We begin with the costs of asking How? too quickly or too eagerly. When we ask how to do something, it expresses our bias for what is practical, concrete, and immediately useful, often at the expense of our values and idealism. It assumes we don’t know, and this in itself becomes a defense against action. This section underlines the importance of getting the question right and paying careful attention to the nature of the debate.

Getting the question right may be the most important thing we can do. We define our dialogue and, in a sense, our future through the questions we choose to address. Asking the wrong question puts us in the philosopher’s dilemma: We become the blind man looking in a dark room for a black cat that is not there.