The Hammock Papers: Questioning.

01 February 2025

Questioning.

Ari Weinzweig on fostering free-thinking with frameworks ...

To be clear, thinking effectively for oneself does not mean reactively embracing leaders who tell you to reject ideas outright. That approach is simply another version—dressed in rebellious garb—of blindly following along without thinking for oneself. From painful personal experience, I’ve learned that reactivity is not the same as reflection. While a big “FU” to those in charge may charge you up in the moment, it is not a framework for thoughtful or constructive work.

Frameworks, by contrast, call for questioning. They push people to pay attention, to think things through in a caring and critical way, and to examine their impact on the entirety of the ecosystems of which they are part. Insightful historian Timothy Snyder’s 8th lesson in On Tyranny is,
Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

Everyone will surely have heard some version of the saying, “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” This story is pretty much the same: Tell staff members exactly what to do all day, and they’ll probably be able to take the “right” action for the specific situation they’ve been shown. Beyond that, they will almost certainly struggle. By contrast, if we help people learn how to think for themselves, they’ll be infinitely more able to self-manage, make wiser decisions, stay centered through stressful times, learn to ask for help, and be happier to help others as well.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL