Why/Curiosity

Okay, I've sort of given up on my plans of uploading photos of my road trip- the photo sizes are a bit massive, Malaysia's internet keeps dying on me on the final 10 photos, and I can't be bothered to scale down the quality so yessss, change of plans. Haha.

Anyway, I recently applied for a position as a writer on a budding online youth magazine and I thought it would only be fair to share my application article here. Enjoy!

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Why/Curiosity

By Ng Chien Young

“Dad, why am I here?” The child inquired earnestly, his eyes gleaming with curiosity. Feeling slightly exasperated by his son’s billionth question of the day, the father managed a smile and curtly replied “I don’t know; why don’t you find out?” The boy sulked and walked away, his arms folded in disappointment.

It took me 15 years to comprehend the significance of my father’s answer. Reminiscing about the conversation, I realized that he could’ve just as easily brushed me off with ‘go away’ or ‘stop disturbing me’. As a child, I was inquisitive to the point of being irksome and could do well with a ‘shut up’ once in a while, but my father did none of that. Instead, ‘why don’t you find out’ changed my life without him realizing it. Despite being annoyed, my dad was sensible enough to continue encouraging my curiosity, and that made all the difference the way I viewed the world.

I truly believe that curiosity is our most prized, and at the same time our most unappreciated possession. Opposable thumbs or high brain-body ratios are useless if not complemented with our carnal desire to seek the unknown. This sentiment has been echoed countless times in the past, most notably by the prominent British author Samuel Johnson, who said ‘curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind.' In spite of all that has been said, curiosity is being suppressed on all fronts and we risk losing an integral component that makes us distinctly human.

Our intelligence is self-evident; we are born with the ability to absorb, process and remember obscene volumes of information, with some sources placing the frontier of our memory banks at 10 terabytes. This is all fine and dandy but one fundamental problem exists; it is limited. Our curiosity however, is not. We are voraciously and insatiably inquisitive by nature, with the philosopher Thomas Hobbes once likening curiosity to being ‘the lust of the mind.’ As such, it is impossible for a person to adequately satisfy the curiosity of another; we simply do not know enough. Unfortunately, society treats the unfamiliar with a degree of contempt; we are rarely prepared to say ‘I don’t know.’ Instead, we sidestep the unknown and discourage further discourse with phrases like ‘this is off topic’, ‘it doesn’t matter why’ or the oh-so-notorious ‘stop asking stupid questions.’ It is indeed paradoxical for humans, with our level of social sophistication and time-accumulated norms, to be culturally incapable of handling something as primitive as our unbounded curiosity.

Curiosity is also being suppressed by the very same education system that is supposed to nourish the next generation of leaders. This trend is especially evident in Malaysia, where rote memory and repetition is all that is required to excel in academics. In a system dominated by exams, rigid curriculums and stringent marking schemes, the human mind is essentially chained by pragmatism. I find nothing more resentful than taking the effort to construct and ask a probing ‘why’ question in class only to be told ‘don’t bother, it’s not in the syllabus’ by my teachers, or to be surrounded by apathetic peers who expect nothing more than zombie-like indifference from everyone else. We have been falsely led to believe that there are things that we do not need to know when in fact the opposite is true; there is no such thing as having too much knowledge.

The last point I would like to make on the suppression of curiosity may strike a raw nerve, but it is a necessary discourse. The issue at hand is none other than religion. In my 20 years of life, I have debated with countless theists who, when presented with an unknown, invoke the God of the Gaps to patch their holes in understanding. In other words; if we do not know, therefore God did it. Taken at face value, such arguments do make sense. In fact, some may even say it’s the most logical answer. However, the God of the Gaps is a superficial argument, providing an answer that is hardly satisfactory for anyone above the age of 5. It is only made acceptable by centuries of religious inoculation and it teaches us to be content with what limited knowledge we have by pacifying our instinctual desire to discover. There is a common reason as to why only 10% of all members in the National Academy of Science are people of faith; or why Isaac Newton struggled to achieve further greatness despite having the ability to do so; or why the Middle East stopped being the premier seat of scientific understanding by 1100, and that reason is religious indoctrination. Thomas Jefferson once said ‘question with boldness even the existence of a God, for if there is one, He must approve of the homage of reason.’ A worthy axiom to live by, if there ever was one.

To sum up this tirade on curiosity, I implore you to embrace your inquisitive self, for there is no question too stupid or answer too menial to be unworthy of your understanding.

‘A man should live if only to satisfy his curiosity’- Yiddish proverb.

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If you've read this far, congratulations! :) Here's a cyber cookie.

As you can probably tell I'm pretty big this issue.... although hypocrisy is a very human attribute, and I sometimes find myself dissing coursemates who ask too many irrelevant medical intricacies in the midst of stressful exam preparations. Oops.