An Inquiry of Place
My new way of breaking the ice with strangers at parties is to ask: In what context and through what source did you first learn about the atomic bomb? (Makes me very popular at parties. Or it isolates everyone. I have about a 50/50 success rate.)
What this question is really asking is, what is your background, what beliefs and ideas make you up, and what lens do you use to view the world?
On the night of the 2016 US presidential election, I was in my dorm’s common room when my father called me. Before hanging up, he and I laughed at the idea of Trump as the victor of the night. I watched people rotate in and out of the common room. No one was in any panic because we all still saw Trump as more of a joke than reality. That all changed when he won Florida.