KNOWLEDGE and CURIOSITY

We live in a society of never satisfied people, in an alienation where we spend and sell our time to pay for what we do not need, discard what we cannot consume, desire what we cannot get, and ignore our real needs and the needs of our neighbors.

Entertainment gives a remedy to this alienation: via median means (hours spent in front of a screen) or via emotional time. Here is the growth of extreme sports, among them motorcycling, giving the necessary shot of adrenaline to forget the lack of meaning in our lives.

Knowing the meaning of our actions looks simple and is often quite difficult to discover or understand; the search for meaning in our actions is the solid base for knowledge, real knowledge of the self and reality.

We are inclined to focus on ourselves as individuals, with a fake sense of freedom undermining the community’s bong, love for humans and nature searching for personal glory, gains and power: insecurity, anxiety, and alienation sit inside us and extend to our social life.

“Arbeit macht frei — Work makes you free” was the phrase appearing at the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. It was a tragic lie. And a lie is the message that is repeated every day to make us obedient slaves of the system: “Success makes you free”.

“Truth makes us free and the key to accessing this truth is a form of knowledge that is never detached from love, a knowledge that is relational, humble and open, concrete and communal, courageous and constructive” It is a knowledge that links mind with the heart approaching reality without prejudice, preconceptions, ideology, taboos. The open mind needs an open heart to be attracted by reality, to remain in dialogue with our neighbours and to be “open and communicative, never unbending and combative. True lovers of culture, in fact, never feel entirely satisfied; they always experience a healthy interior restlessness”

We replace dissatisfaction and alienation with a humble restlessness, fed by healthy curiosity: the desire to expand the limits of our knowledge.

In a recent conference on artificial intelligence, the difference between AI and humans was pinned down to this level: “Humans know that they do not know and curiosity, the search for knowledge, is the engine of intelligence”

Why do we ride a motorcycle? The majority of the world uses two-wheelers as an economical, efficient and ecological tool of transportation. Ride to Work Day expand the call to this kind of use.

For most of us, motorcycling is a sport that allows the application of athletic skills with touring, body exercise with discovery, and the thrill of movement with socializing. In one word a search for joy and happiness. The pursuit of happiness is, in fact, at the base of all our actions and as such it must be qualified not to be vague and irrelevant. Even when biking the search for meaning adds to our joy and the acquisition of knowledge (the search for truth) gives sense to the feeling of freedom we experience on the saddle.

1. We want to know more about ourselves, skills, limits, and attitudes in a demanding sport.
2. We want to know more about the bike and the technique of bike control
3. We want to know more about the system of riding in a specific environment (traffic, circuit, forest, desert)
4. We want to know more about the places we ride across
5. We want to know more about the people we ride with
6. We want to know more about the people we encounter on our rides

Not worth mentioning other “wants” that all belong to the category of a big ego, like the desire to show off by “owning” an expensive bike, the desire to show mastery, the desire to go faster or further than peers, the desire to attract attention and approval, all the desires to compensate for an alienated life.

Mounting the saddle and dropping the clutch to escape the routine, evading the business and family responsibility, “getting away in the wind” is an additional step in the alienation and is a way to obey the ones who want us sleeping, consumers. We need to wake up our curiosity and have a little (or a big) plan for the ride: self-awareness has to start to get new knowledge from any action.

Curiosity moves knowledge: both have a good and a bad side. As Knowledge can become a tool for confusing and dominating people, curiosity can be an interference with privacy and an inquisitive, malicious instrument. We are using “curiosity” with a simple dictionary meaning “a strong desire to know or learn something”. We should aim to cultivate this strong desire in every moment of our life and in any ride we take. A little question “What is the meaning of this ride” can unleash our curiosity before, during and after the event giving all participants and ourselves more joy. The parallel ride-life is here quite evident: finding the meaning of our actions, relationships, and situations builds up knowledge end with knowledge comes wisdom and passion.