05 Oct Why am I studying curiosity?
I must admit, I have been asked this question about why I’m studying curiosity before. It has dawned on me that perhaps I was trying to think about my thinking and to think about curiosity in a very linear way. But my mind doesn’t work in a linear manner. My mind is more like a garden or quite possibly, even a glass of champagne. A garden in that these seeds are planted and they sprout when they want to and a glass of champagne with bubbles constantly forming at the bottom and rising to the top.
There are many reasons why I’m fascinated with curiosity. There wasn’t just one major moment that set me off on this quest/path. It was more like a few significant moments that pushed me in this direction. One of these moments was my restlessness with Google. I’ve grown up in an era pre-google. I’ve had to learn to sit with my curiosity, suspend my curiosity until I had access to information, and then get whatever answers I could or maybe get access to certain questions while I held on to others for a little while longer. Instant gratification didn’t really have a place in my childhood learning and thinking journey. And so as much as questions propelled me into another realm of thinking, it also taught me a type of mental patience.
Along comes Google.
This endless database of information where you enter your question and a waterfall of possible answers are a few split seconds away on your mobile device. This fundamentally bothered me. If curiosity drives exploratory behaviour and learning, what happens when you remove this curiosity? What happens when you have a database like Google that gives you an instant answer. Will we no longer entertain our curiosity? In fact, we lose more than our curiosity, we lose all the learning and growth that happens along the way. Will we lose the patience and staying power that comes with deep curiosity? Will we deprive ourselves of the benefits of not having the answer immediately? Will we become too lazy to think etc.
I’m keen to hear your thoughts. What do you think?
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