While scanning a news site I ran across an article talking about a collection of letters Albert Einstein had written.   One of the topics reportedly addressed in the letters frequently was Einstein’s thoughts on God.  One section quoted struck me:

I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

-Albert Einstein

While I don’t agree with Einsteins thoughts on the childishness of believing in a personal God (contained in a section of the quote I omitted here), I think his reasoning is something the rest of the world could use more of.  We as a society have somehow come to the extraordinarily arrogant conclusion that we have a near complete understanding of how things really are.  We believe that because we can apply logic, reason, and the scientific method to predict and observe various phenomenon we know how things actually work.   Furthermore, we seem to believe that because we think we understand how things are, we can control them as well.

If Albert Einstein suffered from intellectual frailty, we all must admit to the same faults.  I believe a big dose of humility and introspection about the frailty and fallibility of men and our incomplete ability to even comprehend simple things would go a long way towards solving some of the uglier societal problems facing us now.