Human Nature
Remember being a child and how we played the “what’s that” game, while our parents answered us at will?This game when we are children was fun but also the need to understand our environment to gauge what’s safe versus not.
Human evolution helps to ensure humanity survives and is a biological need. Still, the question of curiosity, at least in my case, spreads beyond the physical and is intertwined into knowing the various subjects that catch my attention.
I find myself, and maybe you do this as well, intrigued by topics that I want to understand better. The subjects themselves can be sporadic, but I have this urge to learn more in the end.
This became so evident that it sparked this article questioning curiosity as a whole.
In this post, I explore interest and why there is this ‘need’ to learn more.
Being Curious
As a species, we rely on curiosity to survive. Sure, back hundreds of years ago, curiosity probably cost many human lives.
Do I eat this weird-looking mushroom, or… too late! But that’s how we discovered coffee or chocolate.
I often wondered how we found out you can peel this plant, boil it, make something delicious, and eat it.
Curiosity!
Whether through curiosity or accidental, this is the reason we enjoy many things in our current lives.
The point is, when leveraged correctly, we can use our curious nature to our advantage, and with today’s knowledge, we can do that in a much safer way.
Technology advancements now enable a whole host of curious minds to learn new things like exploring our universe, dealing with a pandemic and so on.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Safety and Survival are among the first two basic needs human species rely heavily on.
The 7 Fundamental Human Needs
Obviously, humans have needs. Dr.Kenneth Aga states we have seven fundamental human needs described with the acronym S.U.C.C.E.S.S. and these needs are as follows:
- Safety/security and survival
- Understanding
- Connection (love) and acceptance
- Contribution/Participation
- Esteem, Identity, Significance
- Self-determination (Autonomy), Freedom, and Justice
- Self-actualization and self-transcendence
Furthermore, these needs are not wants but actually a part of being human. They are intertwined into our DNA. The role of these needs play a role in society through the mechanism of survival and human evolution as a society through generations.
By understanding these physical needs, we can influence people based on these fundamental human needs. This translates to business, to sales, to customers, to negotiation and so on.
Understanding your own fundamental needs is a way for you to uncover a sense of meaning in your life. By knowing what desires satisfy you will lead to a life of purpose over the mundane life we might be living. This is something I have been really contemplating as of late. What makes a life of fulfillment? What makes you excited to work everyday? Perhaps the 7 fundamental human need is the path to achieve true riches in a sense of how we spend our time.
Is curiosity related to astrological signs?
According to a reddit pole, users voted on the most curious astrology signs which resulted in the following… Me, being a sagittarius is no surprise that my sign made the list. Seems like the top three signs, Gemini, Aquarius and Sagittarius are the consist winners of this question, but shift there order depending on which resource you come across.
Furthermore, according to the site Collective World, “Sagittarius is curious about everyone and everything. Sagittarius particularly loves to learn through travel and experiencing different cultures and walks of life. Sagittarius is aware of the broadness of the world and wants to explore every facet of it while they’re alive.”
Being left handed vs right handed
Majority of the population, toughly 80% are right-handed meaning their left side brain dominant. The other 20% or so of left-handed people, which I am in, are right brain dominant. The question that came to mind was, does left vs right handed people ,as it relates to curiosity is there a correlation that drives one more than the other.
In ancient Greece, left-handed people was considered to be linked with special talents, or to be blessed by the Gods. In Middle Ages, being left-handed was seen as having been touched by magic, or even associated with witchcraft and devil worship.
According to a study, they found that a gene called TUBB4B is 2.7 times more likely to contain rare coding variants in left-handed people.
This gene is the blueprint for a microtubule protein that makes up the cytoskeleton, the scaffolding that gives cells their shape. This suggests that microtubules are involved in setting up asymmetries of the brain, like left-hemisphere language dominance but also hand control.
That explains how people gravitate towards left vs right handedness. But could this explain the curious tendency I feel?
According to another study, right-handed people are more fluent with language, vs left-handed people. However, when it comes to faces, bodies and scenes us lefties have the upper hand, pun intended.
Irregardless of which hand you use for most tasks, the curious mind I believe is one shared amongst both types of people. I thought it was interesting to follow this rabbit hole to see if there is conclusive evidence and it seems there is not at least at this point in time.
Was Curiosity Ever Forbidden? Why?
Think about Adam and Eve, Prometheus, or Pandora who all explored curiosity that lead to negative consequences… Its no wonder curiosity was once suppressed in society.
According to the study Curiosity, Forbidden Knowledge, and the Reformation of Natural Philosophy in Early Modern England curiosity was seen a character trait that impeded the pursuit of knowledge.
Seventeenth-century projects for the advancement of learning had to distance themselves from curiosity
The mid-20th-century, psychologist Daniel Berlyne thought that curiosity was driven by the need to achieve an optimal level of arousal, which leads individuals to seek out new and stimulating experiences. Could this be the reason I seek dopamine so often? Exploring curiosity gives me this sense of pleasure and satisfaction by exploring the world around me. There’s so much to know, to find, to explore…
Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning – William Arthur Ward
Does a wandering mind play a part in curiosity?
research paper This particular studies intention was to research if our minds wander when going about our day. A wandering mind might occur while working, jogging, watching TV, playing with our kids and so on. The researchers in this study developed an app that would randomly ping users and ask them question about mood, if there mind wandering at all, and what activity where they doing.
Researchers found that minds wandered 46.9%. Direct quote “In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost”.
A surprising result indicated when are minds wander, we typically are not in a happy state of mind effecting our moods in a negative way. That is interesting, and sometime I do notice, when reading, I tend to drift away and often its not a happy thought.
Perhaps, curiosity is another form of mind wandering. Maybe that new shiny object was a result of our minds wandering away making way for new information for our brains to analyze. The question is can we leverage this wandering mind to our advantage?
Something that comes to mind is meditation. Can we use mediation to let our minds wander enough that we begin to pull out positively, direction, and calmness.
Meditation Effects Curiosity
Meditation has been used for decades and one of its strong points is the ability to control our thoughts and desires from the root. Our brain.
In the context of meditation provides individuals a unique and intimate opportunity to closely examine the nature of the wandering mind by cultivating an awareness of ongoing thought patterns, while simultaneously aiming to cultivate equanimity (evenness of temper or disposition) and compassion toward the content of thoughts, interpretations, and bodily sensations\ https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1745691620917340
The relevance of studying internal experience has garnered ample attention over the last decade. Detailed phenomenological descriptions of the benefits of meditation, as well as the impact of mind-wandering on well-being, have been documented in scholarly Buddhist texts dating back over two thousand years (Santi-deva, 1961). Throughout these ancient writings, an emphasis is placed on how attention becomes habitually prone to mind-wandering, agitation, and vapidity (Wallace, 1999), a mental state referred to as the ‘monkey mind.’
Meditation is a strategy that we can use to help us rain in our thoughts if you will. At the very least, from a benefits standpoint, clarity, emotional well-being, and helping with clinical disorders are worth trying. On a personal note, I will need to do more research on the type of meditation for beginners, and from what I did briefly read, “Mindfulness of Breathing” is most likely where I would start. I will try meditating for 30 days and report back on my thoughts and progress.
In conclusion, curiosity has a role in our everyday lives. From an evolutionary standpoint, curiosity helped us navigate the world, exploring and learning what we could do versus what was dangerous and should be avoided.
Curiosity leads us to creation and problem-solving. Drumming up new ideas lead to several exciting inventions, some successful, others not.
In today’s day in age, curiosity can be perceived and sensory overload. For instance, I am typing this on my laptop, but my cell phone is next to me, and my TV is a few feet away.
I can become easily distracted and think that I am curious about XYZ and simply move away from typing this article. But that wouldn’t be because I am curious, more so distracted by the abundance of choice around me.
Instead, it may be a good idea to remove yourself from the distractions to limit or minimize the chance of our minds wandering.
Perhaps the need to learn is a choice so intertwined in my DNA, and I am okay with that.
The next phase of this journey is to use my curiosity to accomplish instead of leading to overabundance.
Exploring productivity and how to apply techniques like the Pomodoro timer or the Get Stuff Done (GTD) framework can be explored.
One thing I do know is I love to learn. I find it satisfying and rewarding. It’s my brain food and something I will continue to improve on.
Remember to always be curious!
