Inquisitiveness
Human beings must value inquisitiveness greatly. It is through this worthy trait that they have learnt so much. Had human beings not wondered about the worldly objects and phenomena around them, they wouldn’t have been able to know and understand them. A human being is, in fact, bestowed with the faculty to wonder. It is in his very nature to be inquisitive. When he is a child, this quality is at its peak. He wonders about almost everything. And, that is why he learns the most during childhood. But, as he grows older, this quality tends to diminish. Then, there comes a time when he almost forgets to wonder. He is filled and conditioned with the ideas, beliefs and thoughts so much by the people and systems around him that he gives away the urge to learn. The worst thing that a person learns as he gets older is the tendency not to question and doubt. Strict beliefs, mostly pertaining to religion, shun him from asking question and direct him to believe blindly. His religiosity is gauged through his tendency to believe without questions. He, in the process, ripens in his habit of believing and, ultimately, forgets doubting, which may well be termed as Intellectual Suicide. Through blind beliefs he basically learns nothing new, but only adds redundant items to his memory. For learning and understanding properly, it is really vital that human beings must keep their quality of inquisitiveness alive. A reliable knowledge can only be achieved through a process of scrutiny. Every piece of learning must start with a doubt. Science, which has achieved so much for human beings, has questions and doubts in its true nature; and that is exactly why it has accumulated such a wide variety of reliable knowledge. There are fears that doubts may turn human beings skeptic and doubtful and they may fail to have firm beliefs and strong commitments. However, it is imperative to comprehend that firm beliefs and commitments may lead to certainties but may lead them well away from the truth. Stephen Batchelor had quoted, The problem with certainty is that it is static; it can do little but endlessly reassert itself. Uncertainty, by contrast, is full of unknowns, possibilities, and risks. Reasserting does not necessarily lead to success and even if it does so, it does not mean the success is a righteous one. Doubts and uncertainties may not lead to success as well but they may drop their possessors somewhere near the truth. Moreover, at the end of the day, through doubts and uncertainties they will be more knowledgeable. Human beings, for higher capabilities to acquire knowledge, must never let their habit of inquisitiveness die. They have to guard it against all such beliefs that are static and negate change beliefs that make them blind and docile acceptors. They have to challenge every piece of knowledge that they get. There is nothing sacred, if it does not have the capability to answer even the simplest of human questions.
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