Why I can’t live without why

Somebody would say that this is a bug, yet somebody else would think of it as a feature. My pure subjective thinking cheers for the second one.

In my opinion stating pure facts and remembering them isn’t just harder but also dangerous most of the time.

A quick look around the internet is enough for a smart person like you to see what a mindless fact can do.
The most trivial subject I can think of is the famous quotes. Just put some semi wise words on a picture of somebody famous, sign it in his name and everybody will repeat those words.

And don’t even bother with politics.

I must say that I am extremely blessed with a really good memory. It is somewhat selective at times but it serves me rather well. Therefore I don’t have any issues remembering (useless) facts per se.
But I’ve figured it out that I can remember the facts/data for which I know more about more clearly. For which I know the why. I always wanted to understand everything. Not to know it by heart, but to know why everything goes the way it does.

I know I’d raised quite a few eyebrows in school when I asked this question for the n-th time: “But professor, why is that?”
I understood what they were trying to say, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why. Professors are usually credible persons and they know their field so it was pragmatically wiser (or so I thought) to ask for a quick explanation at school than to search for the right answer in books I would have to get in the library (yeah, there wasn’t any Google yet and altavista, lycos and others weren’t that smart).

The “why” question is still a really important part of my daily life. The only thing that has changed is that I tend to be not as persistent on finding the whole answer when the people around me aren’t as enthusiastic about the subject as me. Fortunately, we now have the technology that helps me find answers faster than in the library where I was all the time in my teenage years.