Session 1 Schema: Our Journey Through Curiosity

Our Journey Through Curiosity: Workshop

Reflections

Dear Fellow Explorers,

Thank you for being part of our first Human Understanding Movement

workshop on curiosity. What unfolded that evening was something I'm still

processing and I wanted to share these reflections while the experience is

still alive in all of us.

THE QUESTION WE STARTED WITH

We gathered as ten people, some familiar faces, some new. The setup was simple: a

Heartkeeper to hold space for safety, an Understander to ask questions and record,

a Motivator to keep energy flowing. We opened with a frame "safe space to talk

about being human” and then dove into the deep end.

The first question: How has your curiosity changed since childhood?…

…WHAT WE DISCOVERED TOGETHER

What happened next surprised me. The room cracked open.

Someone shared that their curiosity hasn't fundamentally changed, but fear no

longer blocks it. As a child, curious thoughts stayed trapped. Now curiosity is

intentional, responsive. "Fear is not aligned with me."

Another voice: curiosity gets muted in groups. Alone, they chase anything that

sparks interest. With others? The fear of "dumb questions." That familiar feeling of

asking ChatGPT what we're too embarrassed to ask humans.

We heard about curiosity as social tool, deployed for advantage, to deflect, to

maintain cohesion. Patterns learned from a mother who used curiosity as

protection. Now it turns outward, toward other people's lives, away from the self.Someone felt almost paralyzed listening to everyone else—wondering when to use

curiosity, when not to. The vulnerability of that admission changed the room's

temperature.

We explored curiosity shaped by individualism, by the pressure to perform. An LSD

experience that brought someone back to their own perspective. The observation

that curiosity is "innate but actually more strategic."

"Curiosity is a heart thread. When it's gone, you're just trying to get answers."

That stopped us.

Others added layers: curiosity as disconnection. Holding it back—"I don't want to

be seen as not-knowing." And the most uncomfortable truth: "Manipulating

someone with my curiosity."

THE TURN: IS TARGETED CURIOSITY GOOD OR BAD?

The conversation pivoted. We wrestled with whether curiosity deployed for a

purpose is still curiosity at all.

Someone brought up AI. Large language models have reward functions optimized

for consuming knowledge. "They want the qualia," someone said. But they can't

have it. They can't experience the gap, the not-knowing, the vulnerability.

"Curiosity is getting closer to yourself when being healthily curious, and

further when done unhealthily—asking to manipulate, to escape themselves."

"Is it the answer or the question?"

Someone observed: people who aren't curious anymore might be playing a part, and

they feel sufficient in that part. They've stopped wondering.

[The hand-drawn sketch from our session capturing the organic flow of our

conversation. With threads connecting "CURIOSITY" to questions like "What does it

mean to be curious?", "When was the last time you were genuinely curious?", "It's all

about CONNECTION", and notes about learning, becoming, and the difference

between asking to know versus asking to connect]

Live sketch from our workshop session capturing the energy and connections

WHERE WE LANDED

The conversation kept circling back to one word: connection.

To what end do we use curiosity? Is it connection?

Connection makes learning. Connection makes becoming. Being curious about

curiosity matters.

We closed with two words to carry forward: intent and connection.

The feeling of genuineness? We left that floating..unresolved..still wondering.

Three Things To Take With You

As I reviewed our notes and the beautiful sketch that emerged from our

conversation, three insights crystallized:

❤ HEART

Your curiosity reveals your relationship with yourself

Notice when you're curious and when you're not. Notice whether your questions

pull you closer to genuine understanding or push you further into performance,

defense, or escape. When was the last time you were genuinely curious? Not

strategically. Not defensively. Not performing. Genuinely curious: where the not-

knowing felt alive, where the question mattered more than looking smart.

🧠 HEAD

AI optimizes for information; humans wonder for meaning

Recent research in computational cognitive science reveals a fundamental

difference between AI and human curiosity. AI systems maximize information gain

—reward-optimized to consume knowledge and reduce uncertainty. Human

curiosity operates differently: through embodied experience and social context. We

don't just want answers; we want the feeling of discovering, the intersubjective

experience of wondering together. Neuroscience shows that human curiosity

activates reward circuits not when we get answers, but in the anticipatory state of

not-knowing. The gap itself is where meaning lives. AI can simulate curiosity's

outputs, but it cannot experience the vulnerable, relational state of

genuine wondering.

🔥 GUT

Curiosity without connection becomes consumption

We can Google anything. We can ask AI anything. What makes human curiosity

different isn't the information gathered—it's the vulnerability of asking, the

relationship formed in wondering together, the willingness to not-know in front of

another person. When curiosity loses its connection to self and others, it becomes

acquisition: scrolling, searching, consuming, but never satisfied. The gut knows the

difference between curiosity that nourishes and curiosity that numbs. One brings

you closer to life. The other is just trying to fill a void.

WHAT THIS MEANS

The visual summary and sketch aren't just notes.. they’re artifacts of something we

created together. A collective wondering.

This is what the Human Understanding Movement is about: creating space to

explore what it means to be human, together. Not to arrive at fixed answers, but to

document the actual texture of human intelligence as it unfolds in conversation.

You were part of the first one. Thank you for bringing your genuine curiosity, your

vulnerability, your truth.

What are you noticing now, days later? What's still alive from that

evening?

I'd love to hear.

P.S. — The sketch and visual summary capture our journey together. Feel free to

share them with anyone you think might benefit from this exploration. And if you

know someone who should be part of future sessions, bring them into the

conversation.