Socrates knew he knew nothing, and died for that

Socrates knew he knew nothing, but those who imagined they knew everything put him to death.

We continue to harvest the impact of that centuries old error and today, it seems, the much-celebrated mediocrity of mankind has been substituted for wisdom.
We had our chance at greatness, but let it slip by and now we have a misunderstood unhappiness.
About two centuries ago we discovered how to access fossil fuels allowing us to unleash countless millennia of ancient sunlight, freeing us from endless toil and through innovation the lives of most were enhanced in hitherto unimaginable ways.
Although people can point to the wonders of the modern age and say “all is well”, in fact it is not as that error lives to haunt us.
Excited and blinded by the discoveries of about two centuries ago, we wrested the earth of its finite fossil fuels and luxuriating in that success and moment of excess, we choose to ignore the almost limitless energy resources provided by the sun, the wind and geothermal, an inherent life force of the earth itself.
Wisdom was absent and in its place was momentary pleasure and, particularly, profit. Socrates, metaphorically, had again been put to death, once more by those who imagined they had all the answers.
It is always easy to be intelligent after the fact, but rather than exploit and exhaust our finite fossil fuels, we should have metered them slowly out, using the energy they provided to allow us to develop and create a beautiful alternative energy system, that would be still serving the world today and ready for centuries to come.
Rather than creating personal mobility systems (cars) that made just a few rich, most subservient, severely depleted our oil resources and irrevocably damaged the world’s environment, we should have been conserving that “black gold” in order to build the ancillary equipment that a workable alternative energy system demands.
Some have articulated solutions for the future, but in most instances that solution needs equipment whose creation depends upon oil, that irreplaceable black gold.
Looking into the abyss, we wonder what Socrates would suggest. Probably, for a start, that we step back and then turn our minds to imagining a solution to a dilemma that has arisen from the lack of thought and a weakness that has seen us abandon all that is good as we have pursued short-term gains, profit and pleasure.
The future is long and will be undoubtedly tedious unless we understand and learn how to husband what ancient sunlight the earth has bequeathed and within that build a sustainable world that uses primarily renewable energy.
It was a grave error to put Socrates to death and yet we have again, metaphorically, made that same mistake.