The Question Nobody Wants to Ask
At some point, I realized that I am often preoccupied with a different question than most people.
Not because I am particularly philosophical.
But because I am a social worker who takes his profession seriously.
When someone sits across from me and says, “My life isn't working.”
I can immediately reach for interventions. Program A. Program B. Coaching. Therapy. Occupational support. Integration measures. Conditions and requirements.
There is no shortage of those.
Our society has no shortage of programs, concepts, and interventions.
But before I do anything, a much more fundamental question presents itself:
Not as an explanation. Not as a diagnosis. Not as a label.
But as something that must first be understood.
And this is often where the real tension begins.
Most institutions are oriented toward outcomes.
That is understandable.
A school wants better performance. A social service wants greater independence. A clinic wants fewer symptoms. An agency wants to close cases.
The logic is:
What do we need to do?
My question is often:
What are we even talking about?
Surprisingly often, that question is treated as an unnecessary delay.
As if it slows down the machinery.
As if understanding were a luxury we can no longer afford.
Yet surely the opposite should be obvious.
We demand change.
At the same time, we often lack the patience for the understanding that would make change meaningful in the first place.
What is remarkable is that hardly anyone seems to notice the contradiction.
We expect people to change their lives.
We expect social workers, therapists, and teachers to produce results.
We build programs, frameworks, mission statements, and intervention plans.
Yet the simplest question of all often disappears from view:
What exactly are we trying to change?
We want to draw the map before we have even looked out the window.
And sometimes I get the impression that we would rather act than understand.
Not because understanding is unimportant.
But because understanding takes time.
And because understanding does not translate easily into metrics, performance indicators, or annual reports.
The funny thing is that this would immediately strike us as absurd in any technical field.
If an engine stops running, nobody says:
Just start tinkering with it. As long as it runs again in the end.
First you look.
You listen.
You measure.
You try to understand what the problem actually is.
No one would trust a mechanic who said:
I have no idea why the engine isn't running. But I've already ordered a few replacement parts.
Everyone would immediately recognize how ridiculous that sounds.
Yet when it comes to human beings, this logic suddenly seems to disappear.
Interventions are treated as achievements.
Action is mistaken for competence.
Even when it remains entirely unclear what actually needs to be understood.
Sometimes I wonder whether we confuse activity with insight.
Something happens.
Therefore it must be good.
Someone is doing something.
Therefore it must be helpful.
A form was completed. A meeting was held. A course was attended. A measure was imposed.
The machinery is moving.
And nobody seems willing to ask the embarrassing question:
Yes, but do you actually understand what is going on?
That is why I do not see my interest in philosophy as a hobby alongside social work.
For me, it is the foundation of social work.
Not in an academic sense.
In a practical one.
I cannot help someone unless I first try to understand the world they inhabit.
The story they tell themselves.
The story others tell about them.
The constraints acting upon them.
The possibilities they can see.
The possibilities they cannot see.
The parts of their world that are visible and the parts that remain hidden.
The question
What actually happened?
is not a philosophical game.
It stands at the beginning of everything.
Every act of social work.
Every therapy.
Every serious attempt to create change.
Because if we do not even know what we are looking at, how can we possibly know what to do about it?
What surprises me is not how rarely this question is asked.
What surprises me is that people immediately assume you are a philosopher when you ask it.