Wednesday, October 03, 2018

Stamping Out Curiosity


Thoughts on LinkedIn conversation about curiosity it lean (LinkedIn's extremely poor Ux practices means I can't link to a web page of the discussion).

The strong sense of curiosity is in America but crushed out by bad management.
Allen Scott

And crushed by poor education systems and even just peer pressure. I have written about encouraging curiosity in kids (and adults).

I do agree bad management reinforces the anti-curiosity culture but it goes far beyond bad management - even the anti-fact or anti-critical-thinking aspect so prevalent in media and politics is a system designed to quell thoughtful questioning of existing systems, policies, results, affects... I think the decreasing of curiosity is likely strongly influenced by psychology, aging and coping as an adult (coping becoming the focus instead of curiosity and joy). And then we have several powerful aspects of our culture that discourage cultivating curiosity.

I wrote earlier this year that Critical Thinking is Needed to Counter Propaganda. It seems very obvious to me there has been a decades long concerted effort to decrease critical thinking, discourage curiosity and create a large group of people that will follow what they are told (Fox "News" etcetera). That makes things easy if you control what those people are told, but it also makes those uncritical and incurious followers susceptible to anyone that can create propaganda that appeals to them.

Related: Curious, Joyful, Happy Kids Grow Up: Unfortunately - Sarah, aged 3, Learns About Soap - Experience Teaches Nothing Without Theory