Curiosity and Chastity

Curiosity and Chastity

Curiosity is not really an extraordinary quality. We are all curious. We are creatures of curiosity. The word “curiosity”—or “curious”—has a root meaning, which is “care”. We care. Practically all that we do is based on “care”. As soon as we awaken in the morning we start “caring”. I care for my teeth, my wearing of clothes, my going to work or school…etc. Each time we turn to something and attend to it—be it a simple making of the coffee or a complex web surf—we “care”. We are curious. Just look at the different directions we have taken in our lives. They have been marked by a certain “care”.

Now, when we say that someone is a curious person we think of a good quality of that person. Curiosity, we say, makes that person search, ask questions, discover things. It is a great advantage to be curious. Remember that science and technology have been motivated a lot by curiosity. So there is such a thing as “scientific” curiosity.

But there can be unhealthy curiosity. For example, someone is curious about how to cheat. So that person researches on strategy to cheat. Take another example, the curiosity in gossiping. When someone gossips, there is a lot of information that is private but made public. There is also information that is false. Curiosity in gossip is so unhealthy because gossip is based on false truths. There is curiosity to engage in things that are not necessary, things deviate us from the path of authentic life. 

So when is curiosity healthy? How do we make it healthy curiosity? Well, believe it or not, but here is one word that can help us answer the question: chastity.

The word chastity has its Latin roots: castus "pure, cut off, separated." Castus is related to castration! When chaste we are “castrated”—we are “cut off”. But why use this word “castration”? It sounds morbid.

Wait…it is not as morbid as we might fear. In chastity we cut off from knowing everything about the lives of others. It is to cut off from the private space of others and we set a space of discretion and space of admitted ignorance. By doing this we allow the other person to have his or her own space. The other person has his or her “owness” that can never be under my scope of knowledge and action. In chastity we cut off from that tendency to infiltrate into the sphere—the sacred sphere—of the other person.
It is actually quite simple. I am not you and you are not me. No matter how hard we try, we can never really replace each other. Your thoughts and feelings are yours. Sure we share in thoughts and feelings. Someone eating unripe green mango may make me salivate. But I am not exactly tasting that taste of the other person. The experience is still his or hers...it "transcends" me. 

This reminds us of Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis 2/16-17 and 18.

Genesis 1 says we can have mastery over everything—but it is a mastery in the likeness of God. There is the “Sabbath distance”—the “mastery over mastery”. Just like God we do not impose absolutely our domination and mastery over others.

Genesis 2/16-18 tells us that “you may…but”. So we can let our desires go freely as much as we want; eat from all the fruit trees. But we recognize the limit; do not take from that one particular tree—the “prohibited tree”. Genesis 2 tells us that our desires must be responsible desires. We need to structure our freedom and give it its proper and respectful dynamism. If we do not do this we “die”. Relationships fall apart. We harm and destroy each other, like Cain killing Abel.

So this is chastity! It is a “castration”—a cutting—of exalted mastery and desire. It is a “trimming” off of the many things we add to our needs and desires and actions. Chastity is the cutting away of the “tralalas”—that word we use to refer to the “non-essentials”. In our modern society we are exposed to so many things—and many of those things are not exactly necessary. There is a kind of “exhibitionism” going on in our societies—the “exhibition” of many things that we do not need. Yet we consume. Social scientists have noted how modern societies are “consumerist”.

Playing the game of exhibitionism and consumerism can be quite “un-chaste”. Our society has become divided with the alienation of other social members and the alienation Nature. Prestige is characterized by “how much a person can buy”. Those who buy more have “more prestige”. Given the intensification of economic production we put so much pressure on the environment, damaging the “carrying capacity” of Nature. Mastery (of Genesis 1) and desire (of Genesis 2) run wild!

So let us connect this with curiosity. When is curiosity healthy? It is healthy when it is chaste. We are curious of the essentials…we “castrate” away from the non-essential. We give direction to our life adventure. We search for depths, meaning, and true happiness.

By way of conclusion, we can ask ourselves how the notions of curiosity and chastity can apply to our style of modernity. We can ask what is it that we say is the “meaning of life” today? We pursue what we think is “meaningful”—and so we are curious. We do exercise this curiosity. Can chastity, in the way we describe it here, have a part in our curiosity?