Suppose That We Are Wise Enough To Learn And Know And Yet Not Wise Enough
To Control Our Learning And Knowledge, So That We Use It To Destroy
Ourselves?
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know and yet not wise enough
to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy
ourselves?
Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better
to know even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before
destruction than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish
lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its
wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
-- Isaac Asimov, The New Hugo Winners
Rosencrantz: We must be borne with an intuition of
mortality. Before we know the words for
it, before we know that there are words,
out we come, bloodied and squalling with
the knowledge that for all the points of
the compass there is but one direction,
and time is it's only measure....
