When The War Isn’t Over Borders. It’s Over Brains.

Shane Warren
Dec 28, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Jan 6

The Battle for Curiosity

I’ve been noticing something lately, and I’m trying to name it without turning into the cranky guy yelling at clouds.

It’s this… vibe. A kind of social theatre that plays out in comment sections, on talkback, at family dinners, and in workplace kitchens. The place where someone says, “I’m just asking questions,” but it doesn’t feel like a question. It feels like a door gently closing.

And the thing is, it’s not really a war over flags or borders or “values” in the way people pretend it is. It’s a war over curiosity. Over whether we stay open. Over whether we still have the humility to say, “Maybe I don’t know enough about that yet.”

The Shift in Perspective

Somewhere along the line, not knowing stopped being normal and started being… performative. Not in everyone, not all the time. But enough that you can feel it.

You’ll see someone confidently dismiss a whole culture they’ve never experienced personally or studied in any serious way. They might mock a name or word they can’t pronounce. They roll their eyes at history they’ve never been taught properly. Or they treat the act of learning itself as suspicious, like asking for evidence is elitist, and changing your mind is a weakness.

I don’t say that with judgement. I say it with a kind of sadness. Because most people aren’t trying to be anti-intellectual. They are simply trying to feel safe.

When the world is fast and confusing, certainty is comforting. A simple story is soothing. A villain is tidy. And it’s much easier to throw a stone than to sit with the discomfort of: “I might be wrong.”

The Inconvenience of Real Thinking

But here’s the quiet truth: real thinking is inconvenient. Not because it makes you better than anyone but rather because it makes you harder to sell to.

A curious person doesn’t swallow a headline whole. They ask, “Hang on, who benefits from that story?” They notice when something doesn’t add up. They can live with complexity. And that’s a superpower in a world built on emotional shortcuts.

This is why, in times of upheaval and uncertainty, curiosity gets targeted first. Not always by a person with a plan, sometimes just by the culture itself. Because curiosity slows the stampede.

The Role of Education

This is where I tread with care. I want to be careful because it’s easy to sound like I’m putting education on a pedestal. I’m not. Education isn’t virtue. Plenty of educated people can be arrogant, careless, and wrong. We’ve all met them. Some of us have been them on a bad day.

But there’s a difference between “educated” and “curious.” Curiosity is the willingness to learn. To ask better questions. To revise your view when the facts change. To admit you don’t know and not feel ashamed about it. And in that sense, curiosity is not elitist at all. It’s one of the most democratic things we can practice.

The Discomfort of Confidence

This is also why, historically and sadly currently, people often get uncomfortable when minorities – women, 'the gays', people of colour, and more - are visibly educated, outspoken, or intellectually confident.

Not because they are always right. Of course not. But because someone who won’t shrink can unsettle old habits of power.

They don’t need permission to speak. They don’t apologise for being sharp. They don’t need to pretend to be smaller so someone else feels bigger. And for some people, that’s not just confronting; it’s threatening.

So, when a woman, for example, is labelled “arrogant,” it’s worth pausing and asking: Is she arrogant… or is she simply not performing softness to make others comfortable?

When a person of colour is called “emotional,” I often wonder: Are they emotional… or are they just refusing to go numb?

Or perhaps when someone is told they’re “too much,” I keep thinking: Too much for who? Too much for what? Too much compared to whose comfort?

The Importance of Open Dialogue

I will pause for a moment because I don’t want this to turn into a manifesto. I want it to stay human. Because underneath all of this is something simple:

A society can survive disagreement. But it struggles when it starts treating thinking as a threat. When we can’t ask questions without being mocked. When expertise becomes a punchline. When learning is framed as an identity problem rather than a practical skill. We don’t need everyone to become academics. We just need more people to stay open.

A Softer Landing

So, here’s my softer landing because rage burns hot and hope lasts longer:

If you’re feeling exhausted by the noise, don’t out-shout it. Be the calm person who asks one more question. Be the one who says, “That’s interesting, where did you hear that?” Be the one who can admit, “I don’t know,” and then genuinely go and find out.

Curiosity is contagious, but only when it’s offered with warmth. And maybe that’s the real point: Ignorance can be loud. But it isn’t permanent. The mind is stubborn. It will keep reaching for light.

So, please keep learning. Keep asking. Keep your heart open. Not because you’re smarter than anyone, but because you’re human, and being human was never meant to mean “already finished.”

My Rambles with Shane Warren, sometimes a critique, sometimes a confession, always an invitation to think differently. If we are brave enough to strip away the gold-plated gospel and return to the radical root, perhaps we’ll find that the real miracle was never in the mansions or the jets, but in neighbours who refuse to abandon one another. That, to me, is where faith and resilience actually lives.