Questions

Asking (and answering) questions may seem a simple enough thing. But to do it well is both an art and a skill. Let's see:

If you've ever consulted the I Ching (the Chinese book of divination) you will almost certainly have found yourself wishing you had asked a different question or framed it more precisely. Or perhaps you just rolled your eyes at the answer and had another go. Take Hexagram 35 (Chin), which says: In Chin we see a prince who secures the tranquility of the people presented on that account with numerous horses, and three times in a day received at interviews.
How many questions is that a good answer to?

Or think about the times you've seen or heard reporters asking the newly-bereaved the dreaded "How do you feel?" question.

Or remember the times you've found yourself sitting next to someone who asks you a barrage of questions about yourself. Or asks you none. Both are disconcerting.

And how are our listening skills? 'Credulous listening', for example, is an approach that encourages us to listen to the other person "as if everything they say were true". Now surely that ought to be how we listen to almost anyone - but it's a reminder of how quickly we jump to conclusions and dismiss or disagree with what the other is saying. 'Active listening' is a separate skill that encourages people to listen attentively and check that they understand what is being said to them. Again, it sounds like something we ought to have mastered by the age of 3. But have we?

The writer Theodore Zeldin observes that conversations in families are dying out in the face of interrupting telephones, engrossing computer games and the omnipresent Internet and without the focus of a shared, daily family meal. He also sees conversations at work dying out in the name of efficiency, deadlines and the political correctness that can discourage all forms of personal enquiry. He concludes that we urgently need to find new ways to have conversations if we are to re-establish our sense of empathy or, as he calls it, shared humanity.

Zeldin also quotes research showing that, in Italy, 31% of children's arguments are about beliefs or opinions. But, in the USA, only 6%. While North Americans have twice as many arguments about objects. Perhaps right across the industrialised, consuming world we increasingly devalue the 'idea' and exalt the 'thing'.

Anyway, about 2,400 years ago, Socrates was pioneering a form of questioning that encouraged people to consider their opinions and beliefs more deeply. He began asking the kind of 'difficult' questions that have driven science, philosophy and research ever since:

Can you give me an example?
What's the point of asking that question?
How else could you think about that?
What would happen if that were true?

One of his assertions was this:

If you put together two people who are not sure what they think about something (having first trained them in the skill of asking questions) they will both emerge clear about what both of them think.

These days, people as a whole are probably as unskilled at asking and answering questions as they were in Socrates's day. Young men and women can find conversation as difficult as they ever did and introverts and extraverts collide as uncomfortably as ever when called upon to talk to one another.

In the face of all this, On Q offers you a way to ask questions and begin conversations differently. At its heart are the Question Cards. But it's a lot more than that. The 'rules' suggest many ways you can use the cards, and there are probably many more. Use it as an after-dinner game or as a way to get family members from 3 or 4 generations talking. Use it to get strangers to open up or to get old friends to discover new surprises about each other. Play it in teams or offer it to a couple in a restaurant who have run out of things to say. Try it at work or on the train. Along with the questions come the 'tools' you need if you decide to play it as a game or if you decide to use it to capture for posterity what your friends and family were thinking and feeling today.

As a taster, here are some sample questions. First, some questions you won't find in On Q. This batch are all taken from "A list of interesting questions to ask in English (EFL) lessons":

Are your pet(s) healthy?
What dangers can be found in bathrooms that can cause accidents?
How much do you think it costs to fly to Guam?
Do you ever eat greasy food?

And now for just a couple of examples from On Q. Of course, everything depends on the context, how you're playing/using the cards, who's asked what and who's listening to the answers.

Poppy was asked: "If you could join an animal herd/colony/flock for a week, which animal would you choose?" A considerate, creative, highly empathetic woman in her early 50s, Poppy surprised everyone present by immediately replying that she would be an owl [not a bird famous for flocking!] and would fly to people's bedrooms and frighten them.

Asked "What were/are your favourite sweets as a child?", one team of five people began an exhilarating discussion that provoked the other team to join in and lasted for 40 minutes. It covered pocket-money, corner shops, sweetness and sourness, child abuse, ecology, The Rolling Stones and PlayStation games, as well as sweets.