Those who control which questions get asked control the boundaries of possible futures. This is why established powers prefer workers to askers. Workers accept the problem set as given, askers potentially delegitimize the entire game. When authority figures define the problems, they also define the solution space. “How do we make this system 10% more efficient?” is a very different question than “Should this system exist at all?” The first empowers workers and leaves power structures intact. The second opens Pandora’s box.
The good asker is thus often politically homeless. They’re too disruptive for conservatives who defend existing structures, but too undisciplined for revolutionaries who’ve already decided which questions matter. The asker’s commitment is to the question itself, not to predetermined answers, and this makes them unreliable as ideological soldiers. Every political movement eventually reaches a point where it stops asking and starts answering, codifying its uncertainties into certainties. At that moment, it begins preferring workers over askers.
The most powerful form of control isn’t forcing people to accept your answers. It’s getting them to accept your questions as the only questions worth asking. The asker threatens power not through opposition but through reframing. They don’t fight your answers, they question your questions. And once people start asking different questions, your entire edifice of answers becomes irrelevant. You haven’t been defeated, you’ve been made obsolete. The future belongs to whoever can protect the space for asking, not as a permanent state, but as a recurring rhythm: ask, then work. Build, then question what you built. The moment you stop asking is the moment you calcify.
