A case for curiosity
I am not certain whether you've noticed amidst the happenings of the past 18 months, that something has emerged ever so loudly in the hallways of our collective consciousness.
The one thing we can be sure of in a pandemic is our collective fear in whatever form it takes.
Rightly so, we worry about our future. We wonder about "normal"? What life might be like from here? What challenges might we face? Will our children be able to live happy and fulfilling lives? Will the economy crash before it rebuilds?
There are just so many unanswerable questions and yet so much apparent certainty amongst us.
Whether you are an anti-vaxxer, pro-vaxer, an anti-masker. Whether you #StandwithDan or can't stand the sight of him, are anti-lockdown, or believe that all this fuss about a flu is a conspiracy; the one thing that's certain is our belief in certainty, our certainty that has divided us into the deep pockets of alternate resolutions.
What I have really noticed is that our desire for certainty has morphed into the actual delusion of it.
When we have our perceived or imagined certainty taken away at scale we tend to create our own. We tend to dismiss capacities for curiosity and revert to fear-based decision making, a certainty that comes from perception more than it does reality.
This pandemic has very quickly thrust us into various losses of control over choice, strengthening our resolve or desire for such certainty.
The problem is that our perceptions are shaped by our life experiences and expectations, these of course are not facts they are just simply imagined realities.
In May 2020, I ran a webinar talking about how such imposed changes that this pandemic would inflict, would leave us feeling somewhat regressed emotionally. The loss of control and rise of fear would give rise to the same emotions we felt in our early childhood. This is and has been caused by our forced dependence on others, the media, the government, the rest of the community to take care of our best interests, much like the dependence we felt at the earliest moments of our lives.
What has been super loud in this passage of time is the absence of "grey areas" in our thinking, a polaric and almost instant migration to black or white, a spoken certainty that somehow exists in the most uncertain time of our lifetimes. I’m still waiting for the playful curiosity of our pre-school development to reemerge in our thinking and I'm worried we have blown right past it.
Ironically my day job is about creating more certainty, about forecasting social impacts and outcomes. In this time we have seriously noticed the convenient truths etched from these adopted delusions.
We are super busy right now, why, because of lockdowns. Effectively what we have noticed is that when this pandemic slaps us across the face with restrictions, we suddenly regain our awareness of human struggle and suddenly social issues are more important.
An absence of lockdowns is actually bad for business, as the collective storytelling chooses to believe in something entirely different. I believe that the impacts of this pandemic are far-reaching and will very likely continue for a long time to come. This of course is an inconvenient truth, we choose not to believe in. But since I get paid to find potential problems, my perspective is also tainted as it’s on the lookout for emergent issues.
Although lots of things have surprised me during this time. Who knew that panic buying would be a result of selfishness and not scarcity? Who knew that politics would take priority over people, that we would end up pawns of the bi-partisan divide, instead of being truly and authentically cared for as a nation. I had much higher hopes on both fronts. (idealistic perhaps)
What I really wanted to bring to your attention here though is that fear, uncertainty and convenient truths are starving us of curiosity. A curiosity that wasn't really getting a lot of “game time” before the pandemic began and has now been reverted to the “injury list” of our minds.
When fear is in the driver's seat, we regress, we adopt beliefs and behaviours from the past and we clutch on to those beliefs with all our might, at our own detriment.
A lack of curiosity is costing us. I don't believe I have ever before heard so many voices of absolute resolve bellowing from the toxicity of our mainstream and social media, and the subsequent “concrete” perspectives it gives rise to.
I don't know about you, but I am astounded at how many people know the answer to managing this unknown, without qualification or questioning.
Curiosity needs to make a comeback, and fast before our minds come to a complete halt. Curiosity is the birthplace of our empathy, creativity and progress, we need it to evolve. It is the engine room of all human development and growth and it deserves a spot on the “starting lineup” of our thinking for all of our futures.
Let's be honest, if you are wondering what we can control here, it's our thinking, something I’d like us to take more command of than we have been recently.
Much love,
Scott
