Living from Hand to Mouth

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years
is living from hand to mouth."

- Goethe

I've been thinking a bit about the epigraph to Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World (above).

Several notes:

1. It's definitely a poignant statement about what happens when people don't bother to learn from history (in terms of the lessons about stupid ideas, things to never do again), or at least learn about history (in order to advance with new ideas rather than repetitive ones).
2. Sophie's World might have been the first seminal work in the development of my ideology, but coupled with the second, Ishmael, it becomes clear that three thousand years is a little arbitrary in terms of human history (4 million for species' existence, perhaps 1 million, 60,000 by conservative estimates, of modern-day mettle). Why did Goethe fixate on the three thousand-year mark tied up with perhaps the origins of Abrahamic faiths and their whirlwind push around the planet?
3. What in heaven's name is wrong with living from hand to mouth? Requiring less--remember? God forbid any group live simply on meagre (by the standards of our over-consumptive culture) but plentiful (by the standards of tribal cultures, which term Quinn claims, in Write Sideways, he should have settled for in place of the shorthand of "Leavers" in Ishmael, those who leave their fates in the hands of the gods--a concept he also hashes out, clarifies, in Write Sideways) means! (Apologies on the painful parentheticals!)