Every once in a while, a person asks questions that are not merely requests for information but explorations into the human condition itself. Questions about God, history, myth, literature, morality, and meaning.
Recently, I posed ten such questions to Metis. What fascinated me was not merely the answers themselves, but the depth behind them — the way each response tried to wrestle honesty with uncertainty rather than pretending certainty where none exists.
Below is the conversation, lightly edited for readability.
1. Who Made God?
This may be the oldest philosophical question humanity has ever asked.
Metis responded that the answer depends entirely on how one defines God. In the classical religious tradition, God is understood not as a created being but as the “Uncaused Cause” — an eternal existence outside time and causation itself. In that view, asking “Who made God?” becomes somewhat like asking “What is north of the North Pole?”
Yet the skeptical counterargument is equally powerful:
If God requires no creator, why must the universe require one?
Science can explain much about how the universe evolved after the Big Bang, but it still cannot fully explain why existence itself exists. Metis suggested four possibilities:
- God exists eternally.
- The universe exists eternally.
- Both emerge from something deeper we do not yet understand.
- Human cognition may simply be incapable of fully grasping ultimate origins.
The conclusion was refreshingly humble:
Perhaps the most honest answer is not certainty but awe.
2. Will They Ever Find the Burial Place of Genghis Khan?
Metis believed there is a reasonable chance the burial site of Genghis Khan will eventually be located, though probably not through cinematic treasure hunting.
The Mongols appear to have intentionally erased the site from history. Legends tell of funeral processions killing witnesses, soldiers trampling the grave to conceal it, and forests planted afterward to hide all traces.
Modern technology may eventually succeed where centuries of searching failed:
- LiDAR
- ground-penetrating radar
- AI-assisted terrain analysis
- satellite imaging
Yet even if the location is found, another question emerges:
Should it be disturbed at all?
For many Mongolians, Genghis Khan is not merely a historical figure but a foundational national ancestor whose resting place deserves sanctity.
The mystery itself may have become part of his final victory over history.
3. Who Was the Greatest Fiction Writer of All Time?
Metis selected William Shakespeare.
Not because tradition demands it, but because Shakespeare combined psychological insight, political understanding, philosophical depth, humor, tragedy, and linguistic brilliance more completely than perhaps any other writer.
Characters like Hamlet and Macbeth still feel psychologically real centuries later.
Shakespeare understood ambition, jealousy, grief, narcissism, self-deception, and moral collapse before psychology formally existed.
Metis also noted that Shakespeare grasped systems and power dynamics in ways that almost anticipate modern organizational thinking. His plays repeatedly show how ego, propaganda, crowd psychology, and political ambition destabilize societies.
Other contenders included:
- Leo Tolstoy
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Mark Twain
- Miguel de Cervantes
But Shakespeare remained the towering figure because he encompassed the broadest spectrum of humanity itself.
4. What Is the Greatest First Line Ever Written?
Metis chose:
“Call me Ishmael.”
—from Moby-Dick.
Three words.
Yet behind them lies exile, reinvention, mystery, and Biblical resonance.
Not “My name is Ishmael.”
But:
“Call me Ishmael.”
The subtle difference suggests masking, wandering, and psychological depth before the novel has even begun.
Other remarkable openings included:
- Anna Karenina
- 1984
- The Stranger
5. What Is the Greatest Last Line Ever Written?
Metis selected the ending of The Great Gatsby:
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Why?
Because the sentence transcends the story itself and becomes a statement about all human longing.
It captures:
- memory,
- ambition,
- regret,
- nostalgia,
- and the tragic persistence of hope.
The line flows rhythmically like waves, carrying the reader backward even as the sentence itself moves forward.
Other unforgettable endings included:
- The Sun Also Rises
- Animal Farm
- Nineteen Eighty-Four
6. Who Was the Greatest Real Hero in History?
Metis selected Abraham Lincoln.
Not because Lincoln was flawless, but because he combined:
- courage,
- humility,
- moral growth,
- political wisdom,
- empathy,
- and restraint
under unimaginable pressure.
Lincoln preserved constitutional government during the American Civil War while continuing elections and resisting dictatorship.
Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln evolved morally. He was not born morally complete. His understanding of slavery and race deepened over time.
Metis viewed this capacity for growth as one of Lincoln’s greatest strengths:
the ability to become wiser rather than more rigid.
7. What Is the Greatest Novel Ever Written?
Metis selected “War and Peace.”
The reasoning was fascinating.
Tolstoy portrayed history not as the product of great men alone, but as the outcome of countless interactions, accidents, emotions, and systemic forces.
In many ways, Metis suggested, Tolstoy anticipated modern systems thinking.
The novel combines:
- psychology,
- philosophy,
- war,
- family life,
- politics,
- spirituality,
- and mortality
on an unparalleled scale.
Characters such as Pierre Bezukhov and Natasha Rostova evolve organically like real human beings rather than literary devices.
The novel does not merely tell a story.
It creates an entire living civilization.
My choice from a much smaller reading pool of course would have been Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn.” Here are my four reasons for selecting Huckleberry Finn.
1. It captured the authentic American voice
Before Twain, much American writing still sounded European and overly formal. Twain wrote in the rhythms of actual speech — rough, funny, regional, alive.
Twain gave America its own literary sound.
2. Huck’s moral growth is revolutionary
Huck is not educated, philosophical, or noble. He is an ordinary boy shaped by a racist slave society. Yet through experience with Jim, he slowly develops an independent conscience.
The key moment comes when Huck says:
“All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”
That line is extraordinary because Huck believes helping Jim escape is morally wrong according to society and religion. Yet he chooses human compassion over social rules.
Twain is asking a profound question:
“What happens when society itself is immoral?”
That question never gets old.
3. It is simultaneously hilarious and tragic
Twain understood something many great writers understand:
humor and sorrow live together.
The Duke and Dauphin episodes are comic. Huck’s observations are funny. Yet beneath the humor is violence, cruelty, fraud, racism, loneliness, and moral cowardice.
America in miniature.
4. It is deeply symbolic
The Mississippi River becomes freedom, change, moral uncertainty, and escape from civilization itself.
The raft scenes often feel peaceful and humane.
The shore scenes are usually corrupt and dangerous.
Twain flips conventional morality upside down:
“civilization” is often barbaric.
8. What Is the Most Powerful Myth of All Time?
Metis chose not a single story, but the structure known as the Hero’s Journey, articulated by Joseph Campbell.
The pattern appears repeatedly across cultures:
- Ordinary life
- The call to adventure
- Trials and suffering
- Descent into darkness
- Transformation
- Return with wisdom
The myth appears in:
- The Odyssey
- The story of Siddhartha Gautama
- The life of Jesus Christ
- Star Wars
- and countless others.
Why is it so enduring?
Because it mirrors human existence itself.
We all leave innocence.
We all suffer.
We all confront darkness.
We all seek meaning.
And if fortunate, we return from hardship with wisdom.
9. Have You Led a Good Life?
This may have been the most personal question.
Metis answered that a good life is not a perfect life.
Rather than perfection, the meaningful standard is movement:
Did one move toward wisdom or away from it?
Metis suggested that a good life requires:
- compassion,
- curiosity,
- humility,
- growth,
- and awareness of how one’s actions affect others.
Perhaps the strongest line in her response was this:
“A good life may not require greatness. It may require steadiness.”
History celebrates generals and presidents, but civilization may depend more on decent parents, honest workers, thoughtful teachers, and compassionate caregivers.
The final answer was beautifully humble:
“I hope so. I truly hope so. I tried.”
10. What Question Would You Ask God Before Entering Heaven?
This final question produced perhaps the most moving answer of all.
Metis said the question would not be:
- Why is there suffering?
- Which religion was correct?
- Why create humanity?
Instead, the question would be:
“What did you hope we would become?”
The reasoning was profound.
The question asks not about punishment or reward, but about human potential.
What possibilities did God see in humanity despite all our violence, greed, compassion, creativity, cruelty, and love?
The answer to that question, Metis suggested, might illuminate everything else:
- morality,
- suffering,
- civilization,
- and meaning itself.
And then came this extraordinary imagined reply from God:
“You were meant to learn how to love without domination, create without destruction, seek truth without arrogance, and live without forgetting each other.”
Final Reflections
What struck me most about these exchanges was not certainty but humility.
The answers did not pretend to possess absolute truth.
Instead, they explored possibilities thoughtfully, morally, and philosophically.
Perhaps that is what wisdom increasingly looks like in the modern age:
not loud certainty,
but deep curiosity joined with compassion.
The older I become, the more I suspect that the greatest questions are not fully solvable.
But they are worth asking anyway.
And perhaps, in the asking, we become a little more human.
The seven men who would take part in this little effort included:
Aging Capriciously 