Stay Curious
November 10, 2025
In times of division, curiosity can seem like a small act. Yet it’s a practice that reshapes how we see the world. When fear and certainty creep in, curiosity is often the first casualty. We stop asking questions, lose sight of nuance, and begin to see people not as complex human beings but as others..
The slide from curiosity to othering is subtle but dangerous. When we stop wondering about someone’s story, it becomes easier to stereotype, exclude, or dehumanize them. Staying Curious, one of the six Wassmuth Powerful Practices, reminds us that human rights begin not with laws, but with the conviction that every person is worth trying to understand.
To stay curious is to lean toward difference rather than away from it. It asks us to listen before labeling and to ask why instead of who’s right. Curiosity interrupts the Spiral of Injustice by replacing assumption with inquiry and indifference with attention.
History confirms that the practice of curiosity has the power to disrupt injustice. In 1943, when Nazi orders demanded the deportation of Danish Jews, ordinary citizens asked questions instead of obeying blindly: What is happening? What can we do? Their refusal to stop looking for answers led to a nationwide effort that saved nearly all of Denmark’s Jewish population.
Decades later, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission modeled curiosity on a national scale. Structured listening sessions invited survivors and perpetrators to speak, ask, and be asked. The process was imperfect, but it showed that justice requires both judgement and understanding. South Africa’s willingness to face hard truths and learn from them fostered the emergence of a nation striving to heal divisions and build community.
In the early disability rights movement in America, leaders like Judy Heumann challenged institutions not just to comply with laws, but to get curious about how environments exclude. That shift from viewing disability as a problem to seeing accessibility as a shared responsibility transformed policy and culture alike.
These examples remind us that curiosity, while powerful, also requires discernment. It is not naive or limitless. Some people act in bad faith, spreading falsehoods, exploiting divisions, or refusing dialogue. Staying curious does not mean tolerating harm or engaging with those who deny others’ humanity. It means seeking to understand the conditions that allow harmful ideas to take root and using that knowledge to dismantle them. In this sense, curiosity is both compassionate and strategic.
That balance – open yet grounded – is especially vital today. In a world where social media amplifies outrage and algorithms reinforce what we already believe, curiosity becomes a quiet form of resistance. It slows us down long enough to wonder: What might I be missing? Who isn’t being heard? How might this look through someone else’s eyes? In that space of honest questioning, empathy grows – and with it, the capacity for justice.
At the Wassmuth Center, we see staying curious as essential to building a culture of human rights. Curiosity breaks down bias by revealing nuance. It opens the door to creativity and problem solving. Most importantly, it creates the conditions where dignity can thrive because to be curious about another’s experience is to acknowledge that their story matters.
Before injustice takes hold, there is always a moment when someone stops asking questions. To stay curious is to refuse that silence. It is to keep listening, keep learning, and keep seeing one another as fully human. In this time of division, curiosity reconnects us to what unites us: our shared capacity to learn, to change, and to imagine a more just world together.