They told us that curiosity killed the cat but it’s a freaking lie.
In the original 16th century telling – and until the late 1800s – it was care (with the meaning of worry) that lead to the cat’s demise. And somewhere along the way, care was replaced by curiosity.
Why? No one really knows, apart from the fact that the word curiosity originates from a Latin word cūriōsus meaning ‘full of care or pains, careful, assiduous, inquisitive’.
(Before you think it, “but satisfaction brought it back” isn’t actually in the original phrase and is a more contemporary addition.)
What’s clear to me though, is that our culture has been discouraging curiosity throughout history: from the story of Adam and Eve, to Galileo Galilei, to Queen Victoria who once wrote to her granddaughter:
“I would earnestly warn you against trying to find out the reason for and explanation of everything… To try and find out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and in the end making you miserable.”
And it’s not just the distant past stuff, either. Our current schooling system is largely designed to squash curious and creative enquiry out of children, instead teaching them to tick boxes and regurgitate facts, and traditional parenting advice labels kids pushing back on unreasonable rules as “naughty” or troublesome.
It’s not that surprising, really.
Capitalism doesn’t reward curiosity, nuance, questioning, doubt. It rewards those who shout the loudest, offering the simplest solution, quickest results.
Think about all the recent book-banning, censorship of artists and journalists, ChatGPT replacing basic critical thought and social media and popular culture numbing us into submission, and you can see how those in power are working overtime to squash our curiosity and imagination, because it’s oh so powerful. Because it’s the one thing that can bring them down and give us and our kids a chance of a liveable future.
Because curiosity is the difference between accepting the status quo and the harmful systems that make our lives miserable, and going: “hold on a second here…”, and reading yourself out of ignorance (and btw I obviously don’t mean the “i read this one reddit thread therefore i now know more than all the scientists” kind of uncritical enquiry here).
So I’m increasingly considering curiosity as an essential survival skill.
So nurture it. Feed it. Train it like a muscle.
Your life may depend on it.
