-Why are we going so slow?
-Why would we go faster?
-Why wouldn’t we?
The voices of two minds. One always wants to go, while the other is curious to stay and discover further their presence.
The question of “where?”, is flexible. Where are we (going)? Two distinct questions; yet, perhaps not mutually exclusive. First one -where are we?- wants to understand. It may or may not be controlling. The second-where are we going?- wants to know the unknowable; thus, definitely controlling. Perhaps even slightly obsessive…
Curiosity towards presence and progression…
The second question is distinguished from the first one with an ill-minded feature: Specific information on future events can only bring misery; if they were not already unknowable in the sense of a past event. Thus, craving its knowledge contradicts with the prior intention. There is no progress in knowing, as knowing is -in this case at least- impossible. Only prediction. Hence, fortunetelling. Hence, physics?!
Put it differently, this is exactly what a knowledge and progress oriented mind would argue against: Mysticism! Occasionally manifested as a power that helps to predict/know the future!
Let’s make it more conceptual: Anything that is beyond human reason. Metaphysics; mysticism; speculative realism; noumena; or just any arguable “truthscape” which seems inaccessible by the mind. It is the field of these speculative truths that drives the desire to know the unknown. The claim, however, tends to be that, there is no such thing as unknown, but only lesser research and human effort.
It is this anthropocentric arrogance, that underlies the Enlightenment.
