I've been meaning to write about curiosity for some time now, as it keeps coming up. I've always been a very curious person. I definitely have a base set of interests that I primarily focus on, but when I catch the odd fact about something entirely unrelated, my interest still perks up. Even my main interests seem to be branching out and connecting to so many hardly-related fields of study. The internet definitely encourages these kinds of influences. However, talking to others openly about diverse topics is another big contributor.
Sometimes my curiosity frightens me because my areas of interest seem to be expanding fairly regularly. In fact, they've most likely graduated to the 'eclectic' category.
However, I find my curiosity doesn't necessarily stem from the left hemisphere 'scientific curiosity' but more the right brain's 'creative curiosity'. I don't really want to learn about these various subjects to identify absolute truths because I'm beginning to feel as though they don't exist.
My recent studying of nutrition and diet again have really spoken to this idea. It's next to impossible to know who to truly believe. I think part of our ego tricks us into trying to find and latch on to one, perfect mentor and stick with their ideas and studies.
Enter... Joseph Campbell.
I'm just interested in reading everyone's different stories. I believe this may have been the same seed of curiosity that may have first influenced Joseph Campbell, who studied almost all of the religions and myths, to find many central themes and characteristics that we impart on our 'heroes' or as I like to consider them, our 'ideal humans'. The beautiful thing about Campbell's work is that, to my knowledge, he never fully identified with any one religion of belief system, but rather absorbed aspects of them all like a sponge.
To further this notion, watch this great ted talk on what atheists can take from religion.
This is especially fascinating after watching the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham, on the topic of evolution versus creationism. Brutal. After all of the intellectual rock throwing, they had a session of questions from the audience that were directed to either of the debaters. The debater the question was addressed to would have two minutes to reply, while the other would have one minute to have their piece as well. One fascinating question was along the lines of: "What if, despite all your evidence, you turn out to be wrong?" What a great question, to force you to take a step back from your beliefs. I'd managed to build up my excitement, which was soon to crash into the front door of the Bible when Ham basically responded saying God's word can't be wrong.
Honestly, as much as I despised the response I admire such devotion. I only wish that level of devotion could be applied to the use of repairing the environmental destruction we've inflicted upon the Earth, or perhaps helping to feed the hungry, or perhaps more importantly, gradually creating more of a balance in world. Why can't we direct such high levels of commitment to such a cause, rather than to furthering one's sense of self-comfort while smugly sitting in their thrones of belief.
The battle continues.
I'm beyond the point of caring whether or not either of them are right or wrong. As much as I would love to just join most of you in jumping on Bill Nye's shoulders and condemning Ham for having the silliest rebuttals ever, I ask you to think about this: There are many unknowns in this world. The more that we seem to study our planet and beyond, the more we realize how much we don't know yet. Due to many scientific breakthroughs throughout the past centuries, we've surely developed some absolutely incredible inventions and innovations. All of this considered, there have also been various checkpoints within the scientific spectrum of progress, that have vastly reinvented our entire views of the world!
This is beautiful, and it's something that we need to accept is probably going to be constant. For example, there is a lot buzz around the Higgs Boson particle, which, if we can harness long enough to study accurately, is expected to yield incredible results. Of course, these are all predictions, but as a curious person, it's got me interested. What if we were able to prove the existence of something higher, whether that be a god or another plane of consciousness, or perhaps even that our view of this reality is all a hologram! All of these hypotheses have been discussed in either fiction or non-fiction. My point is, we NEED to be open to any possible unknown, regardless of the potentially ridiculous form it has come to be understood by as it has traveled throughout history in a constant game of broken telephone.
Paradox in Inception by Christopher Nolan.
The only constant seems to be that everything changes. Quite a paradox? Aren't our own views of ourselves just one paradox after another. I feel it would be wise to make friends with this idea, and accept that our views of ourselves are also on a forward path of constant change. This is why Ken Ham disappointed me with his response. He lives in his creationist story, so much so, that to consider otherwise is just impossible. Being able to outwardly look into your own thought processes I feel is a very necessary thing especially if you hope to be credible by any means.
We need our politicians and world leaders to have the occasional thought: "What if everything I've come to believe and understand is wrong? Could this actually be the case?"
With adequate amounts of curiositym everyone's personal shield, or egos, could diminish drastically. Instead of thinking of counter arguments before the opposing side has even finished speaking, we should enforce a required 'quiet, introspective time'. After all, many politicians claims and broken appeals make them appear to have the maturity of a child sometimes anyway.
I'll be treading into similar subjects in this realm at a later date.
For now, please be curious. Of just about everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment