As a species, wise, harmonious progress is our mission.

Huius (sapientis) opus unum est de divinis humanisque verum invenire; ab hac numquam recedit religio, pietas, iustitia ...

Sapiens means wise or sapient... Wise means acceptance, not differentiation. Wise means helping, not fighting. Wise means assimilation, not destruction. Wise means harmony and peace, not dissension.

Unless, of course, one chose to join the increasing numbers who had decided they were so deep in despair that there was nothing worse to fear in life. These were men who had finally, and so early, so surprisingly early seen enough of something in their own ives and in the lives around them to convince them of the final futility of efforts of efforts to break the mean monthly cycle of debt and borrowing, borrowing and debt.

Together you are a species that grows in all aspects of life _ separated you are a mere speck of dust in vast ocean of space-time capable of nothing progressive.

This is the best reason to learn history: not in order to predict the future, but to free yourself of the past and imagine alternative destinies. Of course this is not total freedom - we cannot avoid being shaped by the past. But some freedom is better than none.