The Why Tree

                                                                 The Why Tree

    There is a part of my brain that overthinks to a ridiculous degree. It pokes holes, as miniscule and meaningless as they are, to distract me from getting things done. This is one of those over-thoughts.

    When you write an argumentative essay you have a conclusion or main point to the piece called a thesis. You support your thesis with sub-arguments often in the form of "topic sentences" which you then support further with a paragraph or two of reasons. The why.

    How do you know when you've gone deep enough with your whys? Can't there always be more reasons? Eventually we stop at reasons that seem self-evident (to us and hopefully our readers) so that after we start writing we get to stop at some point.

    Have you ever noticed a child asking "why?" over and over again their parent scrambling for answers they feel compelled to provide? 

    "Why do we feed Scruffy dog food?" "Because it's healthier for him than human food." "Why?" "Because dogs have different nutritional requirements from humans." "Why?" "Because dogs evolved different digestive systems than humans when they branched off from us on the evolutionary tree." "Wh-" "Shut it, junior!"

    I imagine something out of "Jack and The Beanstalk". A tree that just keeps climbing with no end into the vanishing point. It's roots sprawling out the other end of the planet like someone with excessive hair caressing a Van de Graaff generator.

    For adult skeptics one might present evidence to convince them. Then the next question from the skeptic might be: "why do you believe that?" And there are reasons to doubt, it's not unreasonable. Can it be that easy to defeat any argument? I guess the natural counter to the skeptic would be: do you have an alternative with better evidence? If we can't always get all the way deep we can at least compare, and try to figure out what is most likely, rather than definitively true.

    Imagine a child asking you how you know the Earth is round, and you running out of answers. Slipping down while climbing on the why tree. Imagine some adults in the place of that child. How many people can go deep on that answer off the top of their head? I've studied it for a while but I would have to refer to my notes!