Curiosity . . . Is insubordination in its purest form.
Vladimir Nabokov
What is the connection between curiosity and dissent?
The U.S. is a curiously incurious society when it comes to curiosity. I am not suggesting that we are not curious about stuff. What I mean is that we are not curious about our own curiosity. Why, for instance, are we interested in learning about the intricacies of, say, the British Royal family, but are less so in understanding the political machinations of our own national leadership? Is William vs Harry any more scintillating than Marge vs Alexandria?
The Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov in his novel Bend Sinister wrote, “Curiosity … is insubordination in its purest form.” This association of curiosity and insubordination resonates with me because my experience bears it out. For instance, I don’t tell the story often, but I once had my voice taken away because of my curiosity. I am not sure I ever got it back entirely.
The Curious Tale of What Happened to My Voice
When I was a kid, I was a pretty good student and would remain so until high school when I purposely dumbed down a bit, which I wrote about in a piece entitled “Get Smart.”
I had a vast and deep pool of curiosity and wanted to absorb everything I possibly could about the world, which, among kids on planet Earth, rendered me utterly unremarkable.
In sixth grade, my teacher, Miss Whatever, got married midway through the year to some luckless soul with low self-esteem and became Mrs Whocares. I’ll strike equilibrium by calling her Ms Whonose.
If I seem contemptuous of her, you don’t know the half of it. After all, she stole my voice.
Like most kids of moderate intelligence, I wanted to learn. For one thing, I loved science. Ms Whoadoodle did not love science although she taught it. She did not love math although she taught that as well. In fact she did not love any of the subjects she taught, nor did she love teaching and learning at all.
All her knowledge was limited to what was in the textbook, which was most disturbing since — all kidding aside — our science book still had a section about the recent launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union and how the U.S. would have to catch up. That was all just fine but for the inconvenient fact that I was reading this book in sixth grade years after the final Apollo moon mission and even after Skylab had been abandoned in space. Nonetheless, Ms Whygeddowdabed was not perturbed at all by our grossly outdated books since her sole goal as a teacher was to assure that her students displayed no more intellectual curiosity than she or her colleagues, which is to say none.
I actually can recall the exact moment of my defeat at the hands of Ms Whazdapoint when I earned her ire once again by doing the one thing that most curious people — and all children — do: asking questions. Here is what happened.
Ms Whachahoozit was struggling to explain the relationship between time zones and the Earth’s rotation. She was clearly baffled. At some point, though, I got it! I got that the Earth was constantly rotating and that the time of day, as measured by the relative position of the sun, would be different in different parts of the world. Cool!
I had an idea! Up in the air went my hand — perhaps for the last time with such enthusiasm — and Ms Whozawatsit called on me with a sigh. She braced herself for an exasperating one. It wasn’t that I was trying to confound her. It was just that confounding her was unavoidable since she was never more than one degree removed from being confounded.
I queried, “Ms Whaddajurc, what if someone went up in a helicopter and hovered in place for 24 hours? Wouldn’t they see the Earth move below them and be able to land exactly where they started the next day?” She glared at me.
In addition to expressing curiosity, I compounded my overstep in that moment by capturing the attention of the other kids and accidentally sparking the little intellectual curiosity they managed to protect and preserve in themselves. That spark needed to be suppressed before their imaginations were fired anew, but it was too late. They started asking questions too.
Ms Whybotheratal sighed again, looking cross and hissing back, “Why would anyone want to be in a helicopter for so long? It would be boring!” She looked rather pleased with herself.
I was flummoxed, stammering something about just wanting to know, and she shut me down right there. Unfortunately she was too late. The other kids were now engaged by my question and started shouting out ways to make it not so boring to hover in a helicopter for 24 hours. Someone suggested sending two people up in the copter to keep each other company, but Ms Whichadoodle replied that then two people would be bored. The kids persisted with their speculations, though. It was turning into a nightmarish group thought experiment! One had the clever idea of sending the two pilots up with board games to keep them stimulated. Everyone loved this proposal, shouting out the names of their favorite games, and a consensus was quickly hammered out.
All this was too much for Ms Whaddatool, and she blew up at the class in general and at me particularly, shaming and humiliating me in front of my peers. It was at that precise moment that my curiosity was finally extinguished. My school and its champion, Ms Whyuhere, had, at long last, won their war of attrition with me. I fell mute, stripped of my voice, which I would not regain in any significant way until grad school when I stopped giving so much of a hooey what teachers thought of me. For the record, I still struggle to speak up in groups even as I force myself to do so regularly.
I tell this tale not to elicit your sympathy for my childhood trauma, which is admittedly mundane, middle class, and entirely first world. My main reason for telling this tale is to show how my classroom question was, for me, just innocent curiosity while to Ms Whocouldluvher that curiosity was open insubordination. In her bony brainpan, I was trying to upstage and humiliate her. Really, I just wanted to imagine and wonder and know, the elements of curiosity, of learning, and — for what it is worth — of childhood.
Curiosity as Insubordination
You see this sort of thing operate in the workplace as well. A simple inquiry is regarded as a form of resistance. I have myself been accused of insubordination on the job for merely asking “why.” Why are we pursuing this course of action? What sort of a mind is so easily challenged and sent into crisis by another’s question? I’m just curious.
The association of curiosity with insubordination is perhaps why our society is so incurious about our own curiosity or its lack. Why we are so willing to let go of and even suppress the natural curiosity of our youth. Why we have designed an education system and a work culture that quash curiosity. Why merely asking in certain settings is tantamount to dissent.
Some flack even coined a proverb about the alleged dangers of curiosity: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Well, dammit, cats have nine lives, so a single death-by-inquiry can’t be all that bad, can it? Besides, the complete saying is, “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” In other words, having your curiosity met is actually invigorating if not reanimating! The fact that we only quote the first part, I think, is most telling.
I urge you as I urge myself. Recapture the shreds of your childhood spirit of inquiry. Dare to wonder even if others think you a little incorrigible. What do you have to lose? I just want to know.
How often do you wonder about your own sense of curiosity? What do we lose by regarding curiosity as insubordination?
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