Curiosity

The argument I want to make, I think, is this: trauma–true trauma, which is a short circuit in the nervous system–comes with a masking element.  It hides, or tends to.  Part of the self splits off, and becomes dormant, and we don’t notice this because it is a primal part of us, not needed directly to function day to day.

But its silence must be bought.  It must be fed.  Evil–taking pleasure in the pain of others–activates this primal instinct which is not that different than that which leads lions to tear apart gazelles and devour them. It is a rage and a satiation. It is compulsive precisely because it does not partake in higher consciousness, in the front cortex.  It is an instinctual hunger.

I have posted that–at least in my understanding of Peter Levine’s contention–neurologically, the circuits activated by curiosity are the opposite of those which store trauma.  To be curious is to engage precisely in an open and free way, versus engaging in a hostile and disconnected way.  Curiosity heals trauma, or at least reduces it.

Logically, then, curiosity is the most important virtue, as it is the virtue most directly opposed to the psycho-neural circuitry which conceives and perpetrates evils of all sorts, from racism to war to rape.

This has been my intuitive, “gut” sense for some time, but I think I can now rationalize it using words and concepts readily available in the public domain.

It is precisely a lack of curiosity which permits generalized anger and all the cognitive distortions it enables.  Put another way, a curious society is a good society.

And in what political form can curiosity most readily be pursued?  Freedom.  This means that morally freedom is necessary for true Goodness, as is an immense tolerance for diversity of all sorts.