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Curiosity
“Human curiosity,” said Poirot, “Such a very interesting thing. To think what we owe to it throughout history. I don’t know who invented curiosity. It is said to be associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity. They wanted to know. Before them, nobody wanted to know much. They just wanted to know what the rules of the country they were living in were, and how they could avoid having their head cut off or being impaled on spikes or something disagreeable happening to them. But they either obeyed or disobeyed. They didn’t want to know why. But since then a lot of people have wanted to know why and all sorts of things have happened because of that. Boats, trains, flying machines and atom bombs and penicillin and cures for various illnesses. A little boy watches his mother’s kettle raising its lid because of steam. And the next thing we know is we have railway trains, leading on in due course to railway strikes and all that. And so on and so on”
That’s from an Agatha Christie mystery novel, as is clear in the Hercule Poirot character attribution. It caused me to reflect on the course of cultural and political events in America these days and connecting those to my own life. I’m not the most curious person around, that’s for sure, but I have been asked on occasion why I like to read so much, and my answer has frequently centered around my quest to know.
Life experience is another great source from which one can know things. Risk-taking ventures can aid in those experiences. Scientists realize that a way to know things is by experiments. And open debate of different viewpoints aids in this discovery process. I’m also not a very creative person by my own assessment. I think I have always been adept at analysis and synthesis of cause and effect results and related facts and this played a big part in my work career. I remember the period of the 1960’s when I worked several years in bank operations and I became very curious about why we were engaged in issuing so many paper checks to support the economic transactions of our society. The advent of the big mainframe computers had enhanced capabilities for data processing and an awareness of the emerging teleprocessing capabilities gave me an accurate vision of the potential for a checkless society, more realistically tagged a less-checks society. As a result, I was able to eventually be involved managing the disbursement of government payments and started the first major direct deposit of payment transactions by automating monthly Social Security benefit payments to electronic transfers through the Federal Reserve Banking System to commercial banks and other financial institutions. Curiosity led me to that career.
How does this connect to our current cultural and political events? This cancel culture approach and the wiping out of historical studies because some events raise unpleasant facts about things that should never happen are leading to bans on information exchange and removing people from important societal roles and creating images of a society where individuals will be required to know what is acceptable and what is not in public discourse before opening their mouths to express their thoughts. Not a good situation for advancing into new ventures. Other discouraging aspects of this downplaying of curiosity are at work in our academic, religious and government institutions. It is a look backward instead of forward.
Just a curiosity on my part.
Published in General
Steven Wright
Curiosity is how I learned to know about enough things to make me a Trump voter. As more and more things were revealed to me during Trump’s administration I became an actual supporter of many of his views.
Ooh. Your post just sparked a Cancel Culture counterargument, given these times.
We vaccinate people with dead virus* so that when the live virus shows up, our immune system is smart enough to fight it off.
So why not inject dead white guys’ knowledge and deep thoughts, so that when live white guys show up, your amazing intellect can fight them off.
It’s subversive. I like it.
*I know, mRNA vaccines don’t contain dead virus; just roll with me, here.
Since curiosity is hard-wired into the human psyche, nothing can root it out without destroying humanity. That is the Left’s endgame.
This brings to mind my favorite song performed by my favorite insect:
“Curiosity, people say,
Killed the kitty cat, one fine day.
Now this may be true, but hear me!
Here is what to do for curiosity!
. . .
My parents had an Encyclopedia Americana, my grandparents an Encyclopaedia Britannica. I would sit down in front of the bookcase, pick a volume at random, and read for hours. Then I would compare the two.
Then I would go to school, where they had The World Book, which they claimed was an encyclopedia. What’s this, a joke?
Once you achieve certainty, curiosity would invite a departure from the truth. Do you know or are you “curious” about how many fingers I am holding up, Winston?
I was a field hand for SSA in the late 80’s when direct deposit was a new concept. Skeptical bunch … those old geezers!
We did a pilot conversion of Georgia and Florida SSA recipients in the late 70’s. Those old geezers were really attached to getting that check on the third of the month and making their trip to the bank. It was a big social event for them. The next ten years required a dedicated marketing effort to get those already receiving benefits to sign up for direct deposit. For new recipients SSA instituted a process of just asking into what deposit account the beneficiary wanted their benefits sent and that worked well.