From Night Thoughts by Wallace Shawn
To get from where we are now to some less terrifying place will be, if not completely impossible, certainly way beyond difficult, and so it almost goes without saying that the human beings who might carry out such an extraordinary creative task need to be as inspired and insightful and intelligent and deep as members of the species can possibly be. And here is where we must say that civilization itself could come in handy, because some of the things that civilization has learned how to do could prove amazingly useful in the struggle to save the world from some of the things that civilization is now doing.
Because civilization has actually figured out how to store up and preserve human wisdom from over the millennia and has devised remarkable methods for refining and sharpening the individual human mind.
Civilization has come up with many precious objects that can cause the human mind to expand.
but many of these objects have been hoarded in the locked treasure rooms of a tiny number of individuals. And many of the treasures have fallen victim to a fate that is common to things that are kept in locked rooms; no one quite remembers where they are, and after a while they're completely forgotten.
We need to break into those rooms, because we need all the help we can possibly get.
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