T
TK421
Guest
This month I am focusing on the virtue of studiousness. Below I’ve shared some information.
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Carr argues that by repeatedly practicing the sweeping, but fleeting and superficial scanning of information that electronic formats on the Internet supply, we are actually producing changes in our brain tissues and organization that make prolonged, sustained attention more dififcult. (pg 36)
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[…] it is a very good thing to be open to learning about important things. The vice of curiosity implies a curiosity of things that don’t really matter at the expense of the things that do. St Thomas Aquinas notes that curiosity is derived from cura, meaning “care”, and refers to caring about the wrong type of things, citing St Paul, “wherefore the Apostle says (Rom 13:14): Make no provision (curam) for the flesh in its concupiscences.” St Augustine called it “concupiscence of the eyes” since it is most frequently expressed through seeking things to look at. The virtue of Studiousness, on the contrary, refers to our ability to care about, focus on, and study deeply the kinds of things that do matter, such as matters of the Faith and matters of our neighbors well-being.
Why do I argue that the vice of curiosity is rampant today, conducive to loneliness, and that we need the virtue of studiousness perhaps as never before? Well, our world has become one of increasing emotional and social isolation while, at least in the United States, children are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in unheard of numbers, and some adults are, too. Truly, the twin technological marvels of television and the Internet (via computers and various “smart” devices) have opened us up to unbounded curiosity and fleeting attention like nothing experienced before in human history. (pg 37)
Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains. Carr argues that by repeatedly practicing the sweeping, but fleeting and superficial scanning of information that electronic formats on the Internet supply, we are actually producing changes in our brain tissues and organization that make prolonged, sustained attention more dififcult. (pg 36)
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[…] it is a very good thing to be open to learning about important things. The vice of curiosity implies a curiosity of things that don’t really matter at the expense of the things that do. St Thomas Aquinas notes that curiosity is derived from cura, meaning “care”, and refers to caring about the wrong type of things, citing St Paul, “wherefore the Apostle says (Rom 13:14): Make no provision (curam) for the flesh in its concupiscences.” St Augustine called it “concupiscence of the eyes” since it is most frequently expressed through seeking things to look at. The virtue of Studiousness, on the contrary, refers to our ability to care about, focus on, and study deeply the kinds of things that do matter, such as matters of the Faith and matters of our neighbors well-being.
Why do I argue that the vice of curiosity is rampant today, conducive to loneliness, and that we need the virtue of studiousness perhaps as never before? Well, our world has become one of increasing emotional and social isolation while, at least in the United States, children are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder in unheard of numbers, and some adults are, too. Truly, the twin technological marvels of television and the Internet (via computers and various “smart” devices) have opened us up to unbounded curiosity and fleeting attention like nothing experienced before in human history. (pg 37)
- Excerpts from “The Catholic Guide to Loneliness” by Kevin Vost, PSY.D.
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