The crux of the Human Condition problem discussed within Destiny is the ever-present combination of ignorance and power addiction. Our entire history is one of seeking dominance over everything, including each other, and the most capable or cunning political and military types have always been in the foreground. Yet, Destiny speaks of our inner need for ultimate power to be okay. How can this be if we are in any way humanitarian? Is there not something fundamentally inconsistent in being humanitarian and seeking great power?

Recall that Progress demanded distribution of power across all of us capable and willing to work towards our future. That does not mean we are all to become politicians or military conquerors. It means that real power will come from all of us being able to contribute to our advancement and serving as checks and balances on each other. That is fundamental, while we increase our collective and individual knowledge to achieve Destiny. It was the amassing of power by individuals during our history up to our present that was/is wrong and is damaging to us.

It seems trite to say that knowledge is power. Yet, it is. It is the very act of gaining knowledge that allows us to proceed towards true power over existence. No one can rationally deny this fact unless they live in a vacuum, for the advance of the sciences and the routine application of those findings continuously constitutes proof of the knowledge and power interrelationship applied to Humanity. It does not mean that humanitarian goals, however, will be achieved at any particular moment, for applied technology is applied science and we can use it to advance or destroy each other.

It becomes evident that there are two problems in human experience that we must overcome with the power provided from science. The first is our limited mental prowess. The second is the non-uniform distribution of mental prowess. Our most intelligent people throughout history were not warriors. They were philosophers, i.e. either the intellectual base for ideologies or creators of ideologies, or, they were scientists of one type or another. Our least intelligent people were the tribal groups that formed stable societies within their limited environments until they unwittingly destroyed those environments by overpopulation, or were destroyed by natural disasters or by being conquered by more capable tribes.

I intentionally avoided mentioning religions in the last paragraph, for if you strip away the supernatural aspects of religions, what is left is some combination of philosophy and ideology. When you add the supernatural aspect of a religion to that mixture, the result is a particular type of philosophy or ideology that denies inherent power to humans for fundamental growth beyond reproduction and migration. Religions have always been the antithesis of entelechy. They all have the characteristic of relegating living members of the human race to lifelong conditions of ignorance and weakness. They demand subservience, for they typically contain the hierarchical power structure found in most all ideologies before Destiny. Yes, I know early Greeks proposed and attempted pure democracy (Athens), but those experiments were founded on the still irrational notion of equal contributory capability and motivation. It is no surprise that Alexander Hamilton developed his destructive views about the common man, for a pure democracy could not and cannot work with grossly ignorant citizens.

Subservience is the acceptance of personal ignorance, and sometimes worthlessness, in the presence of apparent knowledge or power, combined with willing obedience. Humbleness, however, lacks the obedience component of subservience. Humbleness is what we find in our most intelligent people, for they recognize their ignorance and work towards correcting or eliminating that ignorance. Subservient people may be humble, but humble people are not necessarily subservient. The obvious distinction is in the belief that one does or does not have the right to question current, perceived realities within an existing hierarchy.

Science is the antithesis of subservience. Power from science, which is increased, applied knowledge is developed by individual humans, apart from the power of human hierarchy. That means that a scientist, who may in fact receive physical or financial support from within a hierarchy, provides something unique as an individual that the hierarchy could not otherwise have. All of the money and weapons in the world will not enable a global conqueror to create knowledge. It is only the intelligence and curiosity of the individual scientist that can result in the discovery and development of knowledge. The conqueror or king or CEO or whatever is mostly incidental in a financial support role to that growth process.

This continuous reality of the essentiality of the individual and individual power, apart from the hierarchy, is the reason leaders pay reluctant homage to scientists and do not kill them. Instead, leaders in government or business attempt to harness scientists to develop military weapons or dominating technologies for economic control. And this is also the reason religious leaders look upon knowledge gained from science with fear, for science does not lead to a static view of life. It is thus critical to understand that the individual contributions from scientists are pure unto the pursuit of knowledge, while the application of the knowledge from science is a product of the hierarchy within which that knowledge is gained. Rulers in a hierarchy, not scientists, pervert the use of knowledge to suppression or oppression.

The historical images of the mad scientist, developed for the "entertainment" of the ignorant, were absurd. They were, and are, a part of the overall plan to present science to the ignorant as something to be feared and not trusted. What a marvelous example of dissembling! It is so typically human to take that which is not understood and give it either absurdly positive attributes or equally absurd negative attributes. Simply think about God and Dr. Frankenstein. Consider the initial belief of the Incas and other primitive tribes that the Spanish conquistadors were from God or were gods.

Note also that the pursuit of knowledge is not a hierarchical consideration for the scientist. One may acquire many facts and associate them with each other in such a way as to support the discovery and development of new knowledge, but nowhere do you find hierarchy in that process. Yes, you will find sequence, but you will not find scientists referring to any aspect of knowledge gained from past work in hierarchical terms. Facts that we discover from science and other human endeavors are flat, not hierarchical. Advancement increases the area of all knowledge, and we do not normally speak of one fact as being more or less essential than another within a given discipline. It is typical, however, to find scientists working within social hierarchies of other scientists, for experience and synergism from joint or related efforts are sometimes recognized as valuable.

Finally, consider the philosophical and ideological implications posed by the reality of advancement in knowledge originating from the individual, as opposed to the hierarchy. It is that very fact that leads to the Destiny realization that power, specifically distributed and equal power, is the future of Humanity. It is a rational and fair humanitarian goal. Hierarchy in government or any other social endeavor will eventually cease to exist. We will advance towards our Destiny as one of many. We will know our individual worth by our individual contributions to the whole of Humanity.