The Jewish religion has a concept called "holy insecurity", meaning that we have to live with an imperfect knowledge of our world. We will never know about the existence of God, or at least the description of God. As omniverous mammals on this Earth, our brains have already exceeded that which we need to survive. Our intellect has outpaced our wisdom.

Were we not so bright, if we had topped out, we might be devoting our limited energies to making sure we had clean water, clean air, enough healthy food, and getting along. But we think that survival is a matter of destroying, not living with, the next guy. Build a bunker and arm yourself against the starving hordes.

In order to deal with that anxiety we have developed religions, and it's no accident that in the US the strongest proponents of liberal gun laws are the most religious. One would think that religion would offer comfort, but it just doesn't seem so. "God's will" answers everything for them, as long as God's will reasonably align's with their own.

In fact, our innate animal, internal, will to survive, to be better than the next guy, or tribe, or nation, will lead to our destruction. Our unwillingness to compromise for the common welfare will lead to war, or global warming, or resource shortages which will lead to our doing ourselves in, even though the solutions are obvious.

"Meant" to know seems to imply someone is depriving us of information. "Need to know" means to me that anything not necessary for survival on Earth is superfluous, and may well get in the way of our using what we do need.