Curiosity enjoys an impeachable reputation, and, to be honest, it barely had to work for it. The only criticism ever levelled at it is the old English saying, “Curiosity killed the cat,” a remark that grandparents have used for centuries to caution those who are nosy, as asking too many questions can land you in trouble. So what did we do with that warning? We blithely ignored it. We tell it to children and then reward them for asking questions for the rest of their lives. Schools encourage curiosity. Startups look for it. Every LinkedIn profile mentions it. Somewhere along the way, we all tacitly agreed that having a desire to know things automatically means that you are a better person.
But does it? Because every family gathering on earth has one: the relative who greets you with a warm hug and then, over dinner, opens your dossier. Followed by an unrelenting catechism of questions like salary? Rent or own? Why no children yet? Every culture has its own version of this person, which tells you that even though the interrogation is universal, only the accent changes. Their defenders would say they are just curious. And they are. That is precisely the problem. Curiosity, it turns out, is not one thing. It has two forms, and only one of these deserves praise.
Let’s begin with the one who does. This kind of curiosity opens up a line of thought. It poses questions to help another person be better understood: what was that like for you? What am I missing? Such curiosity is dangerous for the person asking the question, because an honest reply could rearrange your mental furniture. You might realise, with some chagrin, that your assumptions had been lazy. You might come to the conclusion that a life that you had neatly pigeonholed refuses to stay put. I am aware of this because it has happened to me, and each time it does, it is a humbling experience. The act of asking, listening, and making revisions is a moral exercise, and, like most exercises, I avoid it more than I’d like to concede.
Then there is the other type that does the exact opposite. It’s purely acquisitive. It gathers information not for the sake of understanding, like the neighbour who inquires about your difficulties so she has material to talk about when serving you tea. It is the two hours spent rummaging through a stranger’s photos, all the way back to circa 2014. It is the obsession with true-crime binge-watching that knows the victim’s coffee order but not her favourite book. All of this may be described as curiosity, yet none of it improves anyone, least of all us.
How can you tell the two of them apart when both of them display the same interested expression? I suggest carrying out this simple test and applying it to yourself first. Before you ask the question, ask yourself: who benefits from my knowing this? If the person under scrutiny is the beneficiary, then proceed. But if the one who benefits is yourself, or if it’s your entertainment, or perhaps ranking your life against theirs, then you are not really curious, my friend. You are merely window-shopping through other people’s lives, all looking and none caring.
That test, when carried out properly, reveals the kind of people we choose to be curious about. We forensically dissect a celebrity’s divorce, including examining the court documents and all, yet have we ever asked the man who looks after our building what his name is or what he wanted to be before life happened to him? Genuine curiosity about lives unlike our own is rare because it is real work, whereas gossip offers all the pleasure of knowing with none of the work of understanding.
If any of that stings, I can only say it stung me too to write it, so let’s go a little deeper together. What is the one thing you most want to know that you have no right to ask? Is your appetite for someone else’s misery doing more for you than it does for them? And here is the question I find myself returning to at odd hours: when was the last time any of us asked a question hoping to be refuted?
The last one is the hinge, I think. It’s easy for anyone to be curious about their cherished opinions. The true merit comes from asking a question, even when it makes you uncomfortable. It means asking the relative you always argue with to walk slowly beside you, while you actually listen instead of preparing your comeback. It means letting the answer change something in you; perhaps a certainty, a grudge, or a tidy story about yourself.
One more point, and it’s important. It concerns limits. Even the best curiosity must recognise when it would be trespassing. Grief is one of them, as are another person’s body and the details of someone’s worst day, which belong to them and to no one else. Knowing when not to ask is part of the same virtue as knowing how.
That doesn’t mean the best course of action is to ask nothing, because not asking does its own damage. It’s how whole groups end up reduced to a single headline and how neighbours can live side by side for decades, knowing nothing but rumours. The person who never asks isn’t neutral; he’s simply working from outdated information and passing it off as wisdom.
So where do I come down on this? Curiosity can indeed be a moral virtue, but not automatically and never without any cost. You should ask in order to understand, not in order to collect knowledge. You should ask the people whom no one else questions, and you should ask questions that go against your own convictions, allowing the answers to leave a mark.
It turns out that the old saying was all wrong from the beginning. It was not the curiosity that killed the cat; it was indeed the desire to know everything about people while at the same time refusing to understand any one of them.
So stay curious. Just check whose benefit it’s for before you knock.