Curiosity
One
The Vice of Curiosity
The thirst for truth, and the proper cultivation of the intellect, is the foundation for a healthy soul and to live a good life. It’s the basis of everything working right. If you don’t know the truth, you can’t direct any of the powers of the soul the way they should go.
We use the English word “curiosity” to mean the aptitude for wonder that motivates us to know the truth. That is a good thing. But Thomas Aquinas called this “studiousness” or studiositas.
St. Thomas contrasted this good search for truth, studiousness, with the vice of curiosity, the vice of investigating what does not concern you. It takes you down a rabbit hole and distracts you from the good things you should be doing and truth you should be pursuing.
Imagine a father or mother, wife or husband who can’t stop looking at the news, sports, or social media on their phone and in the process neglects the people, the responsibilities, and the good things all around them. Hard to imagine, I know.
The vice of curiosity makes our soul a mile wide and an inch deep. We know a little about everything but we know nothing and no one well.
Curiosity is the vice where you seek out information, or knowledge, that you have no business looking into. It’s where you spend your time looking for truth, but the wrong truth.
Two
Trivial Truth
The first kind of the vice of curiosity is the kind that wastes your God-given intellect on petty, ridiculously unimportant facts – trivial information. These are things like gossip, celebrities, social media browsing, and sports statistics.
Sure, there may not be anything evil about this kind of information, but come on, don’t you know your mind was made for Truth with a capital T? What are you doing squandering your mind on this kind of vacuous content?
Remember the servant who took his talent and buried it in the ground? Do you remember how upset His master was that the servant hadn’t done anything worthwhile with the time and the resources he’d been given?
So too if we bury our intellect, the gift of reason and rationality, in a lot of silly, aimless scrolling, we’ll be held accountable for not using the Lord’s gift of thought on something more meaningful.
Three
Disedifying Truth
Other information that we spend our time on isn’t just trivial, it’s downright destructive.
We talk about morbid curiosity, that means the curiosity that leads to death, when we enjoy digging into twisted, sick facts that we don’t need to know.
We love scandals, we love to read shocking stories, or watching little specials about sexual depravity or crime and murder shows. We keep up on whatever ugly things have happened recently in the life of the Church or whatever stupid things are happening in the life of politics.
We can’t do anything about any of this, of course. We just like to stay up on all the disfunction that’s happening out in the world. To indulge in this, to spend large chunks of time thinking about or learning about this stuff, is to admit that you enjoy the darkness of the world more than the light of Christ.
St. Paul says to the Christians at Ephesus, “for once you were in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord; walk as children of light – for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true – and try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness” (Eph. 5:8-11).
In other words, if you don’t need to know it and if it’s not good, keep away from a mentality that focuses on knowledge of the ugly, twisted side of things.
Four
Distracting Truth
Some truth is good in itself and important in itself but it’s a distraction for you right here and right now.
So, for instance, there are fascinating theological issues to explore. There are wonderful books filled with deep insights. There are ways you can learn about responding to the sophisticated ideological assaults that are confronting the faith from every angle all around us. But are any of those the things that should be consuming your mental energy right now?
Maybe they are. And that’s great because they’re wonderful things to think about and learn about. But maybe, instead of being an amateur theologian or culture warrior, you need to think more about other things: Where your marriage is headed, what you need to do to get ready for death, what kind of guidance your kids need, whether you’re really fulfilling your obligations at work.
What do you think God wants you to be thinking about, learning about, and understanding more deeply, right now in your particular circumstances, with the obligations that come with your particular state in life?
That’s the truth for you to focus on. Anything that distracts you from attending to that truth should ultimately be treated as a temptation of curiosity.
Five
Daily Meditation – Keeping Your Intellect on Target
Remember in the very first Star Wars movie, toward the end, when they are flying in to destroy the Death Star and one of the pilots keeps repeating, “Stay on Target.” That’s what we’re supposed to be doing with our minds, staying on target, focusing on the truth that’s important. And because of the temptation to curiosity, especially in a world with internet, that’s really hard to do.
Well, the best way to stay on target is to set aside time every day, preferably in the morning, for prayerful meditation
That’s where you spend time in mental prayer, thinking about the two most important, fundamental truths there are: The truth about God and the truth about what we can be doing better to please Him.
If you begin your day that way, dedicating your mind to God and His will for your life, you’ll be giving your day the foundation of truth, and not just any truth, but the truth that matters to you.
That’s the only way to ensure that your life as a whole doesn’t get off track.