Curiosity Will Save Us
"Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto"
(I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me.)
-Terence, 2nd century BC.
Depending on the traffic, the trip between my apartment in Hawthorne and the children’s home in West L.A. takes 35 minutes to an hour. At least twice a week, we make that journey in my plucky old Hyundai. The kids take turns playing their favorite songs, and I get to hear what they’re into these days.
Heloise has discovered Arctic Monkeys; David loves Macklemore, and like everyone this summer from Salinas to Singapore, they’re fond of Olivia Rodrigo.
One time per trip, I play a song I like. Sometimes it’s an old classic from my childhood (Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man), or a new Americana track I like from Sturgill Simpson. Occasionally, it’s a single Mozart aria.
The children invariably groan when it’s “daddy’s turn.” I insist, against my accommodating nature; I want to push them out of their comfort zone. I want them to appreciate the unfamiliar. And I hope that something I play – be it Prince or Purcell or Pete Seeger – will strike a literal or proverbial chord, and arouse the curiosity to hear more of something new.
Curiosity is a high virtue, and a neglected one. Maybe most importantly, it might be the trait that gets us through these fractured and overheated times.
One of the key components of good manners is a willingness to indulge the passions of others which one does not oneself share. I remember once being seated next to the husband of a relative at a large Christmas dinner, and from salad course to dessert, I heard about his business -- selling, installing and maintaining brakes on corporate jet aircraft. I kept asking questions, first out of politeness, and then (believe me, it was quite a shock to me) out of genuine interest. I didn’t think I cared about brakes or planes, but by the time we launched into the customary post-pudding singing of the Twelve Days of Christmas, I was grateful to have had a window open into a world which I had been previously happy to ignore.
As we head into August, the contempt in this country for the “Other” has hit a level I cannot remember in my lifetime, and you probably can’t in yours. The rage over vaccines and masks is immense, as one side curses the other for refusing to adopt these (to their mind, evidently sensible) precautions, and the other side pushes back, boiling over at the thought of intrusive (and to their minds, potentially dangerous) mandates. America is a frothing mosaic of ever-changing rules, and instant, frantic pushback against those rules.
We have more ability than ever to talk to each other, and more resolve than ever not to do so.
Why reason with anti-vaxxers? Why break bread with socialists? We can’t change their minds, and the stakes are too high for compromise – we must simply push on, to total victory, sparing no expense and holding back nothing to ensure that the other side is marginalized, if not totally destroyed.
All sides suffer from the delusion that if they press on, some happy day will come when all the idiots with whom we are forced to share this nation will die -- or have an epiphany and see we were right all along. Or maybe, we like to think, they’ll just fall silent. The fact that it never quite works that way only seems to harden resolve to keep on being nasty – after all, as every partisan will tell you, if we don’t win, civilization as we know it will cease, and all our dreams for our children will be dashed.
I cannot talk you out of your anger, your frustration, your anxiety, and your sheer bewilderment at the conduct of your fellow Americans. What I can suggest is what I teach my children: when in doubt, be curious about the hobbies, interests, and hopes of those who are different from you.
When we meet someone who holds very different views, we want to interrogate why they believe what they do. We may hope we can change their minds if we can show them the error of their ways, and get them, say, to follow a different doctor on Twitter. That never works well, usually because we don’t have the emotional credibility with the person we’re challenging in order to confront them. They sense an attack, and either counter or withdraw.
What music do other people listen to? What TV shows do they enjoy, and why? What was their favorite movie as a child? How did their family come to this country? Who was their favorite elementary school teacher, and why are they so fondly remembered? Growing up in a family that was keen on manners, we were taught to ask these sorts of questions.
“Sometimes being interested in other people will be dull,” my grandmother conceded, “But so often, you’ll learn something absolutely fascinating. Other people can open your whole world just sitting next to you at the dinner table.”
My children have been raised Jewish. They have also been to Mass at the Cathedral downtown, and to a Pentecostal service at the historically Black West Angeles Church of God in Christ. Heloise has a friend whose very conservative father collects guns, and he has taken my daughter and his son to a range that permits very young shooters. (My daughter liked holding a gun, but is not sure she wishes to keep up the practice.) The parents of David’s best friend are from Guatemala, and they have fed him (the very non-kosher) gallo en chicha while he watched blood-and-bathos soaked telenovelas.
(In Jewish tradition, it is better to break kosher than to be rude to a host.)
I have taken them to the rodeo, and to Professional Bull Riding, to a Black Lives Matter rally, and most recently, to hear a Republican candidate for governor speak.
We have encouraged our children to have all sorts of different experiences partly because we’re eager to have them be well-mannered global citizens, of the sort who are not appalled or repulsed by what other people love to eat, or watch, or listen to, or recreate with. Their mother and I are not just concerned with open-mindedness for its own sake. We want to inculcate curiosity, because we are convinced that curiosity is one of the foundation stones of empathy, and empathy for the Other is the very thing we lack so desperately in this country.
It’s a common misconception that the word “polite” comes from the Greek word for city, polis, and is thus related to words like politics or police. Rather, polite comes from the Latin politus, meaning polished. More on that in a second.
In 2021, politeness gets a bad rap – it is complicity with injustice, it is acquiescence to tyranny, that sort of thing. What’s needed is more confrontation, we are told, even when there’s no evidence that sort of hostility works to transform hearts or minds. Given that shouting at each other isn’t working, perhaps it’s time for a different tack?
Curiosity about how others live and about what they think is at the essence of what it means to be polite. Politeness says, I am interested in you and your life, and I should like to know more. Would you tell me?
Curiosity polishes. It wipes away the tarnish of mistrust. It makes it harder to dismiss others as nothing more than meat sacks stuffed with ignorance, superstition, intolerance and vulgarity. To be curious and open allows us to see and be seen for something more than our convictions about vaccines or voter fraud or trans athletes.
Curiosity does not compel you to give up your most deeply held beliefs. It merely ensures that you will not be enslaved by them, a prisoner to your own certainties, glaring balefully at all those fools whose choices, habits, and convictions seem so perverse.
Terence, the Roman playwright whom I quoted at the top, had been born an African slave. He knew suffering; he was hardly privileged. His life is a reminder that this kind of generous curiosity is not only for the lucky and the few – it is a virtue for everyone. And not just a virtue, even; rather, a survival tactic. We will never get rid of the Other. We must learn to live with them, and it will be so much easier if we let curiosity polish away the rust of our suspicion.
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Sara and Sean Watkins founded the bluegrass group Nickel Creek when they were barely into their teens. The brother-sister duo do an amazing cover of my favorite Jackson Browne song, and it was on repeat while I wrote this post.
Everybody's going somewhere
Riding just as fast as they can ride
I guess they've got a lot to do
Before they can rest assured
Their lives are justified
Pray to God for me baby
He can let me slide