” …and high in the Arctic on the roof of the world, in a place of mountains and ice, the ice has slowly turned to water.  We often believe that our own time is at last modern, and we are the last men who can act with the authority and weight of the generations that came before us.  The wisdom of all human history gathered together to inform our decisions.  Yet after a century of knowledge we have arrived here and now, once again cursed by resource and conflict and unable to change. 

In another century, whatever happens to the world we know, those who look back will marvel at us- for better or worse.  Our actions and decisions will be studied for years as they attempt to understand us better.

Those modern men from the past with a vague intellect and a comfortable heart.

Yet the finer they were, the frailer;

and the cleverer, the more wrong-headed.”

-Temujin Doran

From brainpickings