Dear Baya,

      Help! I can’t find my passport. I know I put it at the back of one of my drawers, but I’ve got so many cupboards now, with so much in each of them, that it takes for ever to search them. Is there some law that explains why it seems more and more difficult to find things as more bits and pieces accumulate?

      And another thing. I’m finding certain teachers seem positively to discourage new thoughts. They just want safe, solid, accepted, answers. They tell me that I’ve just got to learn facts and know what the accepted wisdom is. Surely education should be about learning to think, question, challenge?

      Or should it? For I remember you saying that in many societies – was traditional China one? – education was a form of thought control, a way of making people conform, to accept the prevailing ideology.

     So could you explain to me some of the ways our thoughts are blocked or controlled? If I could understand how blinkers are fixed to our minds, and how the very nature of knowledge seems to make new ideas increasingly more difficult to find, I might get further.

     I really enjoy a new subject and learn a great deal for a few days or weeks. But then I seem to work harder and harder just to learn a little more. Is there another law here?

     I’d always thought that as human knowledge, whether mine or that in a whole society, increased, it would become easier and easier to make new discoveries. But now I’m not so sure. Please explain this to me – in a way that is not boring please!

Lots of love,