I'm the kind of person who wants to know everything.
Literally, everything. Everything the greatest minds of humankind have discovered since the dawn of history. Everything we're about to discover. Everything we'll never fully understand, which the best and brightest of our species are starting to wonder about. Space. Physics. Linguistics. Sharks. Physiology. Neurology. Persuasion. Marketing.
Obviously, it's not possible to know everything, I know this, but I can't help how I'm made.
When I learn something new, something that shifts my perspective and helps me see the world differently it makes go a little giddy and want to laugh out loud. And then I want to go and share it with someone else.
If you're reading this, there's a good chance you feel the same. Blessedly, I've come to realise we're not alone. In fact there are millions of people out there just like us, from every continent, background and race. A great book* I finished recently has a name for us - "neophiles." We love new things. We love having our assumptions destroyed, our minds changed, and our paradigms shifted.
One of the earliest lessons we learn in school is that not everyone is like us. Most people are "neophobes" – they enjoy the comfort of familiarity. New ideas that challenge them are upsetting and hurtful. Fnord. They choose to live in social media echo chambers, where they are told over and over that they're right, that what they already believe is correct, only bad people think differently, and when reality intrudes and corrects them they can become distraught.
During my undergraduate degree, studying History at a very reputable University, I was mostly surrounded by neophobes. Students, obviously, and this was before the advent of "Generation Snowflake". They have always indulged in intellectual and political orthodoxy while believing they're rebelling against authority.
Educators can be just as bad. They boast about teaching students to be free thinkers and to question assumptions, but nevertheless lead them into the same old straits, probably without even realising it. I once tried to suggest to an American professor that the American War of Independence wasn't really a revolution, but rather a coup d'état.
His response was just to dismiss the idea out of hand.
Conversely, I met a lot of neophiles when I did my postgrad degree, most of which was distance learning. It turns out that's the mind-set that makes you willing to pay thousands of pounds and spend hundreds of hours locked in a shed reading academic articles and writing essays.
Of course, I have to mention the web. The internet, and more importantly, the dark web, is the Realm of Infinite Fun for a neophile. Not only can we find each other, flocking on social media after the coolest curators of esoterica, but it also gives us more primary sources to learn from than ever. One can scoff at Wikipedia, but it remains a great starting point for educating yourself in almost anything, and the rabbit hole goes pretty deep once you're on Google Scholar or in the depths of a private forum for some obscure special interest.
So, if you're also a neophile. Please find me on twitter @unscarred_j and tell me something cool you learned recently. It's an ill wind that blows no minds.
*Illuminatus! by Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea
