What if we set ourselves the task of evolving curiously? Does curiosity lead to evolution? Can anything else? If a scientist or a technologist has no curiosity about What would happen if we…, would there be any progress? Is there any progress except by the hope of curiosity? Can there be plodding progress? It is perhaps a matter of degrees of curiosity–from Hey, I wonder what that thing was we bumped into all the way to Let’s go out and see what we can bump into. So, given the choice, and if we want to improve, curiosity seems to be called. Curiosity about what is around us. Curiosity about who is around us, near and far, similar and dissimilar.
Can curiosity be dangerous? Of course. It is assumed to have killed a cat, exactly how is uncertain–are you not curious about that? Still, if we get so curious as to put our hand into the corn picker while it is running, we have taken too much risk, perhaps. But there are other kinds of risk, the risk of our personality and our conceptions of our selves. There is a mystery here–others are different from us, some far different, yet they manage to live and thrive–why? Is there not something we can learn? And does not learning suggest we may change?
It is this danger then that we need to seek out: the danger of changing ourselves. And of changing others. And that others might take offense at our difference which cause change in themselves. There may be wars. There may be progress and evolution. Each are equally possible. We forget that when we let fears stem our courage.
There is somehow in this the foundation that we are all different, and that is good, and that can lead to evolution. What I am seeing is a medley of notes and tunes and flavors and textures that does not seek to puree all into one sound and flavor and texture, but to allow each to shine and be honored and contribute to the good of all. Evolving curiously.
:- Doug.
