The Insatiable Quest to Understand
We have an insatiable need to understand things. It’s a part of our nature. From just about the time we are old enough to talk, one of our favorite questions (if not THE #1 favorite) is “Why?” (If you doubt me, try volunteering at a local preschool for a day.)
Next to our unique stature and peculiar gait, our desire to learn things is probably the most defining of our traits as a species. The degree of this desire and capacity varies, but it is there, nonetheless. We call it intelligence. And we even have ways of measuring it. (Though, there is plenty of controversy over how accurate those measurements are.)
The pursuit of knowledge in humans goes all the way back to the Biblical account of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden. Anyone who has been to church even occasionally is probably familiar with the story. Adam & Eve were free to roam and eat of all the fruit in the garden as they wished, but they were also sternly instructed by God to never eat the fruit from the tree of Knowledge of Good & Evil, or they would surely die.
Of course, if you’re familiar with the story, you know how that turned out. The serpent sweet-talked Eve into trying it, Eve offered some to Adam, they realized they were naked, so they hid from God (which is really quite silly, if you think about it) who found out and kicked them out of the garden so they could no longer eat the tree of Life. The end result is that we all now have to work our tails off in order to provide for ourselves and our families.
As I was reflecting on this story, I realized that the moral is not what we were taught in Sunday school. (I.e. that we should obey God or we will die.) Rather, the story gives us insight into patterns of human behavior that can help inform our very existence. While it may, intuitively, feel a bit more like a parable than an accurate account (after all, it was passed along via word-of-mouth for generations before it was ever written down), that’s kind of beside the point.
Here’s my point…
Our quest to know more often gets us into trouble, which (after no small amount of suffering) we eventually find a way out of it, only to start the cycle over again. This perpetual cycle continues on through the ages, and will likely continue long after we are gone and forgotten. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Ultimately, we as a species HAVE improved our knowledge, understanding, and consequently our existence. While the cycle of ups and downs may seem endless, our knowledge does increase, and it has resulted in an abundance of things that we would hot have had otherwise.
A lot of improvements we just take for granted today were simply not thought of a hundred years ago. And I’m not just talking about developed countries. Worldwide hunger has decreased, lifespans have increased, and opportunities for self-improvement have been literally put in the hands of people in developing countries. While not all advancements are inherently good, there does seem to be a collective goodness that comes out of it.
Even though we know, deep down, that it is impossible to know all there is to know—especially in a single lifetime—we continue to strive to learn, and teach and add to that learning, from generation to generation, so that each generation’s understanding may be added to the next. We do this instinctively (even though we know that to know all will always be just out of reach) if only so things may be a little bit better for our children and grandchildren.
In modern times, we have immortalized knowledge in many forms, from books and journals to technology (through computer programs and apps), and have further leveraged the multiple layers of knowledge exponentially by employing parallel, self-directed technologies in-tandem so that we now have what we call Artificial Intelligence (or A.I.).
While it is good to be cautious when it comes to the consequences of adding to our understanding, it is worth noting that we do eventually learn from our mistakes and actually manage to improve things along the way.
If nothing else, this should give us hope.
So what about when humanity uses that knowledge for evil? I’m sure we can all think of examples in history when adding to our knowledge led to incidents with tragic and horrible ramifications. Some of those things we have justified within our minds as the “lesser of evils.”
Development of nuclear fission in the 1940’s is a good example.
Just a century before, no one could have even conceived of the idea that we could harness a power of such intensity and potential. Of course, our early experiences with this power potential were primarily focused on weaponry (we were at war, after all)—which resulted in the decimation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in the summer of 1945.
That use of nuclear power demonstrated a potential that few had understood up until that moment. Yes, it was a horrific display, but was instrumental in ending the war—which most certainly would have gone on to cost many more lives (though just how many is impossible to say for certain).
I am not here to open that debate again, and certainly not to justify decisions that were made far before my time, but suffice it to say that it stands as a cautionary tale of what we can do when knowledge (the “how”) gets ahead of our understanding (the “why”).
Thankfully our story doesn’t end there. (Though it does still have ups and downs.)
After the war ended, the development of nuclear power shifted its primary focus back from primarily being used as a weapon of war to that of a source of usable power production. Essentially, the idea was to harness the massive energy potential that had been used as a destructive (i.e. evil) force, and turn it into a source of production and productivity (i.e. good).
While many people still have an (understandably) dim view of nuclear energy production and the inherent dangers (think Chernobyl and Fukushima), modern nuclear power really is the safest, most efficient way of producing electricity that we currently have.
Today, electric energy is considered the cleanest, most sustainable and versatile forms of energy that we have available to us. Sure, there are limitations and problematic applications we are still grappling with, but every year that goes by, our understanding of electricity and the potential of electrification grows.
Electricity is the very picture of abundance. The more we understand about it, the better we can harness it, and the more we realize how truly abundant it is. A hundred years ago or so, electrification was still a fairly new development, and so not every household had access to it. In fact, really only the wealthiest homes were fully electrified.
This wealth gap can contribute to a sense of scarcity, even when there is plenty to go around—especially if this plentiful resource is controlled by the wealthy and made to further the greed-fueled exploitative profiteering practices engineered to further societal and political influence.
Actually, in the very early days of electrification, it did look like things were headed that way. It could have been a defining influence on our society had it not been for huge, public electrification and infrastructure projects, such as the Hoover Dam. But that’s a story for another time.
To be fair, electricity has seen its fair share of destructive application. But ultimately, as our understanding increased and its domestic and industrial applications have expanded it has become a perfect example of how adopting the mindset of abundance can spread and help everyone.
