Excellent post. A lot of chew on obviously but I wanted to post my thoughts on this excerpt

It is a fact, in my opinion, that people who know very little, always believe that they know a lot, and people who know a lot, know that their "a lot" is very little.... For this reason I firmly believe, perhaps I'm wrong, that the full awareness of our ignorance is the highest degree of wisdom.

You are not wrong here. Now let me preface by suggesting that we lower the bar from understanding the All, to Mostly Everything. From there, we have some framework for understanding ourselves because knowing the All as you have said, is impossible.

As humans, our powers of perception are great but not omnipotent. Sometimes we are correct and most of the time we are wrong. Even with a lifetime of training, we can only come out with a very small fraction of the "Mostly Everything".

Those who boast about knowing Mostly Everything are clearly full of it. And everytime one does, ask yourself why their powers of perception have not manifested in a more desired quality of living.

Ignorance to them is something that needs to be compensated for instead of embraced. That is why their development will cease (because they cannot perceive beyond what their ego allows them to see) while the development of the ignorant continues to have near limitless potential. So the "smart" one is destined for a life of inner frustration because he does not know himself. And does not know what makes him happy.