Curiosity

There are not many genuinely unambiguously positive traits in western society any more. This is not a problem usually and it becomes an issue of contexts. It does however become a problem when words that really shouldn’t have negative connotations inherit them from people in supposed authority.

Creativity is one of the aforementioned 100% positive traits. Anyone is happy if they get called creative and it cannot be an insult. Teachers and parents praise creativity endlessly and I think this is how it should be. It is an unambiguously positive trait.

Curiosity is certainly not. This is my gripe.

Curiosity, in our culture has somehow become a negative trait. This is bizarre, but true. What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you hear the word ‘curiosity’.  I’ll bet it is the old saying ‘curiosity killed the cat’ This was around when we were young and it is still around today. To stifle curiosity is a crime. Especially in young people that are constantly enquiring about the way the world works. Picture the familiar scene where a young child is asking intelligent questions about something and the mother/father/teacher/priests responding. The child tries to get a deeper understanding by asking ‘why’ ‘why’ and ‘why’ again. Eventually the adult will answer ‘because that is just the way it is’ in a mildly frustrated tone that telegraphs to the child not to ask questions.

Now it is not necessarily the adults fault, how could they know the answers if they have never looked into the topic? We must remember that as a child they would probably have asked the same questions only to be fobbed off with a ‘it just is’ kind of answer. This is where we need to change things. If a child, be it a son/daughter/younger sibling/student or niece, asks you a question you don’t know the answer too. Say you don’t know and look it up together. This will interest the child in a number of ways that I don’t want to write about here as it will tangent off the point off the article. (I get the hypocrisy of what I just said, but look up the reasons if you are curious ☺ )

The main thing is that curiosity should be nurtured with at least the same vigor as creativity and we, as a society, should do away with harmful phrases such as ‘curiosity killed the cat’ because if anything ‘Ignorance killed the cat’