the cat is alive and well...

curiosity, however, is on life support

I've been thinking a lot about the defining factor of success in human relationships, and I've come to the conclusion:

It's not love. It's not generosity. It's not selflessness. It's not any religion's exclusive moral conduct or value. It isn’t any self-help guru’s tip for magnetism. It isn’t hidden in a Robert Greene book. It isn’t in a 5am gym routine.

The secret to success is simply curiosity. You know, the thing that killed the cat?

Well, if there’s one thing we can emphatically agree on, it’s that the cat is alive and well. Because, although people have more resources to sate their curiosity than ever before, they're no longer curious. My age demographic in particular (18 to 24) is deeply uninquisitive.

That scares me.

Because no matter how progressive or liberal or anti-establishment you view yourself as, there is a set of propagandists thought-terminating clichés ready and waiting for you like a Little Ceasar's pizza at the precipice of every single group that you might want to be a part of. Whether that's communist, feminist, socialist, or completely anarchist; there's a set of social norms and social contracts already established. There are statements already prepared for you. If you do not agree with them entirely, you're not allowed in.

It develops a culture of uninquisitiveness about every aspect of our lives, but most concerningly about politics.

If the prevailing reason for this lack of curiosity was mere laziness, I might be able to forgive it. The danger is that people are not only intellectually stunted, politically siloed, and individually bigoted against their peers rather than their oppressors. They are also wildly self-righteous about it. This sense of superiority is a profoundly unilateral issue in our divided political landscape.

Liberals, quite as loudly and proudly as the most hateful conservative Republicans, will dismiss, degrade, and dehumanize those on the opposite side of their ideology. Bigotry itself is fairly straightforward. Bigotry that insists it is superior to other bigotry because it has the correct moral, humanitarian values is a much more complicated beast.

Liberal and Conservative thought leaders are head-fucking themselves, leaving an incestuous post-coital-fluids puddle of of hate, ignorance, and tribalism that can only ever birth different varieties of the same rotten seed: fascism.

This is the result of intolerance. Intolerance, which is a cover for ignorance, polarity, which is a cover for inflexibility, and self-importance, which is a cover for blatant bigotry.

All of these can easily and immediately be cured by curiosity.

The thing about media is that communications professionals, like myself, have dedicated entire lives to figuring out the strategy to silver-bullet an idea into your head without you thinking about it long or hard enough to reject it in any way. We're really really good at it. Entirely too good. We perfected the art of idea transplanting so well that human curiosity is fading into oblivion, replaced by egocentrism and hate.

In children and teens, curiosity is being shot like a rabid dog in the back alley. As soon as they learn the power of adherence to norms, acceptance of buzz-feedable headlines and campaign slogans, and a wildly incomplete framework of gender theory and the spectrum of our sexuality. Every time they submit their curiosity for social acceptance, the establishment wins another lifelong idea drone to carry out the polarization of our people.

A classic, but deeply problematic example: Bisexuality coming into popular media. Everyone's bisexual. Every barista needs to be non-binary and bisexual.

Okay. Fine. I love bisexuals. I love the progressive acceptance of sexualities that would've once been labeled as perverted and divergent.

Question for you: What happened to pansexuality?

Does it not feel subliminally transphobic that no one identifies as pansexual anymore? They only identify as bi. Upon three to five seconds of investigation, it feels deliberately exclusionary that bisexuality is the normalized “oddity” or “sexual divergence,” while others in the veritable pantheon of sexualities are entirely suppressed and erased from popular culture and media.

Here's the beautiful thing: That three to five seconds of investigation is all it takes to undermine propaganda actively infesting against your subconscious. Asking “wait, but what happened to the other thing?”

“Wait, why did those two deeply intertwined things become silently disconnected?”

“Wait, is that actually in my best interest?”

Because people are no longer curious they lack purpose. Their muscles of critical thinking have atrophied and they rely on “thought leaders.” Here’s how that looks:

“I don't have time to learn about political philosophy! I don't have time to find out about everything that so-and-so is doing right now. I don't have time to develop my own opinions about life and the way that my life is governed or the reasons that my life is governed in the first place! I don't have time!”

Okay, so how are you going to make it through day-to-day life?

“So, I'm going to rely upon someone else, who dedicates all of their time to getting these answers for me in nice prepackaged containers that I can quickly digest without interrogation.”

And you don’t worry that will have some downstream effects?

“Of course not! If not critical thinking, why critical thinking shaped? My curiosity must surely be intact because I felt a little zap of it when I saw their carefully curated hook, pain-stakingly designed to activated my overstimulated, half-dead desire for novelty.”

Right… right. Okay, that seems healthy and fool-proof. Remind me: why don’t you have time?

“Because I’m busy working for a shady company that I’ve justified my loyalty to by murdering the part of myself that would ask questions like ‘is this really all there is’ or ‘where does our inventory come from?’ Now that I haven't wasted my precious afternoon researching any potentially life-altering information about the mechanisms that govern both my society and my mind, I have the freedom to order doordash and watch some consumerist propaganda- I mean TV! Yay! Have you seen the new season of Severance? It’s SOOOO good!”

Spiritual and intellectual food is, much like your actual food, being prepared for you in rooms you never see, through processes and methods you have no knowledge of. It is delivered to you through channels you don't understand. And yet, when it arrives at your door, lukewarm and already growing a litany of mildly dangerous bacteria, you devour it without question.

And you wonder why your stomach hurts.

Ask yourself this question (which will come again it will come up again later): What is the price of these conveniences, truly?

What is the price of never learning to cook your own food and instead ordering out for the rest of your life?

What is the price of never being able to build your own house and therefore having to buy a house and pay people to repair it forever and ever and ever?

What is the price of not knowing how your computer works and therefore when some tiny thing goes wrong you have to pay Microsoft $1,200 to fix it?

What is the price of choosing to go to therapy instead of having hard conversations with your family?

What is the price of not understanding the political philosophies that you have decided are a part of your personhood?

People are donning identities that they do not even understand. Then, whenever you ask them to interrogate themselves, there's an entire glossary of phrases they have been given to vilify you... for the crime of asking them to interrogate their beliefs.

What we are facing right now is a Depression of curiosity. I was merely being dramatic earlier, it's not on life support, but it may be on SSRIs. And we all know what that means. Curiosity needs to be strengthened. It needs to be fed and nourished. It needs to be indulged for the sake of its own flourishing. Why? Because when humans are not curious, we want to die. There's no purpose to anything. There's no color in the world. There is no meaning to anything. it doesn't matter at all.

And so sure, y’know, you get to hack your way through learning the hard parts. You get to hack your way through gaining any skills. You get to hack your way through having to deal with interpersonal relational friction. Sure. And what does that gain you?

It gains you weakness and Ineptitude. It gains you entitlement. it gains you a brittle shell of ego that you subconsciously understand the fragility of and therefore constantly defend and insulate from being broken. It could be shattered in an instant and you know that. Instead of facing that truth and realizing that you haven't done the work and you don't know how to do the work, you just attack anyone who gets too close to calling you on that.

The solution is easy. Ask one fucking question a day.

You could ask anything ask how long it takes a maple tree to grow and how maple sap is actually extracted and what the difference between maple syrup and molasses is and why one has so much more iron and where anemia comes from in the first place and then you can think about the life cycle of a mustard seed. From there you can ask why we started grinding mustard seeds into mustard powder and then from there why did we added vinegar and why does it go so well with cheddar cheese?

And then you can ask the question of how did evolution create the apex mountain goat that can manage to balance on like approximately this much <(-)> cliff? (Because every goat who couldn't balance fell off the cliff, you know, it's a beautiful thing).

It's a curious cycle.

It's vicious.

It's brutal.

It's necessary for us to continue to evolve.

You can't stop asking questions. You can't get complacent. You can't rely upon convenience because it will never bring you happiness or fulfillment or success financially, relationally, Spiritually. God knows certainly not politically.

It's catching up with us faster than we realize. This is something I worry about all the time and I want to inspire you and encourage you to ask more questions. Even to question me. I could be wrong about any number of things that I've written here. What do you think I have erred in? Then and then ask yourself why you think that?

Get to the root of it.

Liberated from judgment.

Don't be an asshole to yourself. It's not entirely your fault.

It is only entirely your fault if you refuse to begin asking the questions that will allow you to get over this lack of inquisitiveness. And, once the hate you have for yourself eases, the hate you have for the rest of the world will melt into nothing like a raccoon's greedy fistful of cotton candy, dunked naively into the creek.

You will always be forgiven in proportion to the forgiveness you give others.

And if you are someone who asks questions, I beg you never stop. Face the constant frustration of people who don't want to ask questions until you break through to them. Get them to ask a question that they are inspired by. Imagine this process like one lit torch touching another unlit torch. It bursts into flame and then you're burning together. Then, all of a sudden, we have a mob, ready to fucking go and it's not hard.

Because it is flammable.

Human brains are so flammable. We are easy to spark and inspire and engage. This has been used against us to great effect. But controlling minds is the least interesting thing we could possibly do. It's not my goal. I hope it's not yours either. However it is the goal of companies, institutions, and governments currently controlling us.

To spite them is truly as easy as asking, “Why do penguins look like that? Why don't they fly? Did they ever?”

Because here’s my favorite universal truth:

A question about nature will answer a question about *human* nature if you push far enough. A question about life will eventually lead to a truth about death. A question about hate will lead you to a truth about love. A question about eternity will lead you to a truth about change. A question about others will lead you to an answer about yourself.

You deserve the strength to find your own answers. However strength is not given, it is earned.

So fuck the proverbial cat. Bring back curiosity.