Besides curiosity, is there a personality complex that causes one to want to learn everything?

Question

is there a deeper issue (problem) than curiosity? For example, I have a friend that is a nursing student. He also is proficient at calligraphy, painting, can play instruments (2), was previously good at mathematics and checks out math books to keep up with his past performances. Philosophy is another thing he does. I really wonder what drives him? He is a loner and doesn't want friends, just knowledge satisfies. It's difficult to understand what is the reason for wanting to know everything and I wonder why he doesn't try to stick with one thing and excel.

When I asked him about it, he replied that he "would die" if he couldn't do philosophy or engage in his interests. Nursing was just a way to "make money".

Answer 1

He sounds like an enneagram type 5
I can relate.
It's not a "complex" but an investigator type.
If you google "enneagram type 5" a lot of info will come up.

Answer 2

Great question... quite close to my heart.

I have always believed that people deeply interested in pure sciences seem to be wary of people related activities and are some sort of loners in their own peculiar ways. Quite the same way, those who are interested in meeting and interacting with different people in general, enjoying normal conversations and other community or social activities seem to be wary of deeper study in pure sciences.

Does it mean that there are perhaps two distinct and opposite traits of personality... one people oriented and the other knowledge oriented? I believe this is indeed the case. The people oriented trait leads to our mind enjoying interactions with other minds with all its complexities arising from inconsistencies and uncertainties..... the other trait keeps our mind free from contaminations through the complexities involved in interactions with the other minds and aims to concentrate on more consistent and logical matters relating to pure sciences.

In a very loose way to differentiate them is to say that one is logically oriented and the other psychologically oriented. Generally speaking, the former type of people would be good at pure research and technology whereas the latter may make better managers and politicians.

Answer 3

according to the michael teachings - which i believe to be fairly accurate. People can be divided into 7 broad categories according to what they like to do in life. Each one is given a name to make it easy to remember:

Server - helping people, simple life
warrior - strength and achievement, success
artisan - working with the hands, making things, art
Scholar - study, thining, knowledge
sage - teaching, speaking, performing
priest - meditation, spirituality, healing
king - facilitation, leadership.

so you can see that obviously he is the scholar type. But the other thing here is his obsession with it. There is also another set of 7 categories of people - i won't go into the details, but one of them is interested in self improvement. So they tend to want to learn and work on themselves a lot, but they are not so interested in "success" - to them the self improvement itself is the success.

So i would say he has 2 drives - self improvement and knowledge. And so he gets his satisfaction from the study itself.

In terms of friends the self improvement people are generally interested in friends, but only in really good friends. They tend to be for quality rather than quantity, and if they can't find any good friends they do without rather than bother with the other people who would just be ordinary friends. Probably if he found others who could talk philosophy with him you might find he was into them as friends.

Answer 4

Your friend loves knowledge and has a variety of interests. I don't see what the confusion is exactly.

"Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous mind."
Samuel Johnson

"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
— Albert Einstein

"I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious."
— Albert Einstein

You might find these links of interest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_epistemology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inheritance_of_intelligence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning

Answer 5

security, maybe..