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. We have, clearly, peace as a great force, as well as material power, communication, education, honesty, and the ideals of many dreamers. We have more forces of this kind to control today than did the ancients. And maybe we are doing it a little bit better than most of them could do. But what we ought to be able to do seems gigantic compared to our confused accomplishments. Why is this? Why can't we conquer ourselves? Because we find that even the greatest forces and abilities don't seem to carry with them any clear instructions on how to use them. As an example, the great accumulation of understanding as to how the physical world behaves only convinces one that this behavior has a kind of meaninglessness about it. The sciences do not directly teach good and bad.
Throughout all the ages, men have been trying to fathom the meaning of life. They realize that if some direction or some meaning could be given to the whole thing, to our actions, then great human forces would be unleashed. So, very many answers have been given to the question of the meaning of it all. But they have all been of different sorts. And the proponents of one idea have looked with horror at the actions of the believers of another—horror because from a disagreeing point of view all the great potentialities of the race were being channeled into a false and confining blind alley. In fact, it is from the history of the enormous monstrosities that have been created by false belief that philosophers have come to realize the fantastic potentialities and wondrous capacities of human beings
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