Curiosity and Attentiveness: How to Avoid the Scroll Hole—and Think More Deeply
How to direct our attention in a world of digital distractions.
Is curiosity a virtue or a vice?
Most of us initially think of curiosity as a good thing. And not without reason. Students and employees are encouraged to be curious about the world and their work. When I was applying to schools or on the job market, some of the most admirable traits that one could have, apparently, were curiosity and passion.
I think what people generally mean by this, especially when talking about curiosity, is that it can be good and helpful to have a desire to learn about new things, especially topics outside your ordinary interests. When learning new subjects at school or new skills on the job that makes a lot of sense.
But ancient and medieval cultures saw another side to curiosity. In these worlds, the trait of curiosity (curiositas) exhibited a more ambiguous character. Thomas Aquinas, for example, explains curiosity in relation to the virtue of temperance, as I’ve discussed in an earlier article on moderation. Surprisingly, for Aquinas, curiosity is an excessive desire for knowledge, something to be avoided.
This is already an interesting observation, since temperance has to do with the right use of pleasure. What do pleasure, curiosity, and knowledge have to do with one another? This is actually a fascinating question. And in many cultures, the desire one has for knowledge, and the pleasure one takes in pursuing it, can exceed the bounds set for humans, leading to destruction and disaster.
Curiosity in Literature: Faust and Ulysses
The character of Faust from German legend is a prime example. There is apparently some historical basis for a Dr. Faust who was a wandering alchemist and magician in the German renaissance. He is perhaps better known, though, as the title character in the plays of Goethe. Faust famously makes a deal with the devil, Mephistopheles, so that he can enjoy the pleasures of the world and unlimited knowledge. Of course, he does so in exchange for his soul. The story, very clearly, draws a connection between knowledge and pleasure.
The Florentine writer Dante also paints a curious portrait of Ulysses, the Latin name for the Greek hero Odysseus, who was famous for his long travels in the ancient world after the fall of Troy. Dante, who did not know Homer’s Odyssey in any detail, composes his own account of Ulysses’ voyage. According to Dante’s version, related in canto 26 of the Inferno, Ulysses, determined to gain knowledge of the world previously unknown to man, sails beyond the Pillars of Hercules, the straits of Gibraltar, and heads deep into unknown waters.
The Greek hero makes it far enough to glimpse the mountain of Purgatory looming in the distance, which Dante sets in the southern hemisphere. But just then his ship succumbs to a whirlpool and the crew and captain are lost, never to return home to the grieving Penelope. The Dante scholar Teodolinda Barolini refers to the ill-fated voyage of Ulysses as “epistemological incontinence.”
Curiosity and the Forbidden Fruit
The account of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman mentioned in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, is recounted in Genesis 1–3. Here there is another link to knowledge, pleasure, and the overstepping of bounds. Alongside the tree of life, another tree is planted in Eden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is placed out of bounds. In ancient near eastern cultures, trees were often symbols of divinity and life. Indeed, the eating of that tree is associated by the Lord (YHWH) with death. So, which tree will the humans taste?
Eve, in conversation with a wily serpent, takes and eats the fruit of the second tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Not only because it was desirable to make one wise, but also because it was good for food and pleasing to the eye. We obviously cannot plumb the depths of this story here. But whether one takes it as scripture or in purely mythological terms, the connection between knowledge, pleasure, and death (physical and spiritual) is on display again. One sees the same parallel in the travels of Ulysses, as he makes his way across the unexplored ocean, and Faust in his quest for knowledge.
Knowledge and the Limits of the Human Condition
But doesn’t this all seem strange? Isn’t the pursuit of knowledge good? On the one hand, to be human is to know. The Greek philosopher Aristotle famously opens his Metaphysics with the line that all men by nature desire to know. The advances made in science, technology, and medicine have improved the lives of billions of people from a material perspective. And the exploration of the world and universe would promise to secure a place for future generations.
And this brings us to the nub of the issue: ancient cultures made a distinction here between good forms of knowledge and problematic ones. They did not always consider the pursuit of knowledge as a good thing. Even in our own day, to gain “experience” of the world is used both as a euphemism for transgression and as a rationale for the pursuit of what is considered commonly off limits.
One need only consider the movie Oppenheimer to see this dialectic at play. The knowledge that leads to the invention of the atom bomb is both the reason for the end of the Second World War and the cause of death to many thousands—and the potential cause of death to human life as we know it in case of nuclear conflict.
Down to Earth: Curiosity in our Daily Lives
Now we, in our daily lives, may not be working on atomic weapons programs, talking to mythological serpents, or exploring the outer bounds of the planet and universe. But we are all in a battle with a desire for knowledge—a daily struggle for the direction of our attention—that can lead to good or ill. Seeing this struggle in mythological terms can help draw out its importance.
The obvious and ordinary application here is to the excessive use of social media and the internet. This is a somewhat ironic observation because I am writing on the internet. (I’m not a luddite by any means, but I think, ideally, these newsletters would be sent by mail and read on paper.)
But the phenomenon of the scroll hole can apply to all sorts of other areas of life. We keep scrolling down, clicking through, and swiping left in all sorts of ways.
The whirlpool that drowns Ulysses, as he is approaching the forbidden mountain, follows the swirling dynamics of the modern-day scroll-hole, whirling us down a path that we find it almost impossible to escape, once in its clutches. The interesting thing here is that neither Ulysses, nor Faust, nor Adam and Eve get what they actually want—wisdom, pleasure, deification. The search for the definitive ends in sorrow and disorientation and a kind of spiritual death.
And neither do we, in searching the highways and byways of the digital world. We do not find anything of deep and satisfying worth. It can be good. It can be useful, but it does not ultimately satisfy in a way that one finds with a walk in the woods, a conversation with a friend, or an afternoon spent with a good book.
There are various ways we can avoid the pull of the scroll hole. Designing our digital environment is one of the easiest ways to do this, to set things up ahead of time so that we are less likely to fall into the hole.
We might create a “white list” of websites to visit in free time so as to avoid the random and endless expanse of the internet. This helps to avoid browsing and scrolling and brings intentionality to our engagement.
We might also use apps like ScreenZen that remind us of how long and in what way we want to use certain apps.
We can curate our social media. One disadvantage of using social media is the echo chamber effect. But if you can actively manage your social media by blocking and unfollowing distracting content, and promoting worthwhile and edifying content, you can avoid getting pulled into the algorithms. This curating takes some time at first but it makes social media more humane.
These actions take little effort in the moment. By designing our digital environment, we can take some control back from the algorithms by creating our own digital pathways and checks that protect our time and attention.
Taming Curiosity: Practicing Studiousness
The alternative to curiosity is not living in ignorance, staying in one’s corner of the world, or rejecting the aims of scientific progress. The opposing virtue, in the mind of Aquinas, is studiousness. This does not signify dull bookishness. The word comes from a Latin root meaning zeal. The pursuit of knowledge can be executed zealously, guided by right reason, for the personal and common good.
One can practice zeal in the pursuit of knowledge, but it will serve the perfection of the human person and society. This measure of the personal and common good is what marks the pursuit of knowledge as beneficial or detrimental. By practicing studiousness we can place our natural desire for knowledge at the service of ourselves and others in ways that are intentional .
Excellent essay... very helpful.