Curiosity

Humans avoid unflattering collective truths because group cohesion is tied to survival. If a group admits something bleak about itself, it risks fracture. Fracture invites conflict, conflict brings instability, and instability threatens resources. People default to whatever story keeps the group intact and keeps them feeling tolerable. This feature is automatic, not reflective, and isn’t a bug.

This is why societies rarely describe themselves honestly. Accuracy threatens the narrative glue. Cohesion beats honesty in evolutionary terms. A tribe with a flattering story holds together. A tribe that sees itself too clearly risks losing the structure that lets it function.

So when a school claims it is teaching curiosity, it is maintaining the story, not practising the virtue. Just as they should.

It still begs the question though, why do societal myths have to be actual lies?

A useful societal myth needs two properties: it must simplify reality, and it must flatter the group. Those two requirements are almost impossible to meet with strict truth. Reality is messy, unkind, and full of contradictions. Group-flattering simplifications rarely survive contact with rational thinking. So the myth drifts away from truth until it lands in lie territory. Not because humans set out to deceive themselves, but because the story only works if it removes the parts that hurt, confuse, or implicate the group.

Take any god fr’instance … an alternative truthful story cannot carry the weight people expect from a god myth. It explains too much and comforts too little.

Final note; a society that confuses comforting language with actual competence eventually gets replaced by one that doesn’t.