If you knew what you know – A Letter to Socrates

Dear Socrates,

I know that you knew already back then, that you and your fellow men apparently knew nothing. But what you don’t know, because you didn’t live to see it, is that this quotation has contributed actively to your popularity, which still continues until today.

Only today I had to read your quote again in a masterclass and I can’t remember how many times I have read and heard it. Ah, yes, a masterclass is a kind of short lecture on a specific topic to give participants insights into promising approaches in different business areas. Just so you know…

Of course, you’re right in a way, because no one knows enough about this and other worlds to stand out from all that and change the world so fundamentally that every existing worldview is shattered. However, in the meantime this sounds really melodramatic, absolutely unrealistical.

In the meantime, many bright minds have become old fellows and you would be surprised how today’s world looks like and how fast it moves.
I mean that in the figurative sense, not scientifically in relation to the real earth rotation. A Frenchman has proved that also long ago, but that is another part of history…

Knowledge of mankind is still a creeping process, whereby we have gone over in the course of the time from creeping to walking and we are on the best way to change from this into the jogging mode and sometime into a running mode.

Everything has become very fast-paced, it is difficult to remember original values.
Knowledge is shared, spread and also applied very quickly. Fortunately, there is no more persecution or condemnation, at most disrespect and rejection, but this is more due to social than scientific reasons.

However, this will also become superfluous by itself, because those who are left behind will simply be overtaken and left behind by progress.
Many decades and centuries have passed, people have gone through a lot, but also learned from many mistakes and this learning process continues until now. Of course, there are always dramatic, almost shocking outliers, but well, People remain People, and they sadly are not flawless.

I would like you to know, however, that people now know “something” more than nothing. At least I would not let your quotation of that time stand any more in such a plain way, because otherwise that would mean that we have not really become cleverer in those many centuries.
And that would extrodinarily disappoint you as a timeless teacher/mentor/philosopher.

Mankind already knows very much, even if this knowledge just as the poor decency was distributed differently among the people.
And if they still do not know what they need to know, then they know where to start searching for it.

Today, in fact, there is the Web3 and a multitude of search engines that quench most people’s thirst for knowledge and even sometimes overwhelm them with slightly too much knowledge.
There are even companies that sell products and services through it, and yet other companies that show these companies exactly how to sell it. Whole trade fairs are organized for this purpose, imagine that.

Your market screaming of former times for the clearing-up of the fellow men has become redundant and is operated today rather only for traditional purposes as for example at the Hamburg fish market, but as you surely already suspect, that is again another story…

The bad thing about it is actually that people usually carry a lot of knowledge in themselves, but have difficulties to call this up at the right moment. So I’ll throw another quote into the room: If they knew what they know, they would know by themselves what they have to do in the proper moment.

I admit that I feel the same way from time to time, but who doesn’t? Probably we do more often than we would like and realize, but that is part of life.
But I still believe that humanity can become something, if it sticks to it and makes an effort.

I don’t want to brag much more about it, after all, this is somehow a very redundant letter, as you would know if you could read it.

So it only remains for me to say, Farewell mate!