I've noticed that if you ask people "why" about anything about themselves, it's very rare that you'll get an answer. People don't have a certain reason for doing anything because they blindly go about their lives. They do what seems fun while not having any desire to know why they find that activity particularly entertaining, they tell jokes that they funny while not considering whether or not they have a right to tell the joke, and they have an opinion on everything despite not being educated on anything. The common people are an interesting bunch. There is no passion for life in a being who lives mindlessly because there is no will to question.
Something that gets on my nerves is when you're talking to a person who disagrees with you (or maybe you're just talking in general) and you ask them why they believe what they do, only to be given nothing of merit in response. "I don't know", "I was raised that way", and "Because that's how it is" are all common responses. I didn't ask how you came to believe something, I asked why. I think this is where the yearning for knowledge comes into play.
It's vital for a person to have a genuine desire to know about something before they can truly speak for it. It's only an urge to learn that will coerce you into learning, and that urge usually leads to questioning. There is no wisdom without the trial and error of observation, questioning, concluding, and then regularly repeating the process. Think of everything your believe as if it were a tree. If the roots of your tree are flawed—sick, for the sake of this example—how do you expect anything growing off of those roots to be healthy? If the absolute basic fundamental foundations of your beliefs are wrong in some way, everything that stems off of them will carry that same "disease", per se.
This is why I say to question the unquestionable. You will likely find your basic beliefs that make up the grounding of all of your morals to be unquestionable; that is the very bad habit I'm talking about right now. For us to ever grow as people, we must reavaluate our most basic thoughts so that we can build a proper strcture of morals from the ground up. We have done this consistently throughout the history of humanity. Just a century ago, segregation, sexism, and the like were not only considered normal, but required for a proper society to function peacefully.
This reminds me of a couple phrases I heard on a podcast called Philosophize This, ran by Steven West. He used the example that if humans were, for some reason, born with their legs bound together but managed to figure out how to walk, flourishing civilizations would write books and teach that we need our legs to be bound together for us to ever know how to walk, not knowing that it's only a hinderance to them. He also used the example I just did with social identites. When we had slaves (which is most of human history), even slaves—although miserable—believed that the existence of slaves was mandatory; who would do the work if there was not slaves? And who would do everything else if there was not also free men? Now, we've abolished slavery (in theory) and we've realized that it wasn't needed at all. It's the same with women entering the working class. Even miserable women less than a hundred years ago believed, "Who will do the housework and care for the children if women are not to stay at home?" This is also an unnecessary way of thinking. Basically, I'm saying that we must rethink these fundamental beliefs we have for us ever to grow; otherwise, we will end up no different than the men walking with their legs bound together who believe this is simply "how it must be." We ought to think for ourselves and come to natural conclusions to why we believe what we do.
A very simple way to do this that anyone can accomplish is to simply offer explanations for common concepts. For exmaple, I had a conversation with a friend last year to why incest was wrong. I asked what truly made incest wrong—not that I believe it's alright, but because it's mandatory to play devil's advocate with yourself. You must challenge the intregrity and quality of your logic. If you can't say why something is bad or good, you have no reason to believe it's one or the other at all. Back to my example: my friend kept insisting that incest is wrong "because it is". They said, "Your family is your family! That makes it gross!" I responded with, "What about your family distincts them from other people? How is your brother, sister, mother, etc. any different from a stranger? If we're all just people, why is it wrong? My friend had nothing to say to this other than their persistent "no's". I asked another friend later that day (my closest friend, whose supported me unconditionally for many years, and whom I am thankful to have many intellectual conversations with regularly), who said "It's not that incest is bad, it's the result. Incest is immoral because any children you reporoduce will be deformed or be sick in some way. Even if your child happens to be lucky, if the tradition continues, they will inevitably grow ill," or something like that. I consider that a proper response. It's not that incest is inherently bad, it's that any offspring resulting from incest will be sick, and to reporduce when you know that is immoral. So, we have develop familial bonds to prevent this.
I think I've made my point by now. To learn is to question everything indefinetly. You must have a reason to believe something, otherwise there's no point in the belief at all.
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