the end vs the ends of the means

Whenever we lost a ball while playing when young, I was always castigated for not looking where we lost the ball. Rather I wanted to look where I did not think the ball could possibly be. I had great success doing that and not being an overly anxious child I remained in my observational mode and never thought to question why that was so. The definition of something lost might be that it is not where we expect or want it to be. It is missing. But missing from where? Missing from where we expect it to be. That is important. Malthus was completely correct in everything he based his famously wrong prediction on but he did not allow for his ignorance. This is a giant mistake expert scientists are lured into making. They made a great effort to know all that is known and narrowed their world in large part in doing so. The wisest of us are aware of what they do not know rather than what they do know. The most ignorant of us are convinced they know everything because they know so little their awareness of everything is easy to grasp. In politics we continually see a certain type, generally a person for whom the group is incorporated into a dwindled individuality, who always warn and are fearful of shortages, just like Malthus. He never thought there would be improvements in food production and quite made fun of it. We saw Morris Udall warn about a shortage of oil and there are many still today who are convinced the crude must run out. It absolutely has to do this. When? Well fearfully soon I suppose. Morris apparently was a little too early if that is the case. But it is easy to underestimate the fear that is in those who warn about shortages of anything. Their answer is to limit, constrict, and reduce in an effort to avoid the extrapolated evil day. This fear encompasses all varieties of production, including abortion. Such a line of thought leads to extinction. Nevertheless, in spite of all that, we learned how to produce so much more food on so much smaller acreages that we fed the vastly expanded populations of the world. We must allow for our ignorance of all the facts bearing on our predictions. There will be something, if the producers do not "shrug off" their natural function, that will completely change all our perceptions about oil. We are relatively soon ready to enter a new era of propulsion that will be similar to the transition from the ultimate perfect typewriter to the computer. Rockets are like fiery chariots, they are ancient forms of propulsion, compared to a world that, instead of oil, drills to the magnetic core of the planet. When we harness gravity we can capsulise it in electrically enhanced magnetic gyroscopes. Instead of the "end of the earth," by linking to a planets' mass and the stars, we will slingshot our way to the "ends of the earth."