WHETHER?
Definition
The word whether is a conjunction. When used as a question, it asks which of some alternatives you prefer or choose. The most common form is whether or not you will be taking some decision, choice, or action. Whether it will be this one or that one can simply be seen as a version of whether or not, in the sense that settling on one alternative means NOT going with the others. If ambivalent, perhaps not sure is best. Hence, the parameter whether runs from compare to commit.
Purpose
The intention of the question? It arises within a state of uncertainty, your own or someone else’s, regarding which of the available options to decide or choose. So, clarification is being sought, yours or another’s. The alternatives may range from to be or not to be on the one hand, to which flavour of the month do I want? on the other. Either you will make up your mind, or you won’t – if ambiguous, stall for time!
Explication
Existentialists put great store by freedom of choice – our right to exercise it, and the implications it entails for human character. Psychoanalysis, on the other hand, looks at the psychological effort involved and calls it the burden of choice. But regardless of whether we recognize it, or like it or not, alternatives are present in most circumstances. The mature thing to do is to see the situation as an opportunity, and make the best of it.
Implication
One of Arthur C. Clarke’s famous laws is that Any sufficiently sophisticated technology is indistinguishable from magic. Part of modernization that brought humanity freedom of choice, was the replacement of supernaturalism with a secular outlook. Unsubstantiated beliefs, whether in deities or magic, would supposedly vanish. But despite our many freedoms, a strain of fatalism persists; does triviality produce only the illusion of choice?
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