Impatience

Nobody asked but …

I am extremely impatient for humankind to start using their brains, and consequently the gift of logic, to end behavior such as war, greed, and territoriality.  But now I am reading a book that is making me take a much longer view.  The book is titled This Will Make You Smarter, edited by John Brockman, and described at Amazon.com thusly:

Edge.org presents brilliant, accessible, cutting-edge ideas to improve our decision-making skills and improve our cognitive toolkits, with contributions by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Richard Dawkins, Brian Eno, Steven Pinker, and more. Featuring a foreword by New York Times columnist David Brooks and edited by John Brockman, This Will Make You Smarter presents some of the best wisdom from today’s leading thinkers—to make better thinkers out of the leaders of tomorrow.

Better thinking?  Yes, that is what is needed.  But, it is a long slow process relative to the speed at which things seem to be changing today.  But homo sapiens is still just beyond embryonic in terms of physical time.  The Earth is billions of years old.  The Sun still has many billions of years in its life expectancy.  The history of humans is just a blip on these screens.  Being objective, any species will either (most likely) fail or (seldom) succeed.  Patience is difficult.  Delayed gratification is hard duty.

— Kilgore Forelle