F.H. Buckley - Curiosity: And Its Twelve Rules for Life

PRAISE FOR F. H. BUCKLEY

Francis Buckley is the closest thing America has
to a Jonathan Swift.

SPENGLER (David Goldman)

F. H. Buckley is a national treasure.

STEPHEN B. PRESSER

Francis Buckley, though often regarded as a conservative,
is in fact truly radical.
SANFORD LEVINSON

PRAISE FOR The Republic of Virtue

This is Buckley at his colorful, muckraking best
an intelligent, powerful, but depressing argument
laced with humor.

GORDON S. WOOD, Pulitzer Prize winner

PRAISE FOR The Way Back

Frank Buckley marshals tremendous data and insight
in a compelling study.
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA

PRAISE FOR The Once and Future King

His prose explodes with energy.

JAMES CEASAR

AND ITS TWELVE RULES
FOR LIFE

F. H. BUCKLEY

2021 by F. H. Buckley

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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Encounter Books, 900 Broadway, Suite 601,
New York, New York 10003.

First American edition published in 2021 by Encounter Books,
an activity of Encounter for Culture and Education, Inc.,
a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation.

Encounter Books website address: www.encounterbooks.com

Manufactured in the United States and printed on
acid-free paper. The paper used in this publication meets
the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 1992
(R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

FIRST AMERICAN EDITION

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Buckley, F. H. (Francis H.), 1948- author.

Title: Curiosity: and its twelve rules for life / by F. H. Buckley.

Description: New York: Encounter Books, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2020036873 (print) | LCCN 2020036874 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781641771849 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781641771856 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Curiosity. | Risk-taking (Psychology) |
Self-actualization (Psychology)

Classification: LCC BF323.C8 B83 2021 (print) | LCC BF323.C8 (ebook) |
DDC 155.2/32dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036873

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020036874

For Ben and Max

O NCE WE LIVED in a garden. It gave us everything we wanted, and while we were there wed never die. And then, because of Eves curiosity, we were driven from it. We were sent to a new world, one of labor and pain. In it were also condemned to death, and that has made why we live a puzzle to us. But the new world is a garden too. Unlike Eden, things happen here. Its a world of passion and nobility, action and surprise, a world we can shape by the force of our will. Its a world that asks us to look, to search, to learn. Curiosity, which was a fatal sin in Eden, is a necessary virtue in the new world.

Thats why we cant stand being bored. In the first sentence of his Metaphysics, twenty-three hundred years ago, Aristotle said that all men by nature desire to know. Give us a box, and well open it. Hand us a book, and well read it. Tell Eve not to eat of the tree of life, and thats just what shell do. Were curious, and naturally so.

Even the gods on Olympus were curious. You might have expected that theyd be content up there, where they had everything they wanted. But they got bored and came down to see what we were up to. Sometimes theyd mingle in our quarrels, taking sides with one group against the other, Greeks versus Trojans. Sometimes theyd come down and visit with us.

Like the gods, we might think we have everything we want, but we still want to get out and do something. We get bored. In our contentment, theres always an edge of sadness, a sense that something is missing. Were jarred out of our lethargy and look for adventure. Sometimes its found at the end of the street. Sometimes its a continent away.

We can easily fall into a rut, however, and need to be prompted to try new things. Thats the spirit in which I offer the twelve rules of curiosity. Theyre not a road map; theyre not even a set of rules, though it simplifies things to call them that. What theyre not is Jordan Petersons twelve rules for life. Those were guidelines on how to survive and surmount the challenges of life in a bleak and cold climate. Perhaps thats what youd expect from a Canadian writer. How to survive in a forbidding world is the great theme of Canadian literature, according to Margaret Atwood. By contrast, the twelve rules of curiosity are meant for the more spirited and fun-loving people I met when I moved from Canada to the United States. They thought that we live in a world of wonders that offers opportunities for enjoyment and delight and that all we have to do is reach out and grab them.

Survival is not enough. We also need to create, to struggle and not to yield, to be curious about the world and what we owe other people. Every leap of knowledge and every entrepreneurial firm was created by a person who was curious. When you pull all this together, what you have are the rules of curiosity.

Now, more than ever, curiosity matters. In 2020 we learned just how much our health, our happiness, our sanity, depends upon it. Shut in during a pandemic, we yearned to get out, to meet other people, and when that wasnt permitted we languished. Then, during a summer of riots and protests, we were told that there was one great evil and that it was immoral to be curious about anything else. The formerly innocent pleasures of sports and entertainment offered no escape. All this happened during an extraordinarily bitter impeachment and election year which, for all its rancor, had on both sides become mind-numbingly repetitive and boring. That might have worked to Trumps advantage, but for the way in which he, too, had begun to bore us with his thin-skinned animosities.

There is only one way out of the madness, and that is to let our curiosity take us by the hand and lead us.

Follow your curiosity, therefore. It will encourage you to take risks, to be creative, sociable, and entertaining. It will ask you to think about how you should live. Thats the greatest question of all, and one that a book about curiosity must answer.

Rule 1: Dont make rules. Rules are a first cut at how we should behave. Theyre usually worth following, and no one wants to junk the Ten Commandments. But they govern only a small part of our lives. They dont tell us whats wrong about being unkind or mean. Thats where curiosity comes in. Moral heroes, people like the rescuers who sheltered European Jews during the Second World War, or like Bishop Myriel in