ultimate Question to Life, the Universe, and Everything!

My e-mail signature which has intrigued many reads “Douglas Adams was wrong about 42. The answer is Islam!” Douglas Adams is one of my favorite humorous science fiction writers, and in his 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy', talks about how certain intelligent beings are vexed by the answer to the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything. They design a complex computer to calculate this answer which, after 7.5 millions of years of computing, declares the answer to be 42. Only then do they realize that the answer makes little sense without knowing the actual question to life, the universe, and everything. Easier said than done; they are forced to build another more complex computer (the Earth) and run it to calculate the question which would take them 10 million years. Of course, they never discover the question because the Earth is destroyed 5 minutes before the answer is to be announced. Moral of the story: the right question is more important than the right answer!

In my year away from this blog, I have been involved in some social work in India. My organization is involved in educational scholarships for the poor, disaster relief, micro finance and self-employment schemes, rural development, health services for the poor and needy, etc. I have seen first hand how much work is being done, how difficult this work is, how little recognition there is for the work, and how much difference this work is making. On the flip side, I also see inefficiencies, mismanagement, lack of co-ordination and communication, ego issues, official apathy, idle criticism from people who do nothing, and more. There are umpteen organizations starting new projects everyday, and probably many more that are planning more projects that they think are even more important. Amidst this ocean of 'answers', I am looking for 'questions'. Before embarking on all these projects, have we done enough homework to understand the biggest needs, issues, and problems facing us? Is there a danger that we are finding the right answers only to the wrong questions? Or do we think that we waste time looking for questions when we could be using that time looking for answers instead? Are we (over) reacting to the armchair philosophers who have been posing obfuscating questions, with the Nike mantra 'Just Do It'? What do you think?

If I try to generate a list of questions, the #1 on any list I prepare would probably be 'Lack of Peace' or 'Violence and Conflict'. While I am sure almost everybody recognizes this as a major issue, I am amazed at the complete lack of belief that we can do anything about solving this problem in a systematic way. To get a perspective on priorities, I suggest you try to find out how many institutes we have that are dedicated to teaching hair cutting techniques and how many there are to teach peace studies and conflict resolution. While there are plenty of other issues, most of them have people thinking about them and many of them have people working for them too. Most problems fall into some category of 'HELPER' (Health, Education, Livelihood, Peace, Ecology, Religion). I feel that a lot of work is being done globally on addressing health and education issues. Ecology gets a lot of publicity too, though some aspects of it are ignored. When it comes to poverty alleviation, most efforts aim at direct aid on a recurring basis, rather than a concerted effort to provide livelihood opportunities which would allow people to improve the quality of their life with more dignity and self-reliance. There are several religious organizations concentrating solely on propagation of their religion and religious education. All this means that peace is nobody's child. So much for my two cents. I would like to get you to generate lists of what your biggest concerns are – global issues, local problems, underrated problems, Muslim world problems, future problems. Email me at riazshaikh@hotmail.com. Let us ask the right questions before we waste 7.5 million years only looking for answers. Even if it is going to take 10 million years, let us begin now – 5 minutes later could be too late!