Isabella never married. 

Her parents died young and left her a small cottage on the outskirts of the village. With the money she earned from selling produce, she became self-sufficient. This allowed her the freedom to pursue her curiosities at a time where such a privilege was nearly unheard of. 

The other village girls were jealous of Isabella’s privilege. They would gossip about how wrong and unfair it was, while secretly dreaming about what their lives would be like outside the small box society had drawn for them.

This didn’t bother Isabella. She knew the only true disgrace of privilege was wasting it. 

She spent almost all of her waking hours learning from books.

Literacy rarely existed outside of the noble class. Even then, it was reserved for men. Nevertheless, Isabella’s father, a tutor for a wealthy family, ignored the social stigma and secretly taught his daughter to read. 

If she wasn’t reading her father’s old books, she was with her only friend, an old widow who lived deep in the woods by an oak tree.

The widow was also a very curious individual. 

She spent years sitting by the oak tree, watching the animals and noting what plants they would eat, not eat, and when. This is how she gained a basic understanding of herbology, which she shared with Isabella.

Isabella’s intellectual knowledge combined with the widow’s practical knowledge helped them form a foundation in natural medicines. This excited them. 

It was a project that they both were naturally interested in and they knew it would eventually help their fellow villagers.

This curiosity bonded them. Bonded them with a rope to the oak tree where their screams echoed and their skin turned black.

***

There are two main mechanisms of social control: formal and informal.

When Catholic authorities commissioned their Inquisition to hunt for witches, it served as a formal mechanism.

An informal mechanism is a social stigma held by a community against anything they deem as a threat. Like when villagers across medieval Europe led their own hunts for unmarried women living unconventional lifestyles.

In both cases, the goal was the same: enforce conformity.

Conformity requires compliance and compliance leaves no room for curiosity. 

This leads us to the core problem: living in a world where both the authority and the majority prioritize compliance over curiosity.

To emphasize the significance of this issue, I need to convince you why seriously following your curiosity is one of the most impactful decisions you can make in life.

To do that, you first need to know what curiosity is not. 

Curiosity is not an interest. Interests are passive, fleeting, and easily influenced by external factors. You become interested in cold plunges after you see droves of healthy people raving about it. You are interested in Aston Martins only because that’s what James Bond drives.

This is not how curiosity works. 

Curiosity is closely related to intuition–a force so intrinsic that it’s nearly impossible to influence. Everyone possesses a unique set of curiosities. This is easy to recognize in children before they are conditioned to fit in.

Another aspect of curiosity is its love for learning. Curious people ask the most questions, and eventually find the most answers.

Now, what is threatened by those who are hard to influence and naturally inclined to seek?

The same force that molds our education system, employs the majority, and dictates societal norms.

Power. 

Curiosity threatens power. Power is vested in preserving the known (order) and curiosity is interested in exploring the unknown (chaos). They are diametrically opposed.

The first rule of power is to not lose it.

The best way to do that would be to enforce systems that promote compliance amongst your subjects. 

Let us begin.

We will start by standardizing education. That would warrant a uniform grading scale: reward good results, punish everything else.

It’s true; this will train their developing minds to associate production and accomplishments with success rather than their capacity to ask good questions and proximity to the truth, but all the better.

In our perfect world, the majority will be conditioned not ask any questions at all.

That will be difficult of course, considering that every child inherently asks many questions. However, if we initiate this process early enough, by the time they reach the age where asking the right questions is crucial to their life’s success, they won’t be able to formulate them! Like the man dying of thirst, with a throat so desiccated he can’t beg for water to save his life.

Encourage them to focus on the answers, the achievements, the progress, and their ever-fluctuating status. We must be unceasing in this effort.

Attach numbers to these categories and teach them that anything that can’t be quantified is worthless. Of course, the exact opposite is true, but they will be too focused on chasing nothing to ever realize it.

We will have made it impossible for them not to compete with each other. The ones that fall behind will be left behind. Shunned and then forgotten. The ones that break free will be cast into the spotlight. Criticized and then crucified. 

The compliant cogs will regulate themselves! All must be equal, except us. We are more equal than others.

We will reinforce this lesson by seeding fear in the unknown. While there are many clever tactics to accomplish this, our best will be to lure them into jobs that are neither hard nor easy. Comfort is an anchor that keeps the mind from wondering.

Dickens! Who are we kidding? They won’t have the time to wonder. Thinking is a luxury, and all luxuries must be reserved for us. 

Work them like donkeys and fatten their brains with pleasure when they tire. The more a man indulges in his pleasures, the duller his thoughts become, and the less he cares to think.

Entertainment and media will be our greatest tools.

Bathe them in it, like a mother washing her children. Sterilize them of their own thoughts. Nurse them with the ideas we want them to believe. They might even come to believe them as their own!

Our success will be measured by the number of individuals who complain about the negative effects of media yet persist in its consumption – like hungry piglets clinging to their mother’s teat and receiving poison instead of milk.

Now, there will likely be a stubborn minority who manage to retain their curiosity despite our best efforts. They will realize the golden prison around them and try to escape. When they do, make an example out of them.

Call them witches! 

They must never realize that struggling to create your own path is infinitely better than living the comfortable and secure path of someone else.

Burn them!

Ideas are contagious. Freethinkers could topple all we have worked for.

Kill the Curious Cats!

***

Is curiosity important only because it challenges power and the status quo?

No.

If that’s all it did, would it be more than enough to justify you pursuing it?

Absolutely.

The primary significance of curiosity is that it serves as your truest compass to authenticity. Discovering your authentic self is the first step towards attaining wisdom.

Socrates imparted the same lesson: ‘Know Thyself’.

Yet, well over 2,000 years later, many still struggle to recognize the importance of that lesson. Or more accurately, struggle to recognize the serious implications of not knowing themselves.

Authenticity has never been in a lower supply.

It’s suffocated by diluted ideas, frivolous content, media, trendy music, extreme opinions, unsolicited advice, and more opinions. It’s not easy to find solitude. And when you do, your immediate instinct is to end it as quickly as possible.

Like the person who’s sick of the city and leaves for a cabin only to realize they can’t sleep without the TV on. Or your friend who can’t eat a meal alone without playing a YouTube video or podcast. Or your little cousin who won’t sit still without a screen six inches from their face.

“The world will ask you who you are, and if you don’t know, the world will tell you.”

–Carl Jung

You won’t find your authenticity in the opinions of others.

Separation is imperative. Without a hero’s journey, without a dive into the unknown, one cannot establish the discernment necessary to filter the opinions of others.

This has never been more crucial, given the overwhelming volume of content enabled by the internet.

What else changed with the internet?

The fact that in the course of human history, it has never been easier to pursue your curiosity.

The majority of you reading this were not forced to work the same jobs as your parents. You don’t face the same level of social constraints as your grandparents did. You can access databases of knowledge, pull inspiration from the best minds, and can connect with like-minded individuals across the globe.

Do you see it? There is an interesting paradox here.

While the pursuit of curiosity has never been easier, there has never been fewer people doing so.

This serves as the foundation for my essay and much of my other work. Therefore, I must address those of you who may think my statement is untrue.

It’s crucial to understand that social media is a platform built for creators, with an algorithm that promotes the content of creators. Meaning, the vast majority of content you consume is from creators.

This forms the basis of the disproportionate illusion that there are more curious people in the world than there really are, as true creativity only exists in direct correlation to curiosity.

Furthermore, out of all the creative content you see, a large percentage (perhaps you can agree it is the majority) is based on trends.

Trends are not examples of people pursuing their curiosities. Trends are exercises of conformity disguised as creativity.

For those still doubting the diminishing pursuit of curiosities, perform your own experiment by asking the people around you what they are curious about. 

You will find that most of them answer with the same topics. That is because they are answering with interests, not curiosities. Remember, the two are not the same.

Only those who know themselves can know their curiosities. This will constitute the minority among the people you ask, just as it would’ve been in Socratic times and is likely to always be.

Out of that minority, how many are pursuing their curiosities?

That is our question.

It’s not enough to simply know what you are aligned with. That’s merely the first step. There needs to be action.

Voracious readers write, fashion enthusiasts design, film buffs direct, music fanatics perform, foodies create recipes, gamers become developers, gearheads become racers.

Creative acts are the signal of someone obsessively pursuing their curiosity.

How much of that do you see around you? How many people do you personally know that are pursuing their curiosities?

It is not the majority.

It has never been the majority.

Even today, it is not feasible for the majority.

This conversation can only be seriously entertained by those who have reached the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy. You aren’t worried about feeding your childhood curiosity when you have hungry children to feed.

That’s why, if you can even consider pursuing your curiosity, you must.

The only true disgrace of privilege is wasting it. 

You’ll see the signs of social control. Don’t let them clobber you into the same rigid line that everyone else waits for death in. You were born different. You might as well die different.

After all, ‘curiosity killed the cat’ is only half the idiom.