On the Journey: Curiosity

The Dec issue of "On the Journey" has arrived! HERE

This month, we explore CURIOSITY. Don't miss it, and don't miss your Journey Group meeting to get together to work with this issue!

Check In, p. 1. How has your month been, and what’s one thing that piqued your curiosity in the last month?

Questions:
1. (From p. 2) How might the word “curiosity” have gotten from the archaic meaning (carefulness, fastidiousness, attention to detail) to its modern meaning? What happened in our culture that would have shifted “curiosity” from the mostly bad sense that it had in Middle English – (prying, meddlesome, nosy), to the more positive associations with the word today? How do you see “curiosity” connected to “care”?

2. (From p. 3): Are there things better not pried into – as Whitman and Davies suggest? Fulton, too, suggests “new is a hooligan.” What is lost by holding everything open to interrogation?

3. (From p. 4) Which quotations resonate with you?

4. What kills curiosity?

5. How curious a person are you? Average? More curious or less curious than average?

6. If you were to become more curious than you are now, would that be advantageous?

7. What are you curious to know about curiosity itself?

8. When is curiosity a bad thing?

9. Suppose you could snap your fingers and double the level of curiosity that humanity in general has about one subject of your choosing. What subject would you choose? Why?

10. Which do is more important: curiosity to arrive at a definite knowledge, or curiosity about questions that can have no final answer?

11. What’s more the more important in human life: knowing, or the process of finding out? (Has Google deprived us of something by making finding out so many answers so easy?)

12. We are curious for knowledge. Are we curious for wisdom? (And what’s the difference between knowledge and wisdom?)

13. Is judging really a bad thing? Is curiosity really a cure?

14. Is there a different question about curiosity that is niggling at you? What is it?

EXERCISE (p. 11): Fill out this eight-question Curiosity self-assessment

The link to the current and all past issues of On the Journey can always be found at cucmatters.org/p/journey-groups.htm