As part of the “younger generation”, we tend to complain and grumble whenever people from older generations would say that young people today are lazier than when they were younger. In response, we would say that we are working just as hard, if not harder thanks to a worsening inflation, a more competitive job market and the need to keep up with new technological developments to avoid falling behind. As much as I hate being called lazy by older people who can sometimes even yell at the clouds, I think that there is a certain amount of truth to this claim. To be more specific, I think that young people today are less curious, which is often perceived as laziness.
Have you ever used ChatGPT while doing your assignments? You come across a question that you do not know how to answer and your immediate next step is to type in the question word for word on ChatGPT and wait until the answer is told to you. Putting my cards on the table, I can admit and say that I have done this. Is this the laziness that older people like to call me out on? Partially, it is laziness and an example of being anti-curious. All is well if you are using ChatGPT or other AI tools to help you study and pick up on what you are learning, but you don’t want it to be the crutches that you rely solely on. If that is the case, then it would be more accurate to say that ChatGPT is the one learning your degree, not you. Being anti-curious about your own degree means a lack of engagement in your university life, in what would be your career in the future as well as in the world that has cultivated the knowledge found in your degree. These generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT simply generate answers based on the data it was trained on, without truly understanding the meaning behind it. In a literal sense, computers plainly can’t think. For humans to think is to resist – something no machine does. When using ChatGPT, try and do your own research after every answer that is given. Look for sources that prove or disprove an answer. By being curious and putting in effort, the proper usage of technological development can be good for personal growth.
Another example of being anti-curious is lacking the habit of pursuing unknown knowledge. When going on TikTok for example, you scroll through your ‘For You’ page, which consists of videos based on an algorithm personally tailored to you. This means that the app looks at your history of the videos that you interact with the most. Occasionally, the app would include a video slightly outside of your interests on your feed. This is partially to gauge your preferences further but also partially to avoid you perceiving the app as being monotonous. Due to the nature of the Internet, an unlimited amount of information is made available to us by just a few taps on the phone screen. This results in the lost art of sitting for a few moments with the unknown territory that the new video brings, thinking about it and looking further into it by way of research. As the British philosopher Bertrand Russell puts it: “A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow processes of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.” Even a mere second of boredom coming from something new on your social media is avoided just by a simple swiping motion on your phone, and so your worldview remains small.
Not only in the digital space, anti-curiosity also manifests in the physical space. As the years progress, there is a general decrease of engaging in intellectual discourse in our daily lives. The fear of severing relationships or receiving backlash is another argument, but there is also the more important factor that these intellectual discourses are not happening because people are just simply disinterested. If the issue does not concern them directly, why even bother to learn and talk about it? Popping their bubbles by way of in-depth conversations means that they would then be open to criticisms or opposing views that would shake up their existing beliefs. To avoid this vulnerability altogether, an air of ‘nonchalance’ is given out and any attempts at having a back-and-forth conversation on pertinent issues are shut down instead of even given a chance at being heard. This situation reminds me of Plato’s allegory of the cave. He asks us to imagine a group of prisoners chained to the floor of a cave ever since they were born. The things that pass by the entrance of the cave behind the prisoners cast shadows on the wall in front of them. All they’ve ever known are the shadows: they assume, naturally, that what they see is the real. One day, the chains of the prisoners are removed. For the first time, they can turn around and see what is behind them. Now they can see that the images that they once took to be real are just the shadows of objects – not the objects themselves. If we don’t feel the fear and throw ourselves out there into having intellectual discussions anyway, how else would we progress closer to knowing more about the truths in the world?
Of course, this article is not meant to generalise everyone as being anti-curious nor does it intend to look down on those who acted in the ‘anti-curious’ ways I’ve described. As a matter of fact, I am also guilty of doing these actions myself. On the contrary, this article is simply meant as a call to make sure that we don’t lose our intrinsic sense of curiosity. Whenever we find ourselves avoiding a chance at learning and engaging with something new, it is best to immediately realise this as a bad habit of wanting convenience. We can all start small. Watch the local news, read the book that you’re dreading, go to events organised by your local community, talk to strangers, and attend lectures by experts in different fields. Curiosity, in fact, does not kill the cat. It can save them.
