Provocative Questions

Fandango’s Provocative Question #81

Fandango23 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

Racism, especially in America, is a thorny and divisive topic. Someone I know told me about a song, “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist,” from the Broadway musical “Avenue Q.” It goes:

Everyone’s a little bit
Racist, sometimes.
Doesn’t mean we go around committing
Hate crimes.
Look around and
You will find,
No one’s really
Color-blind.
Maybe it’s a fact
We all should face.
Everyone makes
Judgments…
Based on race.

So my provocative question this week is simply this.

Do you believe that racism is an inherent human trait or is it learned? Either way, are there actions that society can take to eliminate, or at least diminish, racism? Or will racism always exist no matter what we do?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #80

Fandango20 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

I saw this question on a site that offers up a bunch of “deep, philosophical” questions and this one intrigued me. It’s about evolution, but not in the context of Darwin’s evolution of the species. It’s more about evolution of the individual and about who you are and how you change over time. Here’s this week’s question, which is essentially about you. I hope you’ll have fun with it.

Is the concept of “you” continuous or does the past “you” continually fade into the present and future “you”? Considering that your body, your mind, and your memories are changing over time, what part of “you” sticks around?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #79

Fandango13 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

First, let me start by saying that this week’s provocative question is about sports, so if you have no interest whatsoever in sports, I will understand if you want to stop reading now. Come back again next week and maybe my provocative question will be more compelling for you.

Second, I am a sports fan, although I’m not a sports fanatic. I keep up with how my favorite teams are doing, but while I enjoy watching and reading about sports, I’m neither an expert nor a true aficionado.

As a fan, I was disappointed in March when sports were essentially cancelled. The NBA halted the professional basketball season. The NCAA cancelled its annual college basketball March Madness tournament, and Major League Baseball suspended professional baseball indefinitely. I definitely felt the void. Although, to be honest, I haven’t missed it as much as I thought I would.BC8E9F5E-4BBE-4524-91EA-62D19558EFDDWell, the suspension of the Major League Baseball season ends tomorrow, when big league baseball kicks off an abbreviated, 60-game season (the normal season has 162 games). And all games will be played without any fans in the ballparks.

So, in light of the commencement of the Major League Baseball season tomorrow, my provocative question is about the return of sports.

Have you missed profession and/or college sports since the seasons were either cancelled or suspended in March? How do you feel about the timing of the return of sports, especially given the surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths, at least in the United States?

For those of you who live outside of the United States, have sporting events in your country resumed? Are fans permitted to attend the games? How do you feel about it all?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #78

Fandango35 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

By a very wide margin, The United States leads the world in both COVID-19 cases and deaths.5D43EE67-C712-4BD2-8F19-520E2B1BD7BEAnd with between 60,000 and 70,000 new cases each day and 1,000 or more deaths each day, the virus shows no signs of abating anytime soon.

Donald Trump, the President of the United States, is trying to pretend that everything is fine and that we need to reopen the country and return to “normal.” To that end, he is demanding that schools physically reopen in the fall, even as the coronavirus pandemic is surging through much of the country and is threatening to overwhelm many health care facilities in the hardest hit areas.

Trump is arguing that the social, psychological, and educational costs of keeping children at home any longer would be worse than the virus itself. “We’re very much going to put pressure on governors and everybody else to open the schools, to get them open,” he said. This pressure includes cutting off federal funding for school districts that don’t physically open for this upcoming school year.

My children are adults and my grandchild is only seven weeks old, so I, personally, have no skin in this game. But I’m curious about how those of you who are parents or grandparents of school-aged children feel about schools being required to reopen in the midst of on out-of-control pandemic.

So here’s my provocative question this week.

Do you believe that students should be required to return to school for the new school year? If you are a parent, are you at all concerned about sending your children to school? Or are you relieved to get the little rugrats out of your hair?

If you don’t live in the U.S., has your country or local school district reopened yet? If so, how has it gone?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.

Fandango’s Provocative Question #77

Fandango15 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration.

By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

This week’s provocative question is about justice.E567C17C-6A1B-448C-929E-4650B83AE7CFNo doubt you are familiar with the representation of justice as a Greek goddess draped in robes, holding beam balance scales in one hand, a sword in her other hand, and wearing a blindfold. This depiction is referred to as “Lady Justice.” She is, according to Wikipedia, “an allegorical personification of the moral force in judicial systems.”

Her beam balance scales represent the weighing of evidence, and the lack of a foundation for the scales signifies that evidence should stand on its own.

Her sword is a throwback to ancient times and conveys the idea that justice can be swift and final.

The blindfold she is wearing represents impartiality, the ideal that justice should be applied without regard to wealth, power, or other status. It is from the depiction of Lady Justice wearing a blindfold over her eyes that we get the expression “justice is blind.”

My provocative question for this week is this:

Do you believe, with respect to the judicial system (or systems) in place where you live, that justice is, indeed, blind? Why do you feel that way?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments. But remember to check to confirm that your pingback or your link shows up in the comments.