The Fear & Control of Our Curious Desire to Know

Stay Tuned

We are riding on the hyper-information-highway, a phenomenon that the great polymath of the 20th Century, Buckminster Fuller, called the “Knowledge Doubling Curve”.

Peddle to the metal, 5g’s of head-pinning, neurochem intoxication. The world in front is approaching fast, twist and turns are upon you as quickly as you see them. To your left and right is nothing but a blur, you can’t tell if what you see is the past or present. Where you’ve been is a distant speck on a reversed horizon. You’re travelling at a speed of exponential acceleration. Its so fast you’re realising you’re no longer in control. When did that happen, and if you’re not in control who, or what is?

During the second half of the 20th Century human knowledge doubled about every 25 years, but today, on average, human knowledge, or recorded information, is doubling every 13 months. IBM predicts that the ‘internet of things’ will soon cause a doubling of information every 12 hours.

The existential question of our consumerist-lifestyles has been ‘do we own stuff, or does stuff own us?’. In the hyper-information, digital-age, this ‘stuff’ is now ‘information’, and the answer to the question is perhaps more sinister; are we now beginning to consume ourselves? Are we, as some predict, beginning to eroding our liberty and self-potential, all because of an addiction to the self-producing ‘data-crack’.

It is questionable if we are living through a ‘Knowledge’ doubling curve, it seems more like the age of the ‘Data’ doubling curve. This is a really important distinction to make. The field of Knowledge Management frames a hierarchy from ‘Data’ at the bottom, through to ‘Information’, ‘Knowledge’ and ‘Wisdom’ as the highest achievement. With us, all now being such prolific creators of information, and with our even greater consumption of information producing so much data, are we driving knowledge and wisdom further from our grasp?

The ideas that this brings forth is starting to, rightfully, trouble many of us. Big decisions, by smart people, are being taken in different directions. Directions toward the agendas of what was, up until very recently, extreme regressive minorities. Culture is becoming a subject of nostalgic identity when we have worked so hard for it to been about the progression of the human spirit. It is highly likely that we are, in fact, being manipulated in a shift of power. Not through conspiracy, but through the digital platforms created of own genius. Algorithmic-‘choice’, filter bubbles, echo-chambers and psychographics; fed by our unquenched thirst for more. Our lack of control is demanding quantity of information and not the quality of knowledge nor wisdom we revere. Through a sophisticated twist and slightness of our own hand, we are leveraging our mightiest mental-faculty against ourselves — curiosity.

Politics of Thought

To understand how we may be falling on our own sword, we must first get to grips with the science of curiosity, and our awkward historical relationship to something so common to us all.

Curiosity is a cognitive process that generates motivational behaviour — if you are highly curious you are highly motivated. A process of feedback that generates a propulsion of our awareness; turning information into knowledge and perhaps even wisdom. Essentially, curiosity puts the brain into a state that is conducive to learning, the more you learn the more curious you become.

What goes on in your mind is as important as how we present the behaviour of curiosity through culture. It is a highly complex cerebral process, involving many parts of the brain. Curiosity is influenced by the rewards system, a function that is controlled by dopamine. Dopamine stimulates our cognitive, sensory and motor functions. Operating in the oldest parts of the brain; a system fundamental to our evolutionary progress.

Dopamine, therefore, works to set in motion our processes of enquiry. That is both the reward when we expect something new, and at the very moment, we make a discovery. Dopamine is perhaps the most well know neurotransmitter, for a very good reason; it is the reward system used for sex and appetite. If we expect sex or food we get a hit of dopamine motivating us to go get it. If we get sex or food we get a big hit of dopamine, rewarding us, and therefore motivating us to do it again.

If we don’t have access to sex or food we’ll become motivated to find it — curiosity is the same, if we can't find mental stimulation, we’ll become dopamined-up to go get some. Curiosity’s cerebral connection to sex and food suggests it to be a core attribute in the human success story.

A great deal of ‘curious’ brain activity occurs in the amygdala, the small bit at the base of the brain, roughly located at the intersection between your ears and your eyes in both hemispheres. The amygdala regulates our emotions, our immune system, and our memory; suggesting why we may have a troubled relationship to the subject. The amygdala is our fight or flight bit of the brain, it sets in motion our reaction to a tiger before we know we’ve seen it. Essentially it is where fear and danger emerges from. Creating a natural correlation between curiosity and danger through the origins of our brains.

Naturally, it becomes a good subject of stories; up there with sex, food and fear. But there's an interesting theme and punchline-warning to the stories we tell about curiosity that suggests a more social dynamic. A control of the masses against our natural desire to push boundaries through original thought.

The best place to start is with a dead cat, or at least that's what you have been told. ‘Curiosity killed the cat’, is in fact only the first part of a line from Elizabethan theatre, which goes on ‘… but satisfaction brought it back’. It's not clear who, when or in what context this obscure line was cut short. But it forms part of a pattern, almost a habitual modus operandi in storytelling, around the subject of curiosity, stretching back to the origins of western civilisation.

This common narrative told through time has permeated everything, from Batman comics and kitchen sink dramas of pop culture to political propaganda from the establishment to populism. So common is the narrative that it has affected our gender relations, our values of authority, ideas of liberty, and even to the point where a thought-to-far is a temptress into evil. It is a narrative warning us that curiosity is a dangerous and antisocial pursuit; a behaviour not to be trusted in others. Generally told by the bastions of an ideology, religious or political. Perhaps we even tell a version to ourselves and to our children; unwittingly reinforcing a doctrine of control. After thousands of years of storytelling, who can blame us.

For the ancient Greeks, Pandora was her name. The first woman, created by Zeus had Hermes. She was as ‘lovely as a goddess, with the gift of speech to tell lies, and the mind and nature of a treacherous dog.’ — a telling description, not of Pandora, but of the storyteller.

Pandora lived in the house of Epimetheus. Zeus gave Epimetheus a gift; the infamous ‘box’. A box that Pandora was never to open, alas because of her ‘curious ways’, that's exactly what she did. Out from the box flew every bit of bad known to humanity. Strife, sickness, toil and every other nasty to afflict men and women forever more. However, also contained in the box was ‘hope’ — a sweetener to suggest there might just be something good from all that bad.

It is important to remember that the box was a gift from Zeus’ and Pandora was his creation, with all her mortal imperfections. Alas, it is Pandora who has remained the fool to this day.

Then Pandora became Eve — ‘When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.’

Eve gave in to the temptation of wisdom and lead us into a naked existence of corruption. 

‘The woman you put here with me — she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’

Adam’s quick lack of chivalry suggests to us that curiosity is not just the absence of self-control but also an infectious behaviour. Eve was his ‘temptress’, it was her doing that lead him astray, from the safety of ignorance under the spell of an almighty.

The fact that Pandora and Eve are women is of great significance to the message. Their roles representing the social underdog, the oppressed; those most likely to be dissatisfied with the status quo. In these stories, the powerful characters are never at fault, even though they created the conditions or acted in the same way. These characters are institutions, the establishment; fault could not be laid at their door. Alas, it is also a message to those with power; a warning that institutions of high status are vulnerable to the simple power of a creative spirit.

Whether it be an Elizabethan cat, Pandora or Biblical Eve, stories of curiosity are never as clear-cut as we may popularly believe. After all, curiosity was a design feature by an almighty in both Pandora and Eve. It is also important to look at the wider context within these narratives; the rest of Eden was open for Eve to explore, just as Pandora had all of Epimetheus’ house to roam. Curiosity and enquiry aren’t outlawed in either story only in the areas that posed a high risk of transgression. The cat being revived by ‘satisfaction’ tells us it can pay off, but it can also be dangerous.

As far back as we know, and still to this day, curiosity is a force that we wrestle with, a balance within a power game, within ourselves and within our social and cultural contexts. Quite simply, if curiosity were to be morally shunned we would cease, but where curiosity can break the spell of control over us, it is forbidden, marked — ’DO NOT ENTER’.

Bite Life

Who goes there?

Who are the social tribes who read ‘DO NOT ENTER’ as ‘TRY ME’?

Once upon a time, not so long ago, these cool-cat characters were called the avant guard. The creators of movements. Pushing the acceptable, often so far they wouldn’t live to see the effect of their curiosity in turning the ship of social consciousness.

Alas, this tribe in the 21st Century is all but dead. It is no longer an easy task to shock. To inspire a small group into a revolution that goes on to affect us all; only then to demand a new generation of the avant guard to come along and transgress once more. The engine of social transgression has changed. Does Art shock us any more? Does literature, music or any other form of human expression really take us to a place as progressive as the transgressions of the past two hundred years? Do we live in a time if Nietzsches, Duchamps or Chuck Berrys, or do we have something entirely new?

Has the persona been replaced by the platform?

We are now in a new space that asks not for the mighty visionary but the collective force of ‘social’. Avant guard is now very much about the medium — social media acting as a mass avant guard social art project. Yet these platforms, as the avant guard 2.0, are a poison chalice like we have never seen. Digital platforms, far beyond just social media, are designed to stimulate our amygdala and flood us with dopamine; making us feel like we going somewhere when we are not.

The bumpy ground of this essay suggests how ironic yet perilous our situation of original thought and discovery might be. Our addiction to data-crack, increased by our hardwired dopamine-fuelled motivation to be curious, played out against the backdrop of our negative cultural narratives.

As curiosity is a threat to established systems of influence, it must be agreed that there will always be a power game to what and how we think. What a game-changing play it is if the narrative has been flipped and our curiosity is celebrated. Our new Garden of Eden is designed to do just that… except in such a way that our curiosity now, in part, lives outside of ourselves.

The French utilitarian philosopher, Roger Pol Droit, called the digital world a ‘proxy brain’. From outsourcing the memory of our loved ones’ phone numbers to now outsourcing the process of how we arrive at meaningful discoveries and original thought.

We have surrendered our process of curiosity to the established systems of influence. We ‘Google it’. We ‘like it’ so we see more of the same, we find films, clothes, books, food, perhaps even a lover through ‘recommendations’ made by a ghost in the machine.

The cat killed by curiosity but brought back by satisfaction is a story that shows how the removal of context can change a story. Add to the mix, not just the removal of context but a never-ending shift of contexts and focus while all the time headed in the same direction; a perpetual reinforcement of what you like and already think you know.

We have never been so curious, yet our perpetual surface-skim of enquiry simply makes the familiar unfamiliar, all for our entertainment.

It is now time to take back control of our ride along the hyper-information-highway, and all deeply ask…

‘How am I curious?’

Einstein famously stated ‘I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.’

As neuroscience tells us; curiosity is a cognitive process that generates motivational behaviour. Process and behaviour being the two most import words in this sentence.

Einstein’s greatness came from a process of not just biting one apple from a forbidden tree, but many different apples, over years of obsessing. His acceptance that the gratification of knowledge would not be for a long time, if ever, was motivated and sustained by his passion to be curious. Greatness in original thought and discovery requires accepting that gratification of knowledge is not at your fingertips.

It requires us to go outside of our echo chambers, to burst our filter bubbles, to go beyond and push observations into ideas and ideas into innovation and innovation into transgression.

If you harness your curiosity you are prepared to interpret the world differently. The Art of curiosity requires you trust your expert intuition and look beyond the constraints imposed on you by your environment, to find new ways to solve problems and create opportunities.

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do, curiosity is essential for personal and social well-being, and progress, so ask yourself again — How am I curious?

…because when we are nothing but dust all that is left are the fruits of our curiosity.

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All images produced by Silje Bryn Knusten ? 2017

This essay was first published in A NEW TYPE OF IMPRINT Winter 2017