Intelligent, highly educated, and well informed, as well as free from daily toil, I have a huge advantage over most of my contemporaries in terms of understanding how the world works. This crossed my mind a few seconds ago. But a second later it crossed my mind that I actually have a huge disadvantage over most of my contemporaries. Unintelligent, badly educated, and poorly informed, as well as enslaved by daily toil, they are blissfully free from understanding how the world works.

Addendum (September 6, 2015)

So many years later, this heartfelt lament surprisingly gives me a tremendous boost in spite of everything. A lament though it surely is, it is also a celebration of the human condition. Stupidity, ignorance, and slavery, that is. For it is ludicrous to wish anything else for this poor species at this stage of its bungling evolution. If chimpanzees are only six-million years behind modern humans, it will take at least as much time for the next evolutionary stage to come to fruition. But chances are that I am being way too optimistic in my foresight, as ever. Reaching my lofty station may actually take much longer for the lowly humans that press around me in their billions. Twelve-million years sounds much more like it. In the meanwhile, I wish them all the fun in the world!

In memory of Friedrich Nietzsche