Sapere Aude! - Dare to Know

I stumbled across Immanuel Kant's essay "What is Enlightenment" again..by chance. Have not dealt with it since school days (and only read it in German) so indulging in the English version as well as the here and now...my present understanding and mind/belief-system...I can't help but being completely taken aback...

Leaving historical contexts aside, and exchanging terms e.g. "religion" with "belief systems" etc, it left me feeling that nothing has changed in the understanding, and all having been said and noted down on this 30 September 1784 still holds true nowadays...we have not really come a long way since then and yet we believe and feel we are much more "advanced"...but are we really?

Many here follow the motto...Sapere Aude...for sure, but as a whole, as a society, the human race...are we not still there, way back in the 18th century, or even more so...further bugged down and restricted due to false freedom we believe we behold?

Do we not believe we are all mature yet? But is it not the truth of the matter that the majority is still immature...still stuck in this self-imposed immaturity?

In Kant's words:

"Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.

"Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.

"But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the great masses a few will always think for themselves, a few who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for each person's calling to think for himself. But it should be particularly noted that if a public that was first placed in this yoke by the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke--so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass.

... http://www.english.upenn.edu/~mgamer/Etexts/kant.html - for the rest...
... http://www.uni-potsdam.de/u/philosophie/texte/kant/aufklaer.htm - for the German version

Through this, is it not upon us to realise that there is a long way ahead and only courage and getting off our lazy backsides will ultimately put us on the right path?

This leaves me with a quote from Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe:
"What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

If it's not us...who else and...when?