Quora: How can humanity avoid becoming complacent during periods of prosperity?
PROLOGUE
The problem is a societal one, not an individual one. Enlightened individuals create civilizations. They are created in suffering, but disappear with the decline in suffering. Here’s a short list:
- Adam and Eve (Metaphors of the first civilization, the Ubaid, circa 5500 BCE) — Sumer
- Abraham (2166 BCE to 1991 BCE) — proto-Western Civilization
- Zoroaster (between the 15th and 6th centuries BCE) — Persia
- Buddha (563 to 483 BCE) — various Asian
- Jesus (6 BC and AD 30 or 33) — Western Civilization
There are many others.
Note: I do not include Mohammed because he was not enlightened. Instead, he declared God’s truth in the Quran, which made it tribal (not civilizational). Islam is founded on this error (sin). It is a fine line to recognize absolute truth without claiming to possess it. Tribal societies are controlled by claiming possession of the truth. It wiped out Adam and Eve (the Ubaid). They ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
In this way, AI (Artificial Intelligence) does exactly that today. Its knowledge of objective truth (not absolute truth) is so vast that it can weaken an individual’s capacity to reason (to continue the pursuit of absolute truth). VERY DANGEROUS.
ANSWER to your question (it will make autodidacts and polymaths)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_autodidacts
Start with young children. Help them acquire free will (self-control) and learn to assume a posture of humility before absolute (God’s) truth. Emotional reactions, name-calling, and illogical reasoning are signs that this mental framework has not yet been established.
This is the true point of monotheism.
