When I was working and living in the prison system, I noticed — more than I ever had before — a distinct lack of curiosity amongst both the incarcerated and the incarcerators. Having come from working for decades at a research university, this new baseline of oblivion didn’t necessarily shock me. I did, however, concern me. A lack of curiosity often bespeaks an unwillingness or inability to formulate questions. Without interrogation, the status quo remains unchallenged.
Certainly interrogation is part of the justice system, but it’s not interrogation in the service of larger, progressive transformation. “Where did you get the dope?” “How did you smuggle the phone in here?” “If that’s not your hooch, then whose is it?” : these are, indeed, queries, but ones designed to preserve a particular order in a punitive way. Curiosity-based questions might be posed more in the form of: “Are potential danger and disorder the result of intoxicants themselves or the attempts strictly to control them?” or “To what extent does limiting someone’s ability to communicate result in a better, more moral human being? And if limiting works in that way, should the program be expanded to everyone?” It’s sadly too obvious to the curious that the latter questions are interesting. To the incurious, they are simply destabilizing. But, yes, curiosity is destabilizing. WE can arguing about whether certain questions are destabilizing in the “right” or “wrong” ways, but we can’t have that debate by forestalling curiosity itself.
Once I got out of prison, I was stunned by the general lack of curiosity that I found in the world in general. Certainly part of this is because I have been banished from my curiosity-nurturing and curiosity-demanding world, ironically because I indulged the wrong kind of curiosity in myself. Context does matter. Still, I’m worried about how few people actually ask — or perhaps even formulate — powerful questions. Was this always the case, and I was just blind to it? Or am I witnessing a decline in a social practice that could do us some good?
I have to take a moment to say that I’m creating, for my own purposes, a distinction between what I call “curiosity” and a kind of voyeuristic wonder that I will inartfully term “getting up in everybody’s business.” This is to say that I don’t believe we are being curious when we are keeping up with the Kardashians. Rather, we are getting up in the business of strangers. Getting up in others’ business can be satisfying in some ways, but it’s not necessary. People who use a lot of social media might be legitimately curious in some respects, but as far as I can see post-prison, most social media are more about getting up in people’s business, and its corollary “putting your business out in the street.” This will seem to some a harsh criticism, but I concede that we find a certain satisfaction in both those acts. I’m not hating on. satisfaction; I’m just saying we shouldn’t confuse things. If we are legitimately curious about how the the undeservedly wealthy live, I can think of many ways of asking and answering those kinds of questions than tuning into a show to watch the Kardashians put their business out in the street in an effort to make themselves even more undeservedly wealthy. Moreover, if we pursue that issue in a curious way, we won’t end up mistaking “reality” television, celebrity, and media presence with truth and competence.
Perhaps there are ways to leverage the desire to be up in someone’s business into productive curiosity. The best kinds of biography and autobiography might do this. Serious investigative journalism with serious questions is better than doing this than The Apprentice. Yet I remain post-prison surprised that so many people embrace the latter and despise the former. It indulges our flights of fancy about the rich to watch people grovel before airbrushed oligarchs on television, but it’s not a way to, say, govern a country. The “failing” New York Times might not have the chaché of a failing real estate developer, but the latter counts on us being incurious. He counts on us being gullible, credulous, and questioning only in the ways in which he desires us to be. I suppose that I could have identified this kind of relationship with the lies born of incuriosity before I went to prison. It was always there. But I can’t help but feel that the cult of credulity and obliviousness is far more powerful in 2021 than it was in 2016.
Curiosity is not satisfied by fantasy. Curiosity about the universe isn’t sated by Star Trek, as much as I really like Star Trek. To answer my questions I can use Star Trek as a springboard, but I can’t bring the springboard with me when I dive. As for wanting to know other people’s business, being out a prison is a relief in that other people’s business is the atmosphere one breathes behind bars. In prison it’s difficult not to see everyone’s stuff out in the street. It takes effort to to trade in it. As bad as things are out here, they aren’t as bad as prison. That comparison, however, is the definition of “damning with faint praise.” This is also not to say that the credulous and the oblivious don’t want answers tp same questions. Rather, it’s to say that their preferred answer satiate their potential curiosity the way Pringles satiate hunger. They’re kinda tasty, even a little addictive, but a steady diet of them will leave you lying on the side of the road with scurvy and anemia. Conspiracy theories looks heathy on the surface, but they are the leaves of rhubarb. They aren’t salad-recommended. Conspiracy theory poisons curiosity, but representing illogic and lack of research as logic and research. Conspiracy theory is a fantasy answer, not an actual theory that can be tested.
I’m tempted to say that, out here in the real world, there might be a plurality of people with “limited curiosity,” but I think “limited curiosity” is an oxymoron. The great Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” I take her to mean that both research and curiosity have purpose, not that form lends purpose to curiosity. Limited curiosity would have to have, I suppose, a limited purpose. If the end of curiosity is change of some sort, I don’t believe there is such a thing as limited change. Things either change or they don’t. The status quo is the unchanged, the ever-preserved present. If you are curious about the justice system, you are going to try to change it once you start processing your research about it. Only the incurious could ever say, “It’s fine as it is.” Curiosity is the arch-enemy of unrestrained faith in the present moment. Curiosity is largely incapable of conservation, at least when it comes to ideas. Have you ever noticed which politicians rail against universities? Have you ever wondered why?
Curiosity always has a direct object, so to speak. It always acts on something. That means we have to be open to having something acted upon if we are curious about it. Curiosity cannot take the passive voice. It’s always “I made mistakes,” never “Mistakes were made.” Curiosity means that, if you indulge it, you might be wrong sometimes. It’s never safe. It’s never a sure thing. But if prison has taught me anything, it’s that we live in a society in which we value safe and sure, whether those concepts are fantasies or not, and being right far more than we esteem being wrong but finding a truth. If prison taught be something, it was to sit with discomfort for years on end. To know that I can be steeped daily in what I hate and still not cave in to it. I’m not sure that’s what the judge, the US Attorney, the Congress, or my fellow citizens had in mind when they sent me to prison. But they didn’t have that in mind because they weren’t sufficiently curious. I have no plans to recidivate, but I’ve done enough “research” to know that the system is fatally flawed, that is offers fantasies of safety rather than the thing itself. How many politicians are able to sit with that uncomfortable idea, even though it’s the truth?
Curiosity requires openness because that direct object of curiosity, just might transform itself into a subject and act on the curious in ways they didn’t expect. When that happens, curiosity dies when it is displaced by fear. One of the great ways to satisfy curiosity is to travel. If you wonder what life is like someplace else, go to that other place. Go alone. Go open. Go unafraid. You can be nervous. You can be uncomfortable. You will never satisfy your curiosity, however, if you flee. You might discover that the very thing about which you are curious is something you turn out not to like very much, but curiosity has nothing to do with liking or disliking. Curiosity is the closest thing to neutrality that humans can hope to achieve. A satisfied curiosity may justify judgment, but judgment can never precede curiosity.
The rewards of curiosity are complicated, unsafe, and uncomfortable. They are complexity, uncertainty, and difference. The reward of curiosity is finding out that things are not necessarily as we had imagined them. That is world isn’t as simple or clear-cut as we thought. It’s liberating, but only to those who don’t value a fantasy of liberty, but cherish the truly frightening real thing.