The Fractal of Unanswerable Questions
An exploration of the nature of inquiry and the mysteries of existence.
“In the beginning” {Gen. 1:1}—when the will of the King began to take effect, he engraved signs into the heavenly sphere {that surrounded him}. Within the most hidden recess a dark flame issued from the mystery of eyn sof, the Infinite, like a fog forming in the unformed—enclosed in the ring of that sphere, neither white nor black, neither red nor green, of no color whatever. Only after this flame began to assume size and dimension did it produce radiant colors. From the innermost center of the flame sprang forth a well out of which colors issued and spread upon everything beneath, hidden in the mysterious hiddenness of eyn sof.
—Zohar: The Book of Splendor
If questions are female, then answers are male. A question lures with charms. An answer comes strutting up with turgid surety. Eventually, she opens for him. Their congress produces more questions and answers.
One day, three seductresses—Origin, Purpose, and Destiny—sang from their perches.
Where do we come from?
Why are we here?
How shall we live until we die?
Two brothers, Fidelis and Atheus, each with his plumage, vied for the three. They were enough for the brothers, and the brothers were enough for the three.
Origin bore Higher Power and Indifferent Cosmos, who squabbled.
Purpose bore Divine Plan and Cosmic Randomness, who quarreled.
Destiny bore Creator’s Law and Nature’s Law, who clashed.
In fact, as brothers will, they squabbled, quarreled, and clashed. Still, the six sons went looking and found what sons always find: daughters who would not be satisfied.
If a Higher Power exists, what caused it to exist?
Why would a Creator with divine plans create humans to deviate from his plans?
Is the Creator’s Law good because it is the Creator’s, or good despite him?
If the universe is indifferent, why are we not?
If we arrived by chance, how can our lives have meaning?
Which of nature’s laws should govern us — and which should we govern?
Questions and answers beget questions and answers.
Coital inquiry has no end. A fractal of Unanswerable Questions unfolds around us, with curiosity and certainty in a repeating circuit, neither collapsing into the other. Something emerges from the friction, not exactly order and not exactly chaos.
It yields more than the flicker of a pattern and, fleetingly perhaps, the contours of a greater truth. Yet mystery remains.