Why Curiosity Matters: Overcoming Denial & Embracing Change

FEATURE | HEALTH

Written & illustrated by Tashi Donnelly (she/her) | @tashi_rd | Feature Editor

Curiosity may seem like an odd thing to equate with health. But it is impossible to arrive at a fact without first being curious about the unknown. In 1747, Dr James Lind’s curiosity about the cause of scurvy led him to identify lemon and orange juice as a cure. A discovery that wasn’t believed or put into practice by the British Navy until 1795, almost 50 years later. Regarding mental health, curiosity and the ability to bear the discomfort of not knowing are crucial. A healthy state of mind relies on curiosity as much as your physical body relies on water, or orange juice if you’re taking a long journey by ship in 1753. 

As children, we develop our minds by being endlessly curious about the world. First, we use our senses to absorb new information and later ask countless questions. If you’ve ever spent time with a toddler you will know that “why” is one of their favourite words. Yet as adults, we limit our curiosity to a finite set of subjects or halt it entirely because of the fear of being wrong. Being interested in the potential existence of aliens is all well and good, but don’t turn around and tell me there is no such thing as climate change. Certainly, some people are worse than others when it comes to concrete thinking, but we are all guilty of it. Curiosity must be extended inwardly and outwardly. Reality simply cannot exist in the isolation of a single mind.

So why am I harping on about curiosity? I believe it is a tool we employ to find the truth. It’s more than that though. While the truth is an elusive thing, curiosity is a constant. Many times in human history we have discovered we were wrong about something we collectively believed in for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. If you’d argued bloodletting wouldn’t cure your measles in the 17th century, your doctor would have laughed in your face and probably carted you off to an asylum. We are drawn to certainty. It’s comforting to believe we understand everything. It’s even more comforting to believe someone else has figured it all out for us. There are truths about the world today we can be certain of; the earth is round, and we need oxygen to breathe (a discovery we didn't make until 1774), for example. Science has come a long way. But true science can’t help but be curious and open. The gatekeeping of ‘the truth’ by medical sciences has hindered the health of patients for thousands of years. In the mid-19th century, initial scepticism towards handwashing, despite evidence of its efficacy in preventing infection, led to the continuation of unnecessary deaths. Ignaz Semmelweis, the first Western doctor to discover the correlation between handwashing and lower mortality rates, was laughed out of the Vienna Medical Association. His hygiene discoveries were not widely accepted until years after his death in 1865. Florence Nightingale, a nurse during the Crimean War, improved sanitation, hospital conditions, and care for wounded soldiers, significantly reducing mortality rates. Yet, she was similarly dismissed by the medical community during her lifetime.

Figureheads of the political right are frequently trying to ‘own’ their rivals with the ‘cold, hard truth’. Facts don't care about your feelings, as Ben Shapiro puts it. The idea is that there are truths about the world that are indisputable despite how you feel about them. But this perspective comes from the inability to cope with the discomfort of change. Being wrong doesn’t feel good. Neither does uncertainty. Accepting new ideas requires relinquishing old and familiar ones. A grieving process is involved when we let go of certain beliefs. The undying faith in ‘facts and logic’ is also blind to the reality of our beliefs playing a significant role in our feelings. Denial is a functional method of avoiding discomfort. Especially if the truth about something is grim and hard to swallow. If you believe the climate isn’t warming dangerously fast, you don’t have to endure the fear and dread of climate collapse. Believing sex determines gender alleviates feelings of confusion about what your gender means. This kind of denial affects the health of everyone.  Resistance to accept new facts and truths leads to legislation which further harms people and our planet.

The far-right sees those who ‘just state the facts’ as heroic. The ‘facts’ in question are often dangerous conspiracies that relieve the fear of living in uncertain times. The rise in anti-vaccine rhetoric during the COVID-19 pandemic is one example. While scientists and governments acted as fast as possible to determine the best course of action, spokespersons for the alt-right obstructed these new initiatives. People like Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Infowars founder Alex Jones spent the pandemic spouting ‘the truth about the vaccines’. Both questioned the efficacy and safety of the vaccine and claimed it was part of a broader government agenda to harm or control the population. Often they denied the existence of or downplayed the severity of the virus. These figures were speaking with confidence that scientists couldn’t. We were still in the process of discovering how to manage the pandemic. But in times of uncertainty, a confident-sounding authority is comforting. 

I can greatly sympathise with anyone who is sceptical about the transparency of world governments. In my lifetime, governments have been exposed as incompetent and untrustworthy more than once. As recent as 2021, the Pandora Papers, a leak of 11.9 million documents, detailed how world leaders, politicians, and celebrities use offshore accounts to conceal wealth. The leak revealed how government officials exploit global financial systems for tax evasion and money laundering. However, a curious and open mind will be capable of holding two contradicting truths simultaneously. For example, pharmaceutical companies are corrupt and government legislation allows that, and the COVID-19 vaccine was a clinically tested, necessary part of the solution to a pandemic. Beyond this, the delusional fear of LQBTQ+, and specifically trans, people ‘corrupting’ the youth comes from a rejection of curiosity and the unknown. LGBTQ+ people have always existed. Attempts to study LGBTQ+ issues scientifically have historically been violently obstructed.

In a letter to his brother, the poet John Keats complained about the shortcomings of poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “... – I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason – Coleridge.” The psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion adopted Keat’s term “Negative Capability” and used it to describe a necessary element of psychological health. The capacity to endure the discomfort and uncertainty of not knowing, instead of imposing preconceived certainties and solutions on complex or emotionally challenging situations. 

Questions and curiosity will eventually lead to the truth, even if that truth is that we just don’t know. Some questions don’t have definitive answers. If you search endlessly for the meaning of existence, you’ll drive yourself mad. There is also no point in trying to prove or disprove the existence of God, spirits, ghosts, or otherworldly phenomena. A healthier viewpoint to these uncertainties is to admit we can’t know, and might never be sure. We must become comfortable with the unpleasantness of not knowing. If we could, our physical and mental health would greatly benefit. 

I’ll leave you, reader, with a quote I dearly love:

“Uniformity of thought is increasingly the apparent goal and demand of civilization: education has no use for the fires of rebellion, and even science itself is not above lending an occasional hand at the fire-engine. Still there burns on in most of us a small wild spark. I advise you to nourish it as a precious possession. Do not, however, be under any misapprehension. Really to think for oneself is as strange, difficult, and dangerous as any adventure, and, as the wise ones say, ‘it will do you no good’; but, like virtue - which it does not otherwise greatly resemble - it will be its own reward” -Wilfred Trotter