Cultivate Curiosity

Having the library of Alexandria in our pockets has dulled, rather than heightened, our senses. Despite unprecedented access to information, there is a sluggish incuriosity, a giving of the self to the algorithm that feeds us information, rather than allows us to search for it.

Yet curiosity, at its core, is simple: it is observation, attention, and the persistent asking of why, and how. Curiosity is to stand before the Creator in quiet submission that within each question is a universe of more questions.

Cultivating curiosity is as simple as picking up a magazine, coming across an essay on bird migration and wanting to learn more. It is as simple as taking a walk, noticing the sidewalk or street beneath you, the buildings, trees, plant and animal life around you, and wondering how and why it all got there.

It was during my own walks that I began to question the suburban landscape around me: How did these houses get built, why these houses, and why this style, why are the streets so wide? How did this neighborhood come to be? What I initially saw as a monotonous sprawl became a mysterious puzzle, an adventure in understanding how urban planning, architecture, land use, economics and technology touched my life.

2. Develop a Question

Curiosity without direction is mere distraction. For our purposes, curiosity must crystallise into a question. Passive curiosity must be transformed into an active search for truth. For the leisurely researcher, developing a question is fun because it is anti-disciplinary, multidisciplinary and free to flourish without the arcane rules of the academy.

No question is stupid, but most questions are bad, which is not in itself bad. That a question is bad is a delightful part of the process because it allows for thoughts and connections to bloom over time. A bad question is still a starting point.

My own questions about the suburbs were bad — broad, vague, sprawling. My anchor question “how did the suburbs come to be?” became “how did zoning create the modern suburbs?” and from there, “what is the history of zoning?” to “how did the mall create the modern suburbs?” to “why are there parking minimums” and “are the suburbs actually rational?” and on and on and on.

With practice, I learned a simple formula: A good question is specific enough to guide research, but open enough to allow for discovery. Discovery is essential for the blossoming of thoughts because it is where multidisciplinarity, connections and new questions emerge.

3. Gather Evidence

Once a question takes shape, it needs substance to grow. Gathering evidence is where most researchers get stuck.

First, our information ecosystem has created collectors, rather than readers, out of us. Collecting PDFs, books, and lists of books is a uniquely thrilling pleasure but it can hamstring us. The most challenging part of gathering evidence is organising it.

Second, for the leisurely researcher, self-study must include the discipline’s foundational texts. Understanding those texts, and how they’ve shaped what we think the subject, is crucial because it is where a healthy dose of disagreeableness and scepticism can thrive. By understanding the rules that govern a discipline’s thinking, the leisurely researcher is empowered to thoughtfully question them, explore paths conventional wisdom has overlooked, and develop new answers.

Finally, there is always more to read. That’s ok.

4. Develop an Answer

Research has to culminate, even if its culmination is more questions to research. The culmination does not have to be ground-breaking, but it does have to exist. A resolution must materialise in tangible form, as an essay, a video, a social media thread, or even a letter to a friend.

What distinguishes research as leisure from idle browsing is precisely this movement toward creation. However modest, your answer must contribute to the conversation rather than merely consuming or repeating what others have said.

5. Community of Knowledge

Ideally, like the duality of the Quran’s Read, the culmination of research is social, conversational and communal. Fundamental to the art of research as leisure is the creation of formal and informal ‘communities of knowledge’ in which well-researched ideas are communicated in a written form, and presented for wider debate.

Today, these communities are everywhere. Substack, YouTube, Discord, Twitter. They exist in small-scale book clubs, writing circles, and informal discussion groups that meet in living rooms and coffee shops across the world. Through these communities, much like the Bloomsbury Group, the Inklings, Gertrude Stein’s Salon, or the Vienna Circle, we nurture the living networks through which ideas are tested, refined, cross-pollinated, and passed along.

In doing so, we gradually reassemble the pattern of society as a whole that makes higher culture, and civilisation, possible.

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Mariam Mahmoud • The Lost Art of Research as Leisure