Significance of Domain Name (URL)

of the Union of the Whys

- / -

The web address of this site (the URL) is designed to challenge easy assumptions about this initiative. Use of the prefix "un-" (www.un-whys.org) may therefore be variously understood as:

• stressing the value of a contrarian approach by also implying the merit of a "negative capability", in contrast to uncritical contemporary emphasis on "positive" approaches -- thereby challenging:
  • the wisdom of "conventional wisdom"
  • the elitism and presumption typically implicit in understandings of "wise"
  • the unfruitful manner in which questions of "why" may be raised and answered
  • those acclaimed as wise as to why they are apparently so unwise regarding their dysfunctional relationship with one another and their seeming inability collectively to address the question
• highlighting the widespread challenge of the "unwise" in a period when a pattern of more insightful responses -- whatever that may mean -- may perhaps be one of the few possibilities of avoiding a range of disasters
• recognizing the need for humility regarding ignorance and misunderstanding in the face of what may subsequently be determined to be "wise" -- that may call for a new appreciation of ignorance as a source of wisdom
• introducing a healthy degree of self-mockery as a corrective to unfruitful presumption
• pointing to the fundamental importance of the set of unasked questions, why they remain unasked -- and why others remain unanswered
• provocatively implying that the initiative is in some way related to those of the United Nations -- whether or not a United Nations of the future should indeed be specifically associated with some such approach to wisdom
• implying a conventional static form of "union" -- when the intention is rather to favour understandings of union as characterized by continuing emergence from a dynamic process

An alternative URL (www.u-whys.org), associated with this site, makes the point that in a very important sense it is the individual who is the source of fruitfully wise questioning -- rather than any collectivity of the "wise".