In light of the time since my last publication I have had a couple of people ask me whether I have suddenly become satisfied with the way the world operates and therefore no longer have a need to write this blog. I can assure you that the answer to both these questions is a resounding "no". I have however been busy with other matters which have required my attention but having found a couple of quiet hours on the weekend, I can now complete my latest missive.
After all the political idiocy on Labor's part over the last couple of months and the retarded utterancess of the cashed-up bogans who run the mining industry, it is very tempting to unload once more on these easy targets. However instead I intend turning my mouse and keyboard to a less obvious subject, namely that much-maligned and vastly underestimated human quality, curiosity.
I was prompted to choose this topic by a passage I came across in Stephen Fry's latest autobiography. He was reminiscing about his school days and lamenting the fact that so many people often use the excuse that they weren't taught something in school as a basis for explaining away a gap in their knowledge. He made the very good point that humans have been blessed with an enquiring mind so why is it that so many of us rely on being spoon-fed learning at school or university as opposed to being sufficiently driven to find things out for ourselves? Especially, as he rightly points out, that since the establishment of the Internet, we have for the first time in human history almost all of the world's learning at our disposal with a simple click of a button.
It's a very valid point he raises but like a lot of puzzling deficiencies in humankind, I suspect the answer can be found in how people are brought up, the conditioning that our parents give us as children and the behavioural expectations of society that we are all expected to conform to. For example, how many times can you remember being told as a child: "Mind your own business !"or "Don't be nosy?". I know it happened to me a lot, as having been raised practically as an only child I had to keep myself amused from a young age and was always sticking my nose into places that it wasn't necessarily welcome.
Another tired expression which is used to berate people for showing an undue level of interest in someone or somebody is "Curiosity killed the cat, you know?". I've always found this expression somewhat odd, as apart from those occasions involving the torture of a creature lower than them in the food chain, most cats of my acquaintance have not displayed much curiosity at all. Indolence, capriciousness, duplicity and cruelty, certainly - but curiosity, no. These qualities are part of the reason cats would make such great human resources directors if they could just speak a bit more English.
It turns out though that the expression dates back to the 16th century and in fact appeared in its original form as "Care killed the cat" (which is equally as strange) but some time over the past 400 years it has evolved into its current form. See, there you go, show a bit of thirst for knowledge and this and trillions of other unhelpful facts are yours for the keeping.
While it is true that humans value their privacy to a degree and all of us carry around secrets of one kind or another, the fact is that the parental sanctions and trite admonishments I have mentioned above are by and large a load of rubbish. The simple fact is that most people I have come across in life welcome you taking an interest in them and what they do, and enjoy nothing more than talking about themselves. On the odd occasion where one crosses the line into "no go"areas, they will usually pull you up, but then more than likely blurt out what you wanted to know anyway, often in far more explicit detail than you originally sought.
Deep down I think we all know this to be true. Certainly Mark Zuckerberg did, otherwise he wouldn't have made squillions from establishing Facebook. If humans were inherently reluctant to share things with other people, then why would they publish their tedious daily routines or dirty laundry on the internet where millions of strangers can read it?
Apart from the benefits of discovering friends deepest darkest secrets and unearthing useless facts on the internet, the other benefit of a curious mind is that will generally lead you to greater success than if you just go with the flow and accept things at face value. I have accumulated a lot of acquaintances over the years both in a professional and personal capacity, and it is generally the ones who go the extra mile in terms of listening to others, gathering information and working out how to draw the right conclusions from it who have met with the greatest success. Those I have met who are self-absorbed and think they know everything have usually suffered a come-uppance at some point.
In fact, I would go so far as to say as not having the ability or the inclination to make due enquiry about things is downright dangerous. For example, time and again we see on vapid current affairs programs stories about people who have signed over their life savings to con men when seeking the right advice or even asking a few simple questions would have exposed the crooks for what they were and even better, given these shows one less story to put on air. I think it's terrible that people do this sort of thing to other people, but I would be lying if I said I had any sympathy whatsoever for their victims.
Unfortunately, in an age where we are constantly bombarded with information from numerous media sources, much of it conflicting, humans' ability to concentrate for more than 5 minutes, take in the right information and then probe further to find out what is really happening seems to be alarmingly on the wane. You see evidence of this when newspapers print verbatim press releases from companies or governments instead of delving further to get to the real message behind the spin. You see it where media like Twitter with its pithy soundbytes spring up overnight and prove incredibly successful at the expense of more comprehensive and considered media formats. And, most regrettably, you see it all the time in workplaces nowadays where bosses wilfully ignore the advice of highly qualified and skilled employees in favour of something that appeared that morning in a "Financial Review" headline.
So, people - use that brain that evolution gave you (or for all you Republican presidential candidates, God gave you when he created the world 6000 years ago). Feel free to enquire, probe and do whatever else you need to in order to find out what you want to know. I promise you, the rewards from a personal and professional perspective will far outweigh any backlash you might get from the odd curmudgeon who might resent the intrusion.
As for the cat, I am pretty sure it wasn't curiosity which did it in. Doubtless the cat would have displayed far worse attributes than that over the course of its pampered life, all of which are more likely to have caused its demise than poor old curiosity. And in any case, the cat will be all right in the end, as apparently it has 9 lives.
Now where did THAT expression come from? Must dash, got to get straight on to Wikipedia.
