Ive is quick to look ahead. “Success is the enemy of curiosity,” he says. And for Ive, curiosity has taken on an almost moral or religious quality. “I am terrified and disgusted when people are absolutely without curiosity,” he says. “It’s at the root of so much social dysfunction and conflict…. Part of why I get so furious when people dismiss creativity is that [when] it’s an activity practiced in its most noble and collaborative form, it means a bunch of people who come together in an empathic and selfless way. What I have come to realize is that the process of creating with large groups of people is really hard and is also unbelievably powerful.”
I think all the time about what leads people to be not just incurious, but proudly so. We have a world wherein simply surviving can take up all of your available energy. People need room and rest to be willingly curious. I've always had a curious bent that won't let me rest even when I'm exhausted from work. But it's gotten harder and harder to feel it's worth the energy to learn things for their own sake.
But then there's the inverse, where people who have an easy life, with surplus resources and time to spare, also tend to be incurious. Because they don't need to be? Is a lack of curiosity something that emerges from lack and from luxury? Is there something else within people that trends one way or the other, and if so, why? Then there's also the power structure angle wherein people are ready to be assured that the answers are already known, fundamentalism of all kinds.
... But then why are the people most likely to say "do your own research" on topics also the most likely to believe the least-plausible, conspiratorial explanation? Here I am, winding down too many paths, literally not even realizing until now that I guess I'm illustrating my point.
Anyway. As an extension, I'm too tired to dig any deeper. Especially on big questions there's just literally no answer to.
But collaborative creativity is one of the most beautiful experiences we can have. I don't always agree with what I know about Ive, but I really appreciate this emphasis.