“It reminds me of the Ona people,” I continued, “your wife’s ancestors. In fact, it reminds me of all the native people everywhere, before white man got there. Same here as in Australia, or Mexico, and North America including the Caribbean. Native people failed to realize there were a lot of things of which they were totally ignorant. There might have been one or two that realized what was happening, but if they were that smart, they were also smart enough to know there was nothing they could do against the greater inertia of a substantial majority. I don’t know if knowing what was happening to them could have made a difference in the long run, and I guess we’ll never know, but I like thinking it might have.
“In the end, I think the discovery of ignorance might be one of our greatest discoveries, and a turning point in human history. The point at which a few started to suspect that what we did had consequences, only at first we didn’t know what they were. For the most part, we still don’t know, but at least now there’s a lot of good people trying to find out.