We know more than we think.

Human consciousness resembles a crammed musty cellar into which we seldom venture. We’re reluctant to confront the mess or, worse, disturb it.

Many are disinclined to venture there – who needs trouble? But if you’re curious, you possess a unique extractive tool. Language is a hook we can bait to tug revelations from our depths.

Try this experiment. Ask yourself what you think – about almost anything. Why do you like this or resent that? Reply to your reply with why, why, why, like a precocious eight-year-old. Force yourself: don’t stop. Eventually you will reach the verge of your awareness. Tiptoe beyond. Soon enough your eyes will adjust to the dark. In the jumble of memories, notions, feelings, you will discover many you can’t remember stowing. The more you explore, the more you’ll find, for the extent of your experience has been infinite.

This experiment resembles psychoanalysis only its purpose is less practical and its premise less controversial. You are neither seeking the cause of some distress, nor do you expect equanimity from your findings. You are venturing beyond the known world like the explorers of old, for the thrill. Most of the available world has been mapped by science, but not you. Your depths are a wilderness permitted to you alone, to which you alone hold the key.

Why venture inward? For no good reason but the pleasure of knowing. Humans are curious creatures, perhaps the only ones. We enjoy finding out, not all of us but many, and of that many not always. Curiosity requires a mystery to investigate. An answer we can look up does not supply the adventure we seek. You cannot Google your depths.

Is it advisable to descend into your darkness? Disturbing news may be hidden there, enough to threaten your sanity perhaps. Keep that cellar door locked!

Curiosity has been humans’ boon and bane, probably since the get-go. It led us to science, art, beauty, comfort, mastery of our planet. It made us powerful, prosperous. It also made us vicious, suspicious, dangerous to ourselves. Intellect has proven the most mixed of blessings.

We cannot, though, contain or constrain curiosity. We will always be thinking, devising, scheming. Our brains may sicken, turning our tormentors. They may break. Reason builds systems to tame us. Why can’t we be reasonable! We can – for a moment – but then reason surrenders to insanity, our keeper to the fury of the mob.

Cocky, humans congratulated ourselves on our powers. We were superior to other creatures, q.e.d., lodged between beast and angel on the existential scale. We invented gods, who favored us. We kept creating marvels. No telling where we might end up!

Again and again in history the dream of human perfection comes a cropper. The perfect state is ravaged by factions. The peace of mankind is shattered by man-turned-monster. We concoct weapons of mass destruction – and use them. We despoil the planet we depend on.

The dinosaurs lived on earth for 165 million years, we’re told. Their extinction 65 million years ago may not have been their fault. Humans have lived on earth for two million years. Language is five thousand years old, if that. Some days it feels we’re hurrying toward an extinction that will be our fault.

I rummage in my brain for direction, conviction. Sometimes my discoveries surprise me. I didn’t know how much I know. Thinking makes me wiser, I’m convinced.

But can thinking save us from ourselves? I’m guessing not, but who knows. With its twists and turns, our story supplies superlative entertainment. And the price is right.

Enjoy.