Curiosity is a market-produced deformation, not a universal human trait

Evidence

Heidegger accorded a place of honour to curiosity as an invariant feature in the ‘fallenness’ of human existence, as a fundamental existential-ontological ‘constitution’ within the ‘ontological tendency of everydayness’. Although he clearly saw the function of curiosity as the cement of mass activity, probably expressing a diluted form of collective mimesis of the desire to equal everyone else by knowing everything about them, he nevertheless committed an injustice upon mankind by ascribing curiosity to man as such and virtually making the victim responsible rather than the jail-keeper. Whatever Aristotle knew about the intrinsic desire to see, today visibility is thrust upon everything that can possibly be seen. This is the anthropological sediment of that monopolistic compulsion to handle, to manipulate, to absorb everything, the inability to leave anything beyond itself untouched. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 126

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s goal of honest falsification — here Adorno explicitly rejects the invariant-human-nature answer, forcing us to historicize the mechanism rather than naturalize it. — connects to: Information overload reflects an excess of healthy curiosity — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 542; Curiosity must be protected from both industrial discipline and financial extraction — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 553