Ah God! Had I but studied in the days of my foolish youth.

Name	Francois Villon
Life	1431 - 1465
Country	France
Category	Idealism
Wikipedia	>>

Old age is a wonderful part of life, too. Not least if you have some memories, like Augustine, of a period of less "chastity and continence". If you have fallen for youthful temptation all your life, however, you may regret it and, like Villon, wish that you had instead used your reason and studied a bit more in the days of your "foolish youth." Remember what Socrates said: "there is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance". The difference between them is study! What do we know about mankind's foolish youth? How long did it last? When did we start to study in order to know ourselves? Imagine that all of mankind's life is compressed into one year. The year has 365 days. I would say that for 364 of them we were plain foolish. Only on the very last day, and slowly, did we start to ask questions about ourselves. What do I mean? In one form or another, our bipedal forefathers have lived for some four million years. They lived as primitive

animals, as hunters and gatherers or, even, like hyenas and vultures, as scavengers, until ten thousand years ago. About that time we developed agriculture and culture of any serious type. Ten thousand to 4,000,000 is as 1 to 400 or, as these figures surely are very imprecise, let us say, as 1:365. One day of culture against 364 as "savages". Think of it - our bestial, foolish youth lasted until the very last day of the year. Do we think that after 364 days of living in one way, it is easy to live in quite another on new years eve? Or, is that last day also the last of mankind? This doomsday question can now be put with slightly more justification than the Biblical doomsday tellers, such as Daniel and others, had. Because not only have all our cultural changes taken place in one single day, but change is now faster than ever. Gaps between rich and poor are bigger than ever. Weapons are more deadly. Yet still we are driven almost only by our senses, by our emotions, by our blind animal wish to survive. Still we have not seriously started to study and to use that reason, on which Pico della Mirandola - born just when Villon mysteriously disappeared out of life - placed such high hopes.