The wrong kind of curiosity

Have you ever noticed just how relentless the "news" is in providing us updates on everything and everyone famous? Certainly it is driven by an entertainment culture that voraciously feeds on the latest escapades of sports figures, actors and actresses, and "reality stars". Why do I have to sift through the news to get a picture of the health care debate and at the same time read about Octomom's latest escapades? What interest do I have in Sean Merriman's either virtuous or vicious behavior toward a certain reality tv star? Why do I care about what's happening with Jon and Kate? Why are the Gosselin's even important to talk about? Or maybe even more disturbing... in the end is the story in the newspaper because that's what we deeply care about?

I guess my point is not to say that you are completely evil if you have any interest in these kinds of stories. For sure, they even peak curiosity within me! The first question I have to ask myself is, "Why such curiosity about another's life, even misfortune?" Their life seems so compelling.

Thomas of Aquinas was the master synthesizer and organizer of theology. If you have ever read the Summas (which if you have a mind for theology they are classics) you begin to see just how brilliant he was. But on to Thomas' categorization of the virtues and opposed vices. I was caught off guard a bit with the vice called "curiositas".

What the early Christians identified was that this particular vice was opposed to learning as a good. They saw the development of the mind (and Thomistic thinking is pretty rational) in study as a virtue. It was learning for the sake guiding one toward flourish or live life as it was intended to be lived. This virtue of "studiositas" was connected to greater virtues such as modesty and ultimately temperance and humility. In other words, to be modest is in some way to be temperate and humble in life. That's something for us to think about today!

But the opposing vice connected to "studiositas" was called "curiositas". It was not the curiosity of learning, but curiosity for the sake of simply curiosity. It's the curiosity that is referred to when we say, "Curiosity killed the cat." What fascinated me was that Thomas connects this vice to immodesty. In other words, it was not immodesty in outward appearance but immodesty in the inner person. When one is curious just to know the facts about something, curious just to know what is largely irrelevant, or curious just to be titillated in some way, and none of this makes any appreciable difference in how one lives life, this is immodest. Just as one can be immodest in dress, one can be immodest in the ways that one spends time gathering information about. One can be immodest in terms of what interest them or what one cares about.

When people open themselves up to what is offered as "reality" today, they are actually living in non-reality in the sense that it teaches them very little on the skill of living their own life. While we might end up fascinated with the Gosselins, what appreciable difference does this make in instructing us how live in the present? Do we crave tabloid kind of news because we just have to know the details about someone else's life. Now here's the big question... is my craving, my curiositas related to the fact that I'm bored with my own life that I have to live vicariously through the "exciting" life of another? Is the life that God has offered to me that boring such that I have to find excitement in the life of another? That is the wrong kind of curiosity and is certainly an issue of the heart.