The Curious Corner / Issue #14
Of dying curiosity, understanding art, wild playgrounds and obsolete millennials
👋 Welcome to the latest issue of The Curious Corner – a weekly newsletter where I share interesting reads around culture, psychology, work-life balance, books and more!
This issue is going to be a slight departure. Instead of me setting up the reads that follow, I present to you these words by the wonderful Mary Oliver from Upstream -
Every couple of months or maybe once in a while, you pause and do a double-take when you look into the mirror. Are you the same person as you thought? Most of the times, the answer is a mix of yes and no.
But that’s the joy in knowing yourself deeply - you can appreciate the core of who you are and also be mindful of all the changes in you.
If you are reading this issue, I hope you will let the world happen to you. It’s truly the journey of a lifetime.
I will let you discover the beauty of Mary Oliver’s magic with words at your leisure. But for now, here are the reads that kept me interested this week -
As children, almost all of us were SO curious. We just wanted to know - why.. what.. how. Some of us could not shut up because this was an age where we learnt just so much about the world. That’s why it’s sad when you witness people with access to resources and the time and bandwidth at their disposal to not have an ounce of curiosity about the world. And that bothers me. A lot. This read about the death of intellectual curiosity was fabulous in spelling out some of the things going wrong with our current systems of learning and education. And the point about simplicity at the other end of complexity - I will let you get to it yourself and have your aha moment.
Another way schools and universities destroy curiosity is by presenting answers as absolute and certain. The world gets portrait overly simplified and the words “We don’t really know how X works.” are rarely used. Part of this simplification is necessary to teach certain subjects, but the problem is that students do not get taught that the real world is way more complex than these models and that a lot of things are only poorly understood—an especially big problem in social “sciences.”
Do you feel moved when you encounter great art? Me too. Interest in the arts has been a driving force for most of my interests outside of work so when I came across this lovely read on if neuroscience can explain art, I had to include it in this issue. What actually happens to our brain when we experience art? There are some very interesting findings and insights in this piece which I hope you will enjoy. Neuroscience can now increasingly explain more and more of our experience and this unravelling of layers is delightful.
From prehistoric cave paintings to modern conceptualism, where you find human beings you also find art. At the same time, no one has ever been able to give a very good definition of art, to explain in any rigorous and satisfying way what it is that human beings are up to when they make art and when they like art. It is a subject that touches on the strangeness of consciousness, the felt sense of being human that all of us experience every day but that is so resistant to explanation or analysis. Art is thus a kind of Holy Grail to those who seek to explain the murkiest aspects of human consciousness. But it is this very fact — the experiential and intangible nature of art — that would seem to preclude the possibility that science can intrude into the domain of art.
When was the last time you thought about… children’s playgrounds? A lot of our sense of play, adventure and confidence regarding our physicality comes from the places that enabled play and really gave us joy. Joy is what I felt when I read this piece on Adventure Playgrounds (trust me, it’s even better than it sounds). A true space that enables you to design it the way you want, take controlled risks and have a total blast! A great read on how maybe we have made play too ‘safe’ today’s children and what we can do better. Also, a shoutout to Beth Collier’s wonderful newsletter Curious Minds from where this piece is.
During the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1942, the playground in Emdrup was opened based on Sørensen’s ideas, and filled with “junk” – including wood, tires, bricks, rope and old furniture.
The children playing there had the supervision of an adult, an ex-seaman who was also a trained nursery school teacher.
But he was there to support – not lead – the children in play.
The Junk Playground was a place where children could “dream and imagine and make dreams and imagination reality.”
The oldest millennial is 42 years old. This piece of information never fails to take me by surprise. As a fellow millennial, how people younger to me are behaving and shaping society and culture also take me by surprise. And that brings me to today’s bittersweet read on culture - dear millennials, we are getting obsolete!
Are we really the internet era’s dinosaurs? Loved this witty read on it.
“I recognize them on WhatsApp when the word ‘typing’ appears on the screen; two minutes go by and they’re still at it,” says Jaime Villarroel, born in 2002. “What are they going to send me, a letter? When the message finally arrives, there is not a comma or a capital letter out of place; there is no abbreviation. They write a WhatsApp as if it were an e-mail.” For Generation Z, the period at the end of a sentence is an unmistakable sign of having been born in the 20th century.
And finally, a comment on marketing. Why is everything looking like everything else? The same kind of design sensibilities are leading to everything becoming monotonous. Case in point -
While thinking about the book I wanted to include in this issue of the newsletter, my mind went back to the experience of reading a book that so thoroughly changed my views of looking at many common things. How kitchens are designed, how homes are designed, how seatbelts are designed.. take a closer look and you will see how invisible women are to the planning of things critical to our general health and well-being. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez really made me think hard and twice about almost everything and I am glad it did. If you have not, I would urge you to read it right away!
Some quotes to end this issue with -
“Some history-making is intentional; much of it is accidental. People make history when they scale a mountain, ignite a bomb, or refuse to move to the back of the bus. But they also make history by keeping diaries, writing letters, or embroidering initials on linen sheets. History is a conversation and sometimes a shouting match between present and past, though often the voices we most want to hear are barely audible. People make history by passing on gossip, saving old records, and by naming rivers, mountains, and children. Some people leave only their bones, though bones too make a history when someone notices.”
— Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
“Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to work out. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas, in centre stage, and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the sidelines, wondering why we no longer have a part, or want a part, in the whole damn thing. So everybody’s experienced this. When it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling goes from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain, which is really involved with the recognition of defeat.”
- Leonard Cohen
“We give because someone gave to us.
We give because nobody gave to us.
We give because giving has changed us.”
- Alberto Ríos
"I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind."
~ Montaigne, The Essays
“Knowledge sets us free, art sets us free. A great library is freedom.”
— Ursula K Le Guin
Till next week, stay curious!
- Sukhada
Sukhada your are truly gifted and amazing soul, you are our Maria Popova -- Thanks for sharing