Curiosity is rebellion. Which is exactly why capitalism tries so hard to kill it. Curiosity—the spark that could change everything—gets smothered. And that is no accident.
Schools Without Questions
Schools are built to prepare kids for tests, not to nurture their questions. Standardized tests, written by billion-dollar corporations like Pearson, measure almost everything except the things that matter: creativity, imagination, critical thinking. And yes—curiosity. Students know it. Teachers know it. Still, kids are told to fill in the bubbles and move along.
Albert Einstein saw it clearly: “This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future.”
Test scores get churned into spreadsheets and performance goals. Administrators demand “improvement” while ignoring the real conditions kids face: poverty, crowded classrooms, underfunded schools, inadequate teachers and boring state-mandated content. In the end, curiosity gets pushed aside as though it were a distraction rather than a gift.
Work Without Wonder
The suppression of curiosity doesn’t end at graduation. On the job, most of us are trained to give maximum output with minimum input. Clock in, follow the script, shut up, do your job, clock out. Asking “Why?” or “What if…?” is rarely rewarded. Instead, workplaces incentivize speed and surface answers, not reflection or imagination.
And when the cost of asking the wrong question could be your hours cut, your promotion denied or your job lost, most people learn to swallow their doubts. Capitalism runs smoother when workers are too overworked, too distracted or too afraid to ask the questions that matter.
Media Without Meaning
If schools and jobs train us to not ask questions, then media and technology seal the deal. The so-called information age was supposed to feed curiosity. Instead, what could have been a tool for discovery has been turned into a business model that makes money by keeping us entertained but passive.
Corporations drown us in cheap novelty with shows, ads and headlines—just enough to keep us occupied while we avoid the deeper questions. Today’s platforms are designed to hook our attention, drain our focus and turn it into profit for advertisers. The goal is not to spark deep, genuine curiosity. It’s to extinguish the flame before it becomes dangerous.
The Spark That Remains
But here’s the truth: curiosity never fully dies. It lingers in kids who keep asking “Why?,” in workers who whisper “This doesn’t make sense” and in communities who dare to dream of something better. That spark is still there, waiting to spread.
Curiosity is powerful because it refuses to accept the status quo of “That’s just how things are.” Every breakthrough, every movement for justice, every collective fight for dignity begins with someone daring to ask those forbidden questions: “What if things could be different? What if they could be better?”
Why? Because curiosity is dangerous. To wonder why things are the way they are is the first step toward imagining how they could be different. That’s why students question testing, why workers push back against their bosses, why communities resist ICE raids, why families fight housing insecurity, why Palestinians refuse to give up their land. Curiosity is at the root of every struggle that refuses silence and demands something better.
Seeds of Liberation
Curiosity is rebellion. It’s the seed of every breakthrough and every movement for justice. When we refuse to stop asking questions, we refuse to accept a world built on exploitation and silence. Curiosity is dangerous to those in power, which is exactly why we must fight to keep it alive and keep apathy at bay. Keep asking. Keep wondering. Keep refusing the script. Our curiosity just might be the start of our liberation.
