Nothing is guaranteed - missing a key insight can have you waste 1,000 years!
The Native Americans had sophisticated pottery - they knew how to mold clay via a pottery wheel. But for 5,000 years, nobody in the entire continent thought to take the wheel and roll it. They never invented the wagon!
You miss one key insight and that changes the entire course.
Worse, things can be forgotten.
- average life expectancy in Rome around 100 A.D was 72 years! (civilization, sanitation, aqueducts, roads). Then Dark Age happens and it plunges down to 30 years. It only recovers to 70+ years in mid 1900s in the U.S.
- The way Romans created concrete was lost up until 2017! It is stronger than the concrete used today
- The Chinese invented the printing press 2,000 years ago. Gutenberg got it just in 1453.
- 100 A.D. the Romans knew the world was round, then 1,400 years later Europe pre-Columbus thinks it’s flat
As powerful as these ideas are - they can be missed!
There is always the possibility of significant civilizational regression if we ignore learnings we’ve accumulated over time.
We can hurt ourselves by not paying attention at the civilizational and individual level.
This is a sobering reminder that Bitcoin is not in any way guaranteed for success. All the benefits that are so evidently obvious to us can be missed by the greater public if we don't do our part.
-- parts of this are an excerpt from the Saylor Series Episode 2 - the Rise of Man through the Dark and Steel Ages, its 2-minute version can be found here https://www.2minutebitcoin.org/blog/saylor-series-episode-2-the-rise-of-man-through-the-dark-and-steel-ages-robert-breedlove