Learn why the world wags and what wags it. T.H. White
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled. Plutarch
Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. Samuel Johnson
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity. Eleanor Roosevelt
Her grandmother had once told her that one of life’s best lessons was not being afraid to look foolish. Melissa Senate
Do stuff. Be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Susan Sontag
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. Carl Sagan
Although it may seem premature to some, one of the tasks as the gut-wrenching US elections approach is to think about their aftermath and what we as a people need to do – need to become – in order for elections to do anything more than widen social divisions and confirm biases that it would be better to challenge.
As is the case in most instances, and as I mentioned last week, elections in and of themselves rarely resolve national problems. Tuesday in the US may result in a bevy of new faces at the head of the table, but there is no guarantee that those faces will be able to “sell” disenfranchised or ignored segments of the population that government truly has their back. And our elections, in and of themselves, certainly don’t guarantee that the US as an entity can restore its role as partner to those seeking a higher level of accountability from their own governments; or that we can once again pledge to become a reliable bearer of our own creeds and commitments.
The US is by no stretch the source of all problems in the world, but we must acknowledge our bad habits of thought and action, some of which have punctuated our 200 + year history while others have recently been added to the national menu. There is no reason to dwell here on our cruel legacies of race or the delusions associated with our alleged “exceptionalism,” except to say that we must continue to interrogate and even “wrestle” with these demons if we are ever to bring them to heel.
But beyond these, there is still something that seems deeply wrong with us – all of us, not just the ones who see fellow-citizens as enemies; not just the ones who pull cookies from a jar that isn’t theirs; not just the ones who vacuum up public wealth and horde it within privately-controlled accounts; not just the ones who are more concerned about the operation of their guns than the health and well-being of their neighbors. Collectively speaking, we don’t listen well to others, we wilfully contain our concerns within our families and other “safe havens,” we are much too comfortable with what we imagine we “know” and much too sensitive and protective regarding any threats we perceive to what are so-often lazy, distracted and self-referential opinions.
In sum, we have become willfully incurious about others, about our planet, about the wonders, many still largely unexamined, that exist below our surfaces and beyond our orbits. We are too keen to project our biases hither and yon, but not to ask the questions that allow others to share, and also to grow, and to invite such questions in return. We “know” so much, apparently, about all sorts of things, including what our political adversaries are thinking and feeling, what they fear and hope for, what impediments, real and imagined, block the path of their fulfillment.
Except we don’t.
In our post-election period, regardless of outcomes, we must find ways to recover our collective curiosity about our world and each other, a thirst for what there is to be known beyond what we claim to know, the larger realities and wonders that exist beyond the opinions and biases we barely comprehend and rarely interrogate, but relentlessly project and defend.
In this time of opinions both aggressive and shallow, a time when science is little understood but widely attacked, the ongoing efforts of scientists to examine, recommend and re-examine on urgent matters such as climate change, pandemics and environmental degradation are held up to ridicule and accused of being unreliable and even corrupted, often by people determined to project their own corruption on to others.
In this regard, there were some interesting rays of hope at the UN this week, including a small “Open Science” event on Thursday that shed some good light on our limited understanding of how science works, the curiosity that lies at its roots, and the “public” benefits that can accrue from its investigations. At this event, the directors of UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights joined forces to remind diplomats – and the rest of us – why science at its best matters so much to the lives we lead and the world we need.
All speakers urged a less “secretive,” more open, transparent and community-engaged scientific community, one prepared to insist on a more democratic distribution of scientific benefits, including on a possible COVID vaccine. Such “honest engagements” as High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet urged, must involve discussions of how science aspires to its best insights; the consulting and accommodating of evidence at all stages of investigation, doubling back on conclusions and findings, continuing to modify and enrich what might otherwise devolve into an artificially-inflexible consensus. It must also be about communicating its “best sense of things” beyond the laboratories and research centers, helping us to see as clearly as possible what needs to be fixed, including in ourselves, and how such might effectively be accomplished. It must be about asking the next question rather than settling for the last answer. And it must be about, as UNESCO DG Audrey Azoulay noted, learning to share research and its benefits better across borders as well to to cultivate the “collective intelligence” that we will need to tap into more regularly –beyond the confines of our laboratories and government offices, beyond the bearers of advanced degrees and owners of large bank holdings — if the problems that will continue to confront us post-election have any good chance of being solved.
Indeed, it is that precisely that “intelligence” from multiple sources and corners of our societies — intelligence that is generous, attentive, evidence-based, inclusive and courageous — which we must learn to tap in larger measure if we are to patch up this leaking ship. As we plot our course forward with the leadership that we in the US will give ourselves on Tuesday, we will need heavy doses of all of these attributes, and then some, if the social ruptures, stereotyping and current levels of distrust are to be effectively combated; indeed if we are to emerge as a nation in more than name only. To this end, we would do well to cease our collective suppression of the “fire” of curiosity, curb our obsessive need for certainty, and invest more of ourselves in what “wags” this world still filled with incredible things to be known and which we are slowly, foolishly, dangerously bringing to its metaphorical knees.
As grateful as I was for the “Open Science” discussion, some of the most inspirational moments at the UN this week actually came from other, if complementary spaces. At a UN-Habitat “World Cities Day” event, for instance, a youth climate activist called for higher levels of “responsible action” on climate change and reminded delegates that hers’ may well be the “last generation that can bring us back from the abyss.” And in the Security Council, the ever-thoughtful Ambassador Singer from the Dominican Republic noted that, even after a decade of horrific, unprecedented conflict in Syria, the refugees and doctors, the prisoners and economically distressed have not given up; and “neither must we.”
And neither will we.
For the sake of the young activists now begging the rest of us to to “consult the science” on climate change, the civilians in war-ravaged regions desperate for provisions and the silencing of guns, the front-line health workers seeking guidance on how best to restore the health of COVID patients and reinforce often-ignored health guidelines, we must persevere. Tuesday’s elections may give those of us in the US (and perhaps others as well) the chance to reboot our cognitive skills and priorities and reset our ethics and relationships. If so, it’s a chance we simply must seize.
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