Pursuing curiosity FEELS like "putting on hold" pursuing usefulness. So I'm afraid I've quashed down a lot of my curiosity. I have had some bursts of breaking through and getting some of it revived, though.
Now, what sharpens my hunger to know?
* Getting "tricked into" working on something that engages my curiosity. If someone seeks my help with a math or programming thing that's slightly harder than anything I've done, (but TOO far outside my abilities) that's GREAT. If friends bring up a theological question I've not thought much about... I'll often end up pursuing it much longer on my own, especially if it seems like it's of importance to them personally. (So trying to harness my sense of an obligation to always be working on something "useful.")
* A narrative or idea that "I could become awesome" if I learned a given thing. (embarrassing to admit this motivates me, maybe.)
* Wanting to participate productively in discussions where there's a vibrant community of people who have some major points of commonality but who know some things I don't. (UY did some of this! Fellow comboxers got me reading books I wouldn't have otherwise; I assimilated favorite words of Leah's into my working vocabulary. Alas, my poor husband had been using the word "pugilism" for years, and I only added it then!)
Oh! I can see that! ("Gonzo" is one word I -did- assimilate from my husband first. As an adjective, it's just beautiful. Especially if, like me, you assumed it was derived from the Muppets character bearing the same name. etymonline says "probably no," though.)
However, since we're literally ON the subject of wikiwalks to satisfy curiosity-for-the-sake-of-curiosity, I'm just going to note that "gonzo journalism" wasn't exactly what I expected given the usage of "gonzo." (I discovered what it was a few months ago on wikipedia. And it kind of made me happy.)
I've found that curiosity has taken on four distinct flavors as I've grown older. I have an 'empathic curiosity' - the 'what is my child thinking, how is he interacting with this space or object and how can I join in' curiosity. It leads me to enthusiastically and earnestly dig into 'what' and 'why' questions with my toddler as he explores and forms his own opinions. Then there's a 'distractive curiosity' - I'm much more like to dive down multi-tab or wiki-link rabbit holes when I'm actively avoiding something else. While the knowledge I gain is genuine, it's a digging willy-nilly to avoid thinking deeply about something unpleasant or completing a particular task. The third, 'exploratory curiosity', can be hard to distinguish from the former these days, because who doesn't have a long list of todos they're avoiding? I've been trying to carve out conscious 'explore' time by feeling completely free to read whatever I want before bed without it being time I could be spending doing something 'more productive'. That said, what I like to explore usually falls into my fourth category of 'utilitarian curiosity' - exploring topics that have a utility for my day to day work (both paid & parenting). I love these subjects! And exploring them further is still fun and rewarding. But it's not 'exploring for exploring's sake'.
Ooh! Thank you for this link. I find this super interesting, because a) pride and b) sin are the motivators behind his vice of curiosity but c) "he may seek useless knowledge and waste effort" is not about the motivation of the curious person's quest but a judgement on the knowledge acquired itself.
I have a hunch Aquinas would really only approve of 'utilitarian curiosity'.
I think particularly of this passage from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters for "seek useless knowledge and waste effort"
"You will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...'I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'"
#3: "The faculty of turning away one's eyes as one approaches a chasm is not unusual..."
I think that Henry Adams is saying that since the society he was observing got in a rut where they "had to" think their methods of attaining morality were perfect/optimal, they habitually "turned their eyes away" from avenues of thought that might contradict that.
This seems to "click" with spiritual pride... and also with the Screwtape Letters quote: I think that "in back of" the human's attention being occupied with "conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him" is the sense that he's "walling his mind off" from some things that are intrinsically interesting (e.g. pursuing God) because of the troublesome contradictions it may bring up.
It comes from THIS EXCERPT - in which I assume the author is being heavily ironic: (sometimes I miss irony when it's in writing!)
"Of all the conditions of his youth which afterwards puzzled the grown-up man, this disappearance of religion puzzled him most. The boy went to church twice every Sunday; he was taught to read his Bible, and he learned religious poetry by heart; he believed in a mild deism; he prayed; he went through all the forms; but neither to him nor to his brothers or sisters was religion real. ...they all threw it off at the first possible moment, and never afterwards entered a church. The religious instinct had vanished, and could not be revived, although one made in later life many efforts to recover it.
...that [the society into which he was born] should have solved all the problems of the universe so thoroughly as to have quite ceased making itself anxious about past or future, and should have persuaded itself that all the problems which had convulsed human thought from earliest recorded time, were not worth discussing, seemed to him the most curious social phenomenon he had to account for in a long life. The faculty of turning away one's eyes as one approaches a chasm is not unusual...
The children reached manhood without knowing religion, and with the certainty that dogma, metaphysics, and abstract philosophy were not worth knowing."
#2: "...the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical and rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, "crimestop." "Crimestop" means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. "Crimestop," in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough..."
Like the human "patient" whose course of "treatment" Screwtape was advising, the member of the establishment in the world of Oceania ends up with a dull, despairing inner world characterized by an absence of real, chosen interests.
(#1, the SSC post, was actually more connected to the original Aquinas quote than to Screwtape... posted it in a reply to MG.)
Also, this is the one I deleted. To put it higher up-thread.
1. The Slate Star Codex post "The Lottery of Fascinations."
2. The concept of "crimestop" in 1984.
3. Autobiographical excerpt of "The Education of Henry Adams" on losing his religion.
4. Also from "1984" - an glimpse of inordinate fascination with the lottery.
...and I am going to put quotes from these in different comments. (Even if it makes me look silly! I bet one long mega-comment would make me look silllllier!)
And, I had forgotten that even was in Screwtape Letters - soooo good!
"...not about the motivation of the curious person's quest but a judgement on the knowledge acquired itself. " Oooh. Like the topic is vapid, "windy," empty?
Aquinas: "Inordinateness here appears in... neglecting study to gaze idly on a meaningless spectacle... observing the actions of others to criticize and condemn them.." <-- I see one big example of this being when someone is fascinated with some information because it occasions taking delight in the downfall* of others.
An example of that from a blog post: 'I remember gossiping about a friend who was really into the worst types of politics – the kind where you’re obsessed about whether the head of the Republican National Committee will cut funding to a representative who said something mildly contrary to what someone else wanted him to say – and somewhere in the middle of the conversation my tone switched from “Yeah, what a loser to be concerned about that kind of thing” to “Yeah, poor guy, apparently he drew the short straw in the Things To Be Fascinated About Lottery.” ' ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinations/ )
* I... I realize I could be treading on spicy waters here. But I guess we've all had that thought about someone?
The concern "(c) he may seek useless knowledge and waste effort which should be expended in learning what he needs to know" sounds like what I feared (while frequently violating it) in my childhood value system.
The danger "(a) a man may seek knowledge to take pride in it" sounds like a major thing I've told myself to fear since my own conversion experience.
I like this description of your categories- and especially like the first one and the last one! (also the description of feeling completely free to read whatever you want before bed w/out treating it as time you're supposed to be doing something "more productive.")
Pursuing curiosity FEELS like "putting on hold" pursuing usefulness. So I'm afraid I've quashed down a lot of my curiosity. I have had some bursts of breaking through and getting some of it revived, though.
Now, what sharpens my hunger to know?
* Getting "tricked into" working on something that engages my curiosity. If someone seeks my help with a math or programming thing that's slightly harder than anything I've done, (but TOO far outside my abilities) that's GREAT. If friends bring up a theological question I've not thought much about... I'll often end up pursuing it much longer on my own, especially if it seems like it's of importance to them personally. (So trying to harness my sense of an obligation to always be working on something "useful.")
* A narrative or idea that "I could become awesome" if I learned a given thing. (embarrassing to admit this motivates me, maybe.)
* Wanting to participate productively in discussions where there's a vibrant community of people who have some major points of commonality but who know some things I don't. (UY did some of this! Fellow comboxers got me reading books I wouldn't have otherwise; I assimilated favorite words of Leah's into my working vocabulary. Alas, my poor husband had been using the word "pugilism" for years, and I only added it then!)
Leah used the word “gonzo” in a blog post and I can’t get it out of my mind.
Oh! I can see that! ("Gonzo" is one word I -did- assimilate from my husband first. As an adjective, it's just beautiful. Especially if, like me, you assumed it was derived from the Muppets character bearing the same name. etymonline says "probably no," though.)
However, since we're literally ON the subject of wikiwalks to satisfy curiosity-for-the-sake-of-curiosity, I'm just going to note that "gonzo journalism" wasn't exactly what I expected given the usage of "gonzo." (I discovered what it was a few months ago on wikipedia. And it kind of made me happy.)
that was supposed to say "not TOO far outside my abilities."
I've found that curiosity has taken on four distinct flavors as I've grown older. I have an 'empathic curiosity' - the 'what is my child thinking, how is he interacting with this space or object and how can I join in' curiosity. It leads me to enthusiastically and earnestly dig into 'what' and 'why' questions with my toddler as he explores and forms his own opinions. Then there's a 'distractive curiosity' - I'm much more like to dive down multi-tab or wiki-link rabbit holes when I'm actively avoiding something else. While the knowledge I gain is genuine, it's a digging willy-nilly to avoid thinking deeply about something unpleasant or completing a particular task. The third, 'exploratory curiosity', can be hard to distinguish from the former these days, because who doesn't have a long list of todos they're avoiding? I've been trying to carve out conscious 'explore' time by feeling completely free to read whatever I want before bed without it being time I could be spending doing something 'more productive'. That said, what I like to explore usually falls into my fourth category of 'utilitarian curiosity' - exploring topics that have a utility for my day to day work (both paid & parenting). I love these subjects! And exploring them further is still fun and rewarding. But it's not 'exploring for exploring's sake'.
The distractive curiosity sounds like what Aquinas considered the vice of curiosity (which he saw as opposed to the virtue of studiousness). http://www.catholictheology.info/summa-theologica/summa-part2B.php?q=191
Ooh! Thank you for this link. I find this super interesting, because a) pride and b) sin are the motivators behind his vice of curiosity but c) "he may seek useless knowledge and waste effort" is not about the motivation of the curious person's quest but a judgement on the knowledge acquired itself.
I have a hunch Aquinas would really only approve of 'utilitarian curiosity'.
I think particularly of this passage from C.S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters for "seek useless knowledge and waste effort"
"You will find that anything or nothing is sufficient to attract his wandering attention. You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday's paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but also in conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and outgoing activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return, so that at last he may say...'I now see that I spent most my life doing in doing neither what I ought nor what I liked.'"
#3: "The faculty of turning away one's eyes as one approaches a chasm is not unusual..."
I think that Henry Adams is saying that since the society he was observing got in a rut where they "had to" think their methods of attaining morality were perfect/optimal, they habitually "turned their eyes away" from avenues of thought that might contradict that.
This seems to "click" with spiritual pride... and also with the Screwtape Letters quote: I think that "in back of" the human's attention being occupied with "conversations with those he cares nothing about, on subjects that bore him" is the sense that he's "walling his mind off" from some things that are intrinsically interesting (e.g. pursuing God) because of the troublesome contradictions it may bring up.
It comes from THIS EXCERPT - in which I assume the author is being heavily ironic: (sometimes I miss irony when it's in writing!)
"Of all the conditions of his youth which afterwards puzzled the grown-up man, this disappearance of religion puzzled him most. The boy went to church twice every Sunday; he was taught to read his Bible, and he learned religious poetry by heart; he believed in a mild deism; he prayed; he went through all the forms; but neither to him nor to his brothers or sisters was religion real. ...they all threw it off at the first possible moment, and never afterwards entered a church. The religious instinct had vanished, and could not be revived, although one made in later life many efforts to recover it.
...that [the society into which he was born] should have solved all the problems of the universe so thoroughly as to have quite ceased making itself anxious about past or future, and should have persuaded itself that all the problems which had convulsed human thought from earliest recorded time, were not worth discussing, seemed to him the most curious social phenomenon he had to account for in a long life. The faculty of turning away one's eyes as one approaches a chasm is not unusual...
The children reached manhood without knowing religion, and with the certainty that dogma, metaphysics, and abstract philosophy were not worth knowing."
FULL TEXT here on Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2044/2044-h/2044-h.htm
#2: "...the speculations which might possibly induce a skeptical and rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline. The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, "crimestop." "Crimestop" means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. "Crimestop," in short, means protective stupidity. But stupidity is not enough..."
Like the human "patient" whose course of "treatment" Screwtape was advising, the member of the establishment in the world of Oceania ends up with a dull, despairing inner world characterized by an absence of real, chosen interests.
(#1, the SSC post, was actually more connected to the original Aquinas quote than to Screwtape... posted it in a reply to MG.)
Also, this is the one I deleted. To put it higher up-thread.
Seeing connections to:
1. The Slate Star Codex post "The Lottery of Fascinations."
2. The concept of "crimestop" in 1984.
3. Autobiographical excerpt of "The Education of Henry Adams" on losing his religion.
4. Also from "1984" - an glimpse of inordinate fascination with the lottery.
...and I am going to put quotes from these in different comments. (Even if it makes me look silly! I bet one long mega-comment would make me look silllllier!)
And, I had forgotten that even was in Screwtape Letters - soooo good!
"...not about the motivation of the curious person's quest but a judgement on the knowledge acquired itself. " Oooh. Like the topic is vapid, "windy," empty?
Aquinas: "Inordinateness here appears in... neglecting study to gaze idly on a meaningless spectacle... observing the actions of others to criticize and condemn them.." <-- I see one big example of this being when someone is fascinated with some information because it occasions taking delight in the downfall* of others.
An example of that from a blog post: 'I remember gossiping about a friend who was really into the worst types of politics – the kind where you’re obsessed about whether the head of the Republican National Committee will cut funding to a representative who said something mildly contrary to what someone else wanted him to say – and somewhere in the middle of the conversation my tone switched from “Yeah, what a loser to be concerned about that kind of thing” to “Yeah, poor guy, apparently he drew the short straw in the Things To Be Fascinated About Lottery.” ' ( https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/06/30/the-lottery-of-fascinations/ )
* I... I realize I could be treading on spicy waters here. But I guess we've all had that thought about someone?
Well there we go!
The concern "(c) he may seek useless knowledge and waste effort which should be expended in learning what he needs to know" sounds like what I feared (while frequently violating it) in my childhood value system.
The danger "(a) a man may seek knowledge to take pride in it" sounds like a major thing I've told myself to fear since my own conversion experience.
I like this description of your categories- and especially like the first one and the last one! (also the description of feeling completely free to read whatever you want before bed w/out treating it as time you're supposed to be doing something "more productive.")
Thank you!