I think this is what Jordan Peterson is getting at in his lectures: that examining the world with a scientific toolkit alone isn't enough to generate value and give us a reason for living (and why the literal creationists fail when they try to examine the bible with scientific thinking). We need more than one way of looking at the world, just as we need different sets of tools as we try to address different kinds of problems. As you say,
We have been doing this unconsciously for thousands of years. Go look at history, it's one continuing battle of people creating evil, creating good, and stopping evil to allow more good to manifest.
But I don't think it's been entirely unconscious. We are conscious of it when we tell stories and develop mythologies, and use those stories to pass these values to our children and disseminate them out into the culture.
Anyway, your post is well expressed. I'm thrilled to find the Internet filling up with a broader expression of ideas these days.
Thanks for the feedback. I meant we are not seeking to know thyself consciously to learn actively about morality, we learn after the fact with 20/20 hindsight vision to learn form our mistakes, true. We, humanity, have been unconsciously striving for morality as we find it present. But I mean the forsight to guard and protect against making future moral mistakes.