The Death of Curiosity

If you’ve spent even a miniscule modicum of time on the socials you will no doubt have come across the ubiquitous dart playing scene from Ted Lasso - where he waxes lyrical on the Walt Whitman quote, “Be curious, not judgmental”.

That spawned all manner of erudite articles from Medium to Forbes on the supposed lessons and skill sets embodied in that scene. The great irony being that whilst they espouse the virtues of being curious, even the most cursory of enquiries would have led them to the fact that Walt never said it in the first place. At all.

And whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment I do think that we have missed the point about being curious entirely.?

Being curious is no longer just a character trait - it’s an endangered species.?

All manner of entities are hell bent on wiping it out entirely.?

And that should scare the living excrement out of you, because apparently, you’re very much onboard with the whole idea.

Let me explain.?

For the vast majority of human history curiosity was an active and sovereign pursuit.?

There was a period of time when the very act of curiosity, asking questions and seeking out knowledge could get you burnt at the stake. The Church got very touchy about the whole deal - but the point was if you wanted an answer to something you had to go get it.?

That meant going to a library, seeking out subject matter experts, even delving into your grandparents' dusty yet epic tomes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.?

The search for knowledge was self directed, self actualised and self governed.?

Then Steve Jobs, Google and a plethora of servers promised to put the combined and cataloged knowledge of the human race in the palm of your hand.

And for a time things were good, until they weren’t.

Using Google as the ubiquitous example, your search for knowledge was still a self directed one? - you wanted to know a thing so you searched and delved like a modern day digital Indiana Jones, pushing back the cobwebs all the way to page 9 of the Google results to find the lost treasure of the Hovitos. (ifyky)

And that was good,

until it wasn’t.

Planet of the Apps.

The rise of apps and algos began the great descent from active to passive humanity.??

All manner of ‘efficiency’ and ‘convenience’ drove us further and further into the back seat. In the case of self-drive that’s not even a metaphor.?

But from DoorDash to Tinder we could step further and further back from broad, active IRL curiosity to bite sized, pre-curated, dopamine delivery

The rise of ever more sophisticated algorithms began the insidious corralling of the boundaries of our curiosity.?

Suggested playlists, prefilled menus, pre-populated feeds - we were slow-walked down the garden path into an ever-shrinking walled topiary.?

Search was originally about emboldening curiosity - find out literally anything.

Apps and algos are about the moronisation of the human mind.?

The curated diet of information is now packaged in bite-sized, hyper edited, dopamine enriched nuggets.?

And the bounds of that diet are held in check by guard rails decided and enforced by something decidedly non-human.?

If you combine the wealth of readily extractable data about you , combine that with intelligent targeting and curation and leverage our endemic need for comfort and avoidance of anything approaching limbic friction and you have the ideal scenario (for corporations, not you).

You have gone from an active and sovereignly inquisitive human being to a geo-located algorithmically bracketed digital wallet ripe for plundering.?

The current state of the internet, combined with the current state of humanity has left us dehumanised, delivering us wide awake and walking through the very Matrix style existence that Morpheus warned us about.?

Now I know that thus far this has been a stunningly uplighting and positive piece - so for the sake of sparing you from even further abject misery I’ll skip the section where I wax lyrical about what happens when we turn this entire system over to AI and see what happens when the whole thing gets juiced up to eyeballs and we set it all lose.?

Your sovereign curiosity has been undermined and disarmed, leaving you the unwitting accomplice in your own subjugation.

If you want to size the prize consider this, 63% of teens in the US use TikTok daily, and 20% of Gen Z are averaging 4.8hr per day on that app alone - add in the rest of the social app menagerie plus any ‘normal’ screen time and you have a sizeable cohort living their entire waking lives inside the machine - and the machine is watching, logging, learning and refining your walls every single second that you feed it.?

So what do we do?

Am I advocating that you, me and Ezekiel need to hook up the horse and buggy, burn the phones and get ourselves to a good ole fashioned barn raising?

Far from it.?

I’m advocating for the conscious and active reclaiming of your curiosity.?

You’re not going to change the world.

You can Greta Thunberg the social media giants until your placards melt but they are not going to give up the greatest opportunity in the history of the universe to plunder the combined assets of an entire generation.

The real world is the real world - so understand the game.?

As Morpheus says, some rules can be bent, others can be broken.?

I’m not going to give you a five point plan on reclaiming your sovereign curiosity - because we're all different and my five point plan may well be utterly unworkable or inappropriate for the next guy. So let’s work on some basic and powerful big picture stuff to at least get you back on your feet and then you can drive your own enquiry from there (as you should)

Zoom Out.

Panoramic vision isn’t just a setting on your camera - your brain loves it. ?

Put your phone down, step away from the screen and go outside - on the regular.?

Walk the dog, have a cuppa, watch the sunrise and/or set.?

Disconnect - sometimes simply stepping off the digital field helps to reset to perspective and clear the cache.?

Defrag in the real world.?

Understand the purpose of your visit.?

There's nothing wrong with scrolling through the reels, but understand why you are doing it, and think - for at least a moment - whether you need to at all.?

Did you come here looking for specific knowledge? In that case, search and actively find it.?

Otherwise you’re back to getting fed what something else needs you to like.?

Youtube has a search function, same as google - so use it.?

Search is about actualising curiosity - so bend it to your will.?

Seek some limbic friction.?

Sometimes you should go order food in person and wait around for it.?

Not because it’s easier - it isn’t. That’s the point. A little effort, some conversation, sights, sounds, smells, interactions, the human mind being transported about, re-establishing its place in space, time and society.?

You’re an easier wallet to plunder if you stay on the couch and follow a digital Dorothy down the rabbit hole.?

You’re harder to corner if you stay on the move, literally, figuratively, intellectually.

Play the game, but on your terms.?

An entire generation has been swallowed whole by an algorithmically fueled digital cartel, pimping bit-sized dopamine hits to willing accomplices.?

But the entire system hinges on the passive participation of the user.?

You can remain a user but be an active one.?

Operate adjacent to the system, leveraging it as a tool.?

Lest you become another ghost in the machine.?

Misquoted Walt was right - but overly verbose.?

‘Be curious, not judgemental.’

Better still;

‘Be curious.’?