Watching the heartbreaking images of Syrian migrants pouring into Europe, a thought coalesces: This is unfixable. It’s impossible for me to imagine this ending without more suffering, instability and probably large-scale conflict.

That sounds fatalistic and hopeless, and like I’ve given up. I have not.

The solution to Europe’s migrant crisis is obvious: Fix Syria and North Africa. Give these poor people a reason to stay home. Make sure they have food and clean water, a safe home and stable community, a healthy economy. They also need hope, the lack of which is a huge part of why they are currently fleeing. Physical well-being and hope—that’s all these people want. That’s what we all want.

Yet that is exactly what mankind cannot deliver—to these poor, fleeing Syrians, obviously. But also, less perceptibly, to a growing number of people all over this planet. This crisis—as every crisis does to one degree or another—exposes the inadequacy of the human mind to solve problems at their most fundamental level. Humanity might possess an unparalleled amount of knowledge, but our inability to solve basic problems shows we clearly lack something.

How to fix Syria? Simply end the civil war. But this means tackling Syrian President Bashar Assad, a powerful, heartless man with even more powerful, heartless friends. Taking out Assad would require force and fortitude, both of which the West lacks. Confronting Assad in a meaningful way would likely lead to conflict with Iran and Russia, probably China too. Such conflict would engulf the Middle East. It would be World War iii.

There is an obvious alternative. Have European nations accept the migrants. This is feasible. It is also, many believe, the moral decision. But is it really this simple—or moral? Set aside emotion for a second and think on the practicality of millions of refugees settling in Europe. Who is going to pay for the food and clothes, the homes, the schools and medicine? Taxes in Europe are already among the highest in the world. European countries wallow in debt. “Who will pay?” might sound like a callous question, but it is a reasonable and important question. Sustaining life comes at a cost. Someone always has to pay. Who will that be?

There’s also the impact on Europe’s communities and culture. We’re talking about the influx of a million people, and many more eventually, into a territory that is already one of the most densely populated on the planet. There will be consequences. There’s also the issue of precedence. If Europe accepts Syrian refugees, isn’t it compelled to welcome other refugees in the future? There are tens of millions of people in this world who are suffering terribly and would undoubtedly prefer living in Europe to where they currently dwell. What happens when these people begin to arrive on the shores of Greece and Italy? Are they any less deserving than the migrants from Syria?

Europe could accept the migrants, but not without enormous expense, and not without significant social ramifications.

Which brings us back to where we began: how to solve an intractable crisis that some say is reaching “biblical proportions.”

What would you do? How would you solve this? There is no easy solution. If I were Syrian, watching a cloud of hopelessness descend on my country, I’d gather my family and head north as well. It’s a dangerous, risky journey but no more dangerous and uncertain than staying home. If I were German, or Hungarian, if I lived in Europe, I’d find the sudden and massive influx of foreigners disconcerting and alarming. I’d sympathize with these people, but I’d also think: Where are they going to live? Where will they work? Will they take my job? Will I have to pay more tax? What if they overburden the system, the infrastructure? What if some of these Muslim migrants are radicalized? Is my future safe, secure, sure?

What a predicament.

Honestly, I think most people haven’t yet fully comprehended how serious, how perilous, how incurable this crisis is. Right now, there’s a lot of emotion and not enough serious thought and understanding. That spells disaster. The understanding will come, but it will come too late. It will come after Europe is on fire.

What about you? Will you think seriously about this?

Europe’s migrant crisis furnishes some important lessons about humanity and human nature. The images coming out of Europe reveal the limitations and deficiencies of the human mind. Doesn’t our inability to solve this problem say something about humanity?

What a paradox. Mankind has never been as sophisticated and advanced as we are today. We have never possessed this much knowledge or attained this level of scientific and technological accomplishment. Yet here we are, utterly incapable of solving a crisis of “biblical proportions.”

Mankind is so brilliant, yet so helpless. And we think too much about the brilliance and not nearly enough about the helplessness.

All this reminds me of the words of the late Herbert W. Armstrong, a truly brilliant man who understood human beings and human existence. Mr. Armstrong often spoke about this great paradox. We live in a “magic, entrancing push-button world where work is done largely by machines. It’s the glamour dreamworld of the three ‘Ls’—leisure, luxury and license,” he wrote. “But paradoxically, it’s also a world of ignorance! Even the educated know not how to solve their problems and the world’s evils. They know not the way of peace or the truevalues of life!”

He wrote that in 1985 in Mystery of the Ages. This book explains the solution to this problem. (It is also the reason I am optimistic about mankind’s future.)

Thirty years later, that paradox is 100 times more obvious—yet far less widely perceived.

We have been kidnapped by vanity. We think that because we have an extraordinary storehouse of knowledge, incredible technology and an evolved morality, we are equipped to solve problems. This has created a frightening reality: The “smarter” we have grown, the more ignorant we have become of our deficiencies and limitations, and the more dangerous our predicament has become. Dire crises like this one in Europe are exploding, but we don’t see them—at least not as the civilizational threats that they are—because we believe we are smart enough to fix them.

What a spot we are in.