Posted By Stefan Monsaureus

John Heywood, the English dramatist and writer of proverbs (c. 1497-1580) is credited with noteworthy insights into the waste laid by haste and the perils of premature leaps of faith. Among his more prescient aphorisms is the one that goes “you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make him drink.” In the four centuries since his death, though, the horses seem not to have grown any thirstier, or any wiser. Where is the thirst for knowledge?

Parents spend an inordinate amount of their time escorting their colts to the shimmering, cool, clear waters of the lake. When young, children drink freely of the water, leaving dry riverbeds in their wake. When they reach their teens, though, they take on the manner of camels, and seldom avail themselves of drink, no matter how freely offered. A teenager has endless capacity to refrain - to hold their thirst in abeyance.

The tragedy is that many adults, too, are dying of thirst and cannot be convinced to drink. We - collectively - seem not to have a true thirst for knowledge. Instead we drink freely of the inebriating concoction that is political rhetoric or religious dogma. When we do seek water we are as likely to rely on divining rods as science. Politicians of both parties, in their incessant blather, give us mannah instead or water, telling us that it is truth - whatever truth we would like it to be, in whatever form we would like it. We are bereft of true leadership, and left to wallow in misinformation and distortion.

This must change if we are to progress. Or survive.

Examples of our refusal to drink of the waters of knowledge abound. A majority of people continue to disavow the veracity of evolution by natural selection - this despite a preponderance of evidence in support of that hypothesis, and none in opposition. Our government declines to endorse the Kyoto Protocol to mitigate the human influences on global warming, wantonly ignoring the rigorous scientific data demonstrating the escalating risks of conducting business as usual (and, even if global warming is not a man-made problem, can anybody seriously argue that more pollution and depletion of our natural resources is a good thing?). We ignore common sense when we allocate resources for a “war on terror” when many more lives could be saved through improved healthcare.

How many of the world’s greatest problems would be amenable to simple solutions if we were not so reluctant to think about them rationally and have an honest and open debate. The challenges of over-population, the health consequences of smoking, and obesity are all things we know how to solve, but do not. Even such intractable problems as the finite nature of natural resources could be addressed if only somebody would speak honestly about their dangers and the sacrifices needed to resolve them.

Answers to our problems abound. With water enough to drown in, how do we get people to take a drink?