The Bureau of Questions. R tells me something she learned in social psychology, that if you call someone and ask whether they are a charitable person, or support the idea of giving to charity, but without asking explicitly for money, it is difficult to get a no. Then—unrelated—you call them three days later and ask them to give money: a seven-hundred percent increase in donations. I’m not interested in money, although I’m glad to note the efficacy. A Bureau of Questions—a group that calls and asks the right questions, questions that unsettle them or change minds. Questions that irritate, like grains of sand… Questions that pass so silently it’s almost as if they weren’t ever asked at all.
