The only thing that surprises me about the world as I get older, is how much more banal things are than I thought they'd be when I got to see them up close.
Discussion
A person's life experience and growth is hard to perceive, only when the perception of external things changes. Because all the embodiment of the external world comes from the change of people's self-cognition ability.
But even when everything is banal and everybody seems to be very incompetent and unable to create anything complex, good or bad, still a lot of things happen. The answer seems to be that it doesn't take a lot of effort from a lot smart people to set some things in motion.
But reconciling all of this requires letting go of our impulse to interpret things through a functionalist lens. Which is hard to do, because our dumb brains *really* want to take that shortcut.