Kill Your Curiosity

One's own curiosity can cause so much unneeded discomfort and suffering. Before acting on your curiosity, both the conscious and subconscious, ask if you are putting your own curiosity satiation above someone else's comfort. Then gauge if it is something that needs to or should be satiated, or if it is unnecessary.

An example is a curiosity about the latest drama. You ask someone to expose information about themselves or others, and they clearly show hesitation. curiosity will tell you to persuade and convince them to spill, despite whatever is holding them back, simply because you don't really care about their own hesitations you just want to get the details in order to satiate your curiosity. This information is unnecessary to your life, yet you push.

This is a bad habit to get into, you trick yourself into thinking you need or deserve to have these feelings and desires resolved and are willing to disregard people's privacy and resistance to get it. You do this despite yourself holding the position that you value your privacy and would rather people not discuss details of your life or be pushed to give details you were not willing to initially give.

Another example is curiosity about other possibilities. When in a long-term relationship one may begin to wonder what other options are out there. Are you settling for a subpar relationship when “the one” is out there? But acting on this can make you begin to compare a hypothetical ideal relationship to a very imperfect reality. When this makes you unhappy and soils the once acceptable relationship this ideal relationship isn't there waiting in the real world.

Perhaps you pull a Miley Cyrus and believe you can have the best of both worlds, you secretly cheat on your partner so you can see if the curiosity you felt was an intuition for a valuable end goal, but in doing so you break the trust that is integral to the relationship. No matter the result, this act is unfair to a person you claimed to care for through entering a formal relationship in the first palace. You position yourself for all of the benefits while imposing possible and likely harm on others.

The caveat is, obviously curiosity is important. Curiosity about everything is what drives our actions. The fact that we are never fully satisfied with our lot in life means we strive for more, to maximize our benefits and minimize our costs. Curiosity is simply the pondering of a hypothetical reality in which we have something we don't currently have (information, an answer, something material, etc.). Acting on curiosity, believing that having that something is better than not, is an important step in human action. However, making faulty judgments on the true benefits and costs, and forming habits where we trick ourselves into thinking we need or deserve that certain something is where curiosity should be killed.

When our curiosity satiation is cheap, in cases where we bear little of the cost for it being satisfied and get the benefits. we are most at risk of failing to kill it when we ought to. When it's the secret of a friend of a friend, or when we bear little of the burden, guilt, or shame, that comes upon sober reflection after sharing, then it is cheap. But while those costs and those feelings are not felt by us, we ought to be concerned for the privacy of the feelings of others. If not simply out of empathy and compassion, then our desire for social norms to incentivize this behavior when the time ultimately comes for our own secrets to be the aim of someone else's curiosity.

I often feel dirty or guilty after engaging in curiosity satiation that I know should've been killed. People are very good at knowing what strategies to employ and using them to get the information they desire. Think of all the teenage crushes that have been methodically coerced out of people through careful social manipulations. One could guilt their friend for insulting the trust at the foundation of their relationship by being unwilling to divulge the guarded information. One could sweeten the deal by offering information of their own. There is no end to the methods that can be employed, they must be shaped by the personality of the target and the other contexts. They must adapt to new information, and be shaped in quick time based on cues, emotions, and feedback. It may be that the act of getting information out of someone is the real desire, the greater experience. The secret is the cheap carnival toy, the act of getting it is the game we play.

Gossiping is a form of curiosity that should often be killed. When discussing the leaked intimate details of a celebrity's dating life, or about the ugliness of a friend's chosen attire, we are seeking out information. Arguably the many details of celebrities are largely unimportant in day-to-day life. Perhaps it is the ability to infringe on those of higher social status, in a way to makes feeling below them more tolerable. Perhaps, it is out of admiration, desire, or obsession that one wishes to know the details. Perhaps it is for the social entertainment of discussing the newly acquired "juicy" information with peers. When it comes to the example of the friend's fashion mishap, maybe the benefit is testing if you and others are on the same page regarding social norms, or if you each already don't like the person and will jump at the chance to tear into them, establishing an "in" and an "out" group.

What is clear in these cases is that none of the options happen because of care for the person being talked about. They happen because their information, their secrets, are valuable dopamine sparks, that can be grown further by engaging with them in a social capacity, and their privacy, their well-being, and interests are of none to very little concern. It is the act of using others as a means to an end with no or little regard for them or their feelings.

It is the great personal and psychological benefits of curiosity satiation, gossiping, and secrets, combined with the limited, largely un-felt, costs of gaining such benefits that make acting in line with this ideal so challenging. Yet if one cares for others and hopes to see socially valuable institutions of trust and privacy strengthened they ought to do so.