I always thought it a sad fact when reading history of the times people have faced what to them were insurmountable odds, or lost a worthy fight against disease or an army, whilst all the time their salvation existed. They just didn’t know about it. For example the much lionised Roman Army that never gave up and built an Empire could have been stopped in its tracks with gunpowder, but no one knew it existed. And the plagues that ravished Europe and other countries, the diseases that wiped out Native Americans all could have been cured, but no one had a clue about germs and rudimentary microbiology.
Of course this is an academic exercise in thinking but it becomes humbling when one wonders what it is that we don’t know, that could cure and stem pain and suffering; what it is that we don’t know that could make nuclear weapons obsolete; what it is that we don’t know that could end the plague of guns in the world.
We don’t know. But I guarantee these things exist and that one day if human beings still exist or if an alien finds out rabid history, they will shake their heads and say “If they had only known . . .”
We should gear our entire lives to the discovery of knowledge in the face of our desperate ignorance.