Hard to Answer
Can you think of a statement that requires an answer but for which there is no satisfactory response?
I will start with "Honey, does this dress make my butt look big?". If it didn't, she would not ask the question; if it does, there is no way to reply that is both kind and truthful.
I will start with "Honey, does this dress make my butt look big?". If it didn't, she would not ask the question; if it does, there is no way to reply that is both kind and truthful.
Comments
Th dress is perfect dear, as are you
“Yeah but I like it that way” and then start romancing. And/or “Big and beautiful.” Possibly playing Sir Mix-A-Lot…
(Of course this is only honest if someone actually does, indeed, prefer big butts.)
(I usually answer "no", but think in my head "The mere fact that you're having to ask the question...")
If you’re willing to go random or semi-random, go to the one of the places you like you went to longest ago; or pick the next one in alphabetical order; or assign numbers to them and ask your phone (Siri, etc.) to pick a random number in that range. When I’ve really struggled with, say, a menu choice, I’ll go by the day of the month and count my way through them, so if it’s the 16th I’ll look at the 16th menu item, and if that doesn’t sound good, I’ll pick up there and count 16 more, and so on, possibly going back around to the start of the list. I’m better at making decisions now, but for a long time I really struggled with … a whole lot of things, really. (Picking a flavor of ice cream was really rough every single time.) So if this is helpful, go for it! (Another thing is to pick a food type alphabetically, beef chicken fish pork etc. (b c f p etc.), and ask yourself what you last ate, then go for the next one, so if you had a hamburger then pick something from the chicken section, etc.)
The curse of Body Dysmorphic Disorder haunts many women/girls at some stage in their lives. (men too, but the question here is in gendered form).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_dysmorphic_disorder
"You ask as though that would be a bad thing."
Seems like there are a bunch of Zen koans that work like that. In general, any question that embeds a flawed or false assumption in the question.
We need the old bowing-down smiley.
Poe wrote on both.
The Fall?
You can't.
So the unanswerable question is: what morally should you do about it?
What we should do morally, if we have resources others do not, has been answered by many people, with different specific answers (some rather loathsome, like those of Ayn Rand, but mostly good, involving using those resources to show compassion), but not no answer.
It's "nevar" put the wrong way 'round.