The Risk of Knowledge | Ep.12

We track a chaotic news cycle from Venezuela to a fatal ICE shooting, then switch gears into literature to ask when knowledge liberates and when it paralyses. Politics, pride, grace, and risk collide as we weigh doers versus thinkers and why utopias always crack.

• shifting narratives on Venezuela and motive versus outcome
• conflicting frames on the ICE shooting and evidence
• identity locked to party lines and outrage habits
• making space from the news to think clearly
• Wuthering Heights as a study of cruelty and imitation
• classic literature privileging themes over plot
• Notes from Underground and paralysis by analysis
• ideals, light, and grace as a way forward
• risk, growth, and rejecting knowledge as an idol
• reading plans and next books to explore

Do you do your job and make the world a better place and show them one of the top five, subjectively top five podcasts in the world, and send it to them and to say you need to listen to this because it'll change your life.

Christ is King, Jesus loves you and He's coming back soon.

Chapters

• 0:00 Opening, Banter, And Listener Nudge
• 1:41 A World In Constant Chaos
• 2:30 Venezuela, Power, And Pragmatism
• 5:55 Ice Shooting And The Outrage Divide
• 11:15 Two-Party Entrenchment And Hypocrisy
• 15:20 Stepping Back From The News Cycle
• 16:50 Wuthering Heights: Cruelty And Consequence
• 20:05 Classic Literature And Themes Over Plot
• 21:45 Notes From Underground: When Awareness Burns
• 26:20 Light, Ideals, And Grace
• 30:05 Doers, Thinkers, And Paralysis
• 34:10 Knowledge, Sorrow, And Ecclesiastes
• 38:05 Against Rational Egoism And Utopia
• 43:00 Risk, Growth, And The Need For Danger

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to episode 12 of Ministry of Man. And I'm your host, Isaac Anthony Turner. And let me tell you something. We've got a doozy today. I can't believe we've got 12 episodes. That means just listen to this. We've got 12 episodes. Roughly give or take. Some episodes go for an hour, some go an hour 10, some only go like 40 minutes. But approximately you've listened to nearly a little 11 hours after this, 12 hours of my voice. That's pretty wild. That's like a like nearly that's like half a day. Half a day of hearing the a top five, subjectively, a top five podcasts in the world. And um, so you must be in a better place. Imagine a person having not listened to the 11 hours and then after this 12 hours of the Ministry of Man podcast compared to someone that has listened to that many hours of the Ministry of Man podcast. And just think about like they have to walk around living their life without having experienced that. Oh I feel I really feel for those guys. Um thoughts and prayers for all those. So you know what? Do you do your job and make the world a better place and show them one of the top five, subjectively top five podcasts in the world, and send it to them and to say you need to listen to this because it'll change your life. So without further ado, without any further ado, I want to talk about a few things. First of all, the world is it it there's never a point where the world isn't just in utter chaos. My whole life, I feel like, the world has just been an utter chaos. And when there's not something massive happening, there's something small happening, and people are making it massive. And the two biggest things in the last week that have been, I guess, being shoved down my throat involuntarily is the whole Venezuela thing, which I am a little bit more up to speed on, still not heaps, and then the there was uh the ice uh guy shooting a civilian. And so this is my take, this is my thoughts on that, right? First of all, the Venezuela thing. I don't particularly know a lot about it, but this is what I've this is what has been revealed to me is that Trump has invaded, kidnapped the the Venezuelan president, who a lot of people are saying he isn't actually the president because he wasn't voted, like he lost the last election, but like made himself stay, pretty much. This is what I'm hearing from the Venezuelans that that the majority didn't actually vote for him, but because he was already in power, he maintained it. And so he is a dictator. And then they say, but then it seems to be that the left wing really hate, really didn't like this, even though when Joe Biden was in office, he actually increased the bounty from I believe it was 15 million to 25 million on Maduro, whatever the guy's name is, on the Venezuelan dude. So he so the so a democratic office raised the bounty to get this guy to take him out. Like it's it was what a bounty is, and so it just begs the question if Biden had have done it, would there have been an issue? The answer is obviously no, there wouldn't have been an issue. It seems to be uh that because Trump did it, anything Trump does is bad. Mind you, I don't like Trump at all, and I think that he is not a good person. So I'm not in this, I'm not a I don't align with the Republican Party, and I don't see myself as a conservative. But it it does seem to be quite apparent that it really didn't matter. Also, here's the thing I don't think anyone's really under the impression that Trump cared a lot about Venezuela, and so this is the thing that get people up and up in arms is that like Trump didn't do it, uh he did it for oil, and you're like, okay, sure, he did it for oil. But also it kind of seems like the Venezuelan people are happy about it, though. And so if they're happy about it and then he did it for oil, like it kind of seems like a bit of a win-win. Like Trump gets the you know, to take their oil. But they're like, look, if that's the price we pay, the general public doesn't really care about their oil. They're just like, we just would don't want to live under a dictator. We would rather have some sense of freedom. And because they haven't had that, they're like, look, this dude's come in, yeah, he's gonna take our oil, but we've got so much of it, the most in the world, by the way, that they're like, yeah, sure, take it and then let us be free as well, though. So I think it looks like a bit of a win-win, but no one's going to agree with that because you can't, there has to always be a loser. Uh, mind you, all of that just could be, I could be missing so many valid points. I'm sure that there's other valid points. But that just from like my outside observations, it seems like just because Trump did it for nefarious reasons doesn't mean the the fruit of it was necessarily bad. Um, yeah. But this is kind of already, this is already yesterday's news because of the ice shooting thing. So people kind of moved on from Venezuela because the big debacle now is that there was an ICE agent who shot and killed a civilian, an unarmed civilian. And this is the divide between the two. The the civilian hit the guy with their car, and the guy shot them, and the claim is that he shot them in self-defense. So this is the I'll I'll give you the argument for both. So the argument that the left wing are providing is saying that she was unarmed, she was at no threat, and she wasn't trying to run him over as much as she was just trying to get away and just drive away. And he was standing in front of the car, and one of the angles, the most recent angle, it does look like she's turning away. Like it doesn't look like she's steering into the guy. Uh, but it but on the right, they're saying, well, it kind that kind of doesn't matter because you still did hit the dude, and they were telling you to stop and to get out of the car, and then you drove anyway. Um, in addition to that, the guy had already been run over by a car. And so his mind state of being hit by a car is there's there's people out there that actually want to kill me because this has happened before. So uh from the angles that I seen, it it looked pretty bad for the the ice agent. I mean, I've only seen two, I think two of the angles. I think there's four. And it didn't, I don't know why he decided to shoot. It looked like he was by the time the shots came out, the car was already past him. So I don't think that whether he shot or not would have changed anything. Like if he if he fired his gun or if he didn't fire his gun, it didn't, I don't think that would have changed anything. And I could be wrong. And I'm open to being wrong on that. But the the more the point is, more than any of that, is it really doesn't matter. Uh I mean, I guess the last thing is they kind of were both doing did something wrong by the looks of it. The question is more who did the worst wrong. Because sure, you can say if she just didn't drive away and just got out of the car like they asked, and they weren't um, it seemed like they were kind of being a bit antagonistic, filming them and saying some comments and stuff. It wasn't uh deserving of any kind of assault against them. But like the the ideal situation is the ice people come over and then they ask the questions or whatever, and they go, Yeah, whatever they answer the questions, and then that's kind of it. Like they just go away, and then nothing happens. And so there was a lot of fuel being added to a fire, like hostilities were rising, obviously. And it just makes you wonder, it's just like it's it's all of the rhetoric online of the divide between the two, because like the no one's going to give an inch, no one's no one on any political party is gonna give an inch. Every right wing person is gonna say, yeah, the cop did the right thing, they tried to kill him with the car. And then every left wing person is gonna say that it was completely and utterly like there was no antagonizing, the person was just peacefully trying to get away, and like they're not gonna give even the tiniest little centimeter of due to the other side. It's just gonna be as much, and um because of that, no one's it's so hard to find an objective view. You just have to make it up yourself, but but yeah, the the the current state of US politics, mostly politics everywhere, it seems like, is that the two the two um party system, the two-party system, doesn't really work because it's just a bid for power and control, and it's just pitting people against one another. And there doesn't seem to be a good solution to fix that. Everyone just hates each other, and I hate all of them. No, I don't I don't hate any of them, but uh actually, I really don't like any most of the left-wing ideology, and I only don't like some of the right wing. So I suppose I probably lean more that direction, but regardless of my own political views, I just don't see how you can find any common ground between the two parties to have a valid living state. It like it almost seems like you're trying to mix water and oil, it is not going to mix. I also don't like the hypocrisy of you know, Charlie Kirk got shot, and then this woman got shot, and the left didn't really like some people cared, but they definitely weren't outraged. Like, no way, like now they are they are completely outraged. So it's like, you know, the the the the two states of left-wing thought when Charlie Kirk was assassinated, some celebrated it, some just said, I don't care, and then others were like, Yeah, that's bad, we shouldn't have that. No, no one on the left was outraged at all, even remotely, and now they are outraged extremely. So, like it is just a bit of a testament to to that. And then I think both are scary, but at least one there was like it wasn't like premeditated, I suppose. Like it wasn't an assassination. Like this guy, he definitely got hit by the car. I don't know if it was an intentional thing or not, but he was definitely hit and he definitely had a history of being hit, which would have impacted in his just decision making. Uh, so it is a very different circum set of circumstances. The other thing is whether she was like a mother of children, she was just like definitely not a criminal or anything, although neither was Charlie. I mean, he's a father and all of that, but yeah, I don't know. It's um it's a divided world, and it'll be interesting how it develops. I mean, yeah, maybe I'll talk a bit more about politics next week, but those are my two cents, I suppose. My very poorly educated two cents on those two topics because I have been trying less and less to get wrapped up in the political world as far as like the the ebbs and flows of it. Because guess what? In two weeks' time, there'll be a different thing. There'll be another thing. I literally can't keep up. I've had friends send me things. The Venezuela thing, I had someone send me their opinion on the on the thing. I didn't even know that it happened yet. It was like uh I was so late to the party. So, but that is kind of intentional. Like, I can't afford the stress and the mental real estate of finding out all the information because it does, you can't just get a first, like, you can't formulate your opinion on some of these complex issues because each side is going to give you a different story completely, and they're gonna leave things out, they're not gonna give you an honest, unbiased uh documentation or rendering of what really happened. You're going to have to put in effort and time to look at both sides, even though there shouldn't be sides. It should just be this is what happened. But no, because it's politics, it has to be a side to make it look like no one wants their side to look bad. And it's like, oh stressful, dude. There are other things that I feel like uh my mind is better focused on. But one of those things has been reading, and I just finished a book finally, because I started reading this book ages ago and then I stopped for a long time, and then I'm like, all right, I'm gonna hammer through and read this book. So I just finished the book Wuthering Heights. This is a strange book. Like, I'm gonna do a mini book review right now because this is this is a classic book. I first heard of Wuthering Heights through it, would have been the TV show You, where the protagonist or antagonist, I don't even know what you would call him, he Joe Goldberg references the book Wuthering Heights in a real poetic way. And the main love interest in the fifth season, she called herself Bronte. And Bronte is the the author of Wuthering Heights, is Emily Bronte. And so I was like, oh, that got me curious about this book. And I had a look, and it's definitely got a cult following. Some people absolutely love this book, some people hate hate it. And I found it super interesting. So this is basically the plot points or the themes of the book that it explores. It's very much down the realm of like child neglect and abuse and mistreatment and heartbreak and betrayal and unmet expectations and hostility and all of these things kind of wrapped up, and the result of what happens to a person when they're on the receiving end of all those things, and the despicability a person can get to, or the the depths of despicability a person can get to when they experience all those things. The one of the main characters throughout the book, he is a bad man, and he, I suppose I will, this will be a little bit of a spoiler. So skip forward a minute or two minutes. He's a bad man and he stays that way. There's no redemption for him. He doesn't heal from his pain, he doesn't get better in any way, he remains bad right till the very end, to the bitter end. And it also shows how destructive it is. He there's people that come into his vicinity and he corrupts them, and then they start playing the game that he plays. So there was a young, his niece started to live with him, and it turned out that she started to scorn people in the same way that he would scorn people. And it is a reference to how uh how she, his niece, started to get gratification out of hurting other people in the way that he would hurt people, and so that was rubbing off on other people. And it it's not it the book presents itself as a love story, but it is definitely not a love story. There might be themes or elements of love in the book, but as far as like a classical or typical love story, it's definitely not that. Uh, and nothing really happens in the book that you're super satisfied with either. So it's not a book where you're like, oh, this storyline is really good as far as like you get the happy ending that you want. Nothing really happens that you want. It's kind of it's just a tale of things that happen. But I think people really love it because it's really realistic to a reality. It's not just this fairy tale, everything works out in the end. Because sometimes things don't work out in the end. Well, at least some things don't work out in the that particular storyline. You might create a new storyline in which things would work out, but there have been times where I've had experiences with people and things didn't work out and there was no happy ending in that in that relationship. And so this is a this is a tale that I suppose unpacks and explores the ideas of villainous characters. And it's really interesting because one of the things about classic literature is that it's very little about the story and about the the yeah, like the there isn't a strong storyline oftentimes, because the point of the book isn't just to have an amazing story, the point of the book is to explore themes and ideas. So a lot of these classic books or the classic literature, someone might ask, so what's it about? And then, like, what's the storyline? And you're like, Well, the storyline is difficult to explain because there isn't one sometimes. Like Fodor Dostoevsky wrote a book called Notes from Underground. And you could say that there is kind of a like, I wouldn't really be able to give you a strong idea of the storyline. I can tell you all the themes that that are that are in the book and the things that he talks about within the book, but it isn't a story in the classical sense or a typical sense. And I want to go into this idea today and explore notes from underground. So ideally, what the point that I'm gonna drive at is the danger of knowledge and the risk of knowledge, I suppose, or the risk of being too conscious. So the essence of the book is that um it's exploring the idea of someone that becomes too conscious that they become miserable as a result of it. As, like, a heightened level of consciousness comes with a heightened level of suffering, maybe. So he starts the book by saying, I am a sick man, I am an angry man, I am an unattractive man. And this is true. He is aware of these things, and he isn't saying them to insult himself. He's saying them because he knows that it's true. He also says, I swear to you that to think too much is a disease. So he has these ideas of what it would be like if he wasn't so self-aware or conscious or didn't have so much understanding. He also says, it would be enough to have the consciousness of our men of action and public figures. So to them, the men of action and public figures are the common man, just the regular everyday man, as opposed to him who sees himself to be more conscious. So an example might be the more conscious you are of beauty, and he he mentions this in a different way, but the more conscious you are of beauty, the more exposed you are to your own ugliness in those moments. So if you aren't so aware of your surroundings and what's happening, if you aren't so aware of beauty, you're you aren't going to be aware of the comparison between maybe yourself and other beautiful things. Or whatever might be anything nice or in good standing, you can immediately compare yourself to that, which then causes suffering in a sense. So this is the reason that the Bible says that people hated Christ. So everyone has this idea of what the ideal is to live. So it might be an ideal person or the ideal person in the sense of what would be the perfect way to live. You would say, well, they would be a virtuous person. And a lot of people would say that. They would have a good sense of justice. And they would, you know, they would have all these things. They wouldn't do perverted things or disgusting things. They would be clean and they would be hygienic. And, you know, there would be all these things. They would make sure that all of their affairs are in order. They wouldn't cheat. They wouldn't lie or steal. There's all these things that people would have. And it can be different for everyone. Like not everyone might have the same ideals as far as what the perfect person or the ideal version of a person should live, let's say, depends on what their idea of virtue is and what theory of virtue they subscribe to. But the Bible says that Christ is the light of the world and that the light came into the world, and the people hated it because the people were in darkness. And in darkness, you can hide your sin, you can hide your evil. And when Christ comes in as the light, light exposes what is in the dark. And so another term might be no one knows that they're dirty if everyone's dirty, because everyone's just the same. As soon as the clean person walks in, then it makes people realize wow, in comparison to that, I'm really dirty. But in comparison to all the other dirty people, you wouldn't even notice. And so I remember there was a time I walked into a friend's house, and I I just got some of these fresh Air Force One shoes, and I kicked them off. And uh I've uh when I got to my friend's house, and his shoes were there too, and he had some Air Force Ones that were maybe a year old, and they collected a lot of dirt and they were a little bit dirty. And then I remember him saying, like, wow, I did not realize how dirty my shoes were until I've compared them to yours right there. It's like, yeah, it's it is kind of like that. Like you really don't that's uh a good litmus test, I guess, or uh a good way to explain it, I suppose, if you've experienced anything like that. So yeah, it is um and so in the the underground man, so I suppose notes from underground is it's written in the form of someone writing notes, the underground man is writing these notes from underground. So it's like an insight into the inner workings or or the yeah, the the mind of this person. And so when you when you see whatever the ideal is, you become more aware that you are not that when you're in the presence of it. So I suppose the good thing about Christ and the Christian walk is that we we're called to model our lives after Christ, but it is his grace that actually saves us and cleans us. So one thing that people really get twisted in Christianity is that they think that they have to clean themselves up before they can go to church or before they can talk to Jesus, for example. Not realizing that it's Jesus that does the cleaning. So you don't have, you don't clean yourself up before taking a shower. You jump in the shower to get cleaned. That's the common expression used in Christianity is that come to Jesus, he will uh clean and cleanse you, and he will show you the way. So this is the the song Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. It is the amazing grace that Jesus would say, Hey, I see where you are at, come with me, and I I will I will save you. I'll pull you out of that, and then you can live, you can you can live the ideal. You you have an opportunity to actually live the ideal through Christ and Christ alone. Because this is the thing, if it's not through Christ, anyone can have their own version of their ideal. But if what if there's two conflicting ideals? If there is such a thing as an ideal, which everyone seems to have a sense of, something must be true and right. And I trust that Christ is that. I mean, he's the only one that there was nothing that Christ did that people can really attack. People attack the Bible all the time and different things, but no one really ever attacks Christ specifically. And the things that he said, I mean, people have some disagreements with it, but you you can never be ashamed of it. There's nothing people go that would be, oh, that's shameful. For example, Muhammad has done a lot of shameful things where he married a six-year-old and consummated the marriage when they were nine. That is disgusting, and you would never want to model your life after someone that did that. So Christ doesn't have to battle those things, which is admirable, I think. So, anyway, he likens in the underground man, he likens men of action to doers that would act spontaneously. But he says this is in a way that they don't think things through. So he's not saying it as a good thing, he's he's saying the doers and the men of action are actually stupid, which uh, but he also says that may be the better way to live. So the people that live spontaneously and the men of action, they're acting in accordance with, let's say, nature. And he admires that in some respects and says that this may be the better path, the better way to live. Because they're actually living. He thinks the opposite to that are the thinkers. The thinkers are the ones with the heightened awareness of everything, and they won't act so uh until they have thought everything through. And by the time they've thought everything through, they realize that everything's pointless, and then there's what's the point of even seeking, let's say, revenge on someone. So, someone that wants to seek revenge, they're angry, they're upset, and they respond, they seek the revenge, they get the revenge, and they might feel satisfied after it. As the thinker or the heightened aware person, they would overthink the process so much that by the time it comes to actually act upon their thoughts, it it's just become a pointless endeavor, and then they no longer end up doing anything. And so he likens it to it's almost like a paralysis by analysis. You've just thought about everything. So another way to explain it might be people that think less about something are more likely to do something because they're less likely to evaluate all of the potential risks. It's similar to maybe the Dunning-Kruger effect where the less competent you are, the more confident you are because you aren't aware of your potential flaws. So the more aware you are of yourself and your abilities, the more you will think, okay, well, I don't think I'm capable to do this, or you know, there's going to be this risk. Have you thought of that risk and that? What if this happens? What if that happens? And you end up just doing nothing. And so you reach that paralysis by analysis. He doesn't even think that he is lazy by doing this. This isn't, is he he would rather be lazy than have this sense of awareness because at least he would be defined by something. Person doesn't act because lazy, therefore, person is lazy, therefore, person has been defined by an attribute. And he's saying, I don't even have that. This is just this is just nothing at all. Now, a similar thing, I suppose, that's echoed in the Bible is Ecclesiastes 1, verse 18, which says, For in much wisdom is much vexation, and he who increases in knowledge increases in sorrow. And the writer also, which is, I believe, King Solomon, the wisest king to have ever lived. Some say the wisest person to have ever lived. He says that chasing knowledge and wisdom is as good as chasing air, is like chasing after the wind. It isn't a good goal to have. So I suppose it's similar in the sense of the risk of having this awareness, I suppose. But one thing, so the reason that Dostoevsky wrote notes from underground is a couple of different reasons. One of them is to say that you simply can't live like that. To have this sense of heightened awareness, he's exposing what a type of person that might have a higher sense of consciousness might experience and saying, Do would you want to be the underground man? You should be reading this book and be like, I want to be as far away from anything like this underground man as possible. I don't want to be anything like this person. And so if you are someone that experiences that, then you would want to run as far away from that as possible and figure out ways that you would not uh want to live your life in the same manner. Furthermore, the book itself actually has been highly censored by Russian authorities, and many parts of the books were redacted or removed because of all of its Christian undertones and its Christian themes. So living in the time that was the Russian authorities did not want that, and so they didn't allow the book to be published with those themes in it. Essentially, it was supposed to be a solution to this underground man in the sense of that kind of gives you the purpose, the direction. Um, Dostoevsky was a Christian, and so that's something very interesting to point out. But the other big reason as to why he wrote the book is that it's a direct response to Nikolai Chernychevsky's utopian novel, What is to be done. So this is a book that was about rational egoism and a socialist utopia. So rational egoism is that the rational thing to do is to follow your own instinctual or to follow your own what whatever is in your best interest, rational egoism says that the rational thing to do is to follow your own self-interest, and that's what anyone would do. So anyone that that's in good mind would follow any intuition they had that was for themselves in their best interest. That's what uh Chernyshevsky believed. And also a socialist utopia is everyone working together for everyone's self-interest. It's in my self-interest to help you, it's in your self-interest to help me. Now, Dostoevsky argues that free will will inevitably lead people to act against their self-interest just in defiance against having any kind of lack of free will. So if you remove someone's free will, that they will no longer feel inclined to act within their own self-interest, they would prioritize rebellion in those moments. People will act out, even if it's against their own self-interest. So he goes through and kind of pokes fun. He mocks the idea that people would naturally act in their own self-interest every time. And he kind of gives this example of a friend that preaches many things that we all have. We all have this friend that's really preachy about something or really determined, and they have these strong convictions on these topics, and they even correct other people about living particular ways. And then on a whim, just randomly, they will act against those beliefs themselves. And it's almost like that there's no identifiable reason as to why they're doing it. So it's just like this idea of rational egoism is just a fairy tale that would never work in reality, and also there is no such thing as a uh socialist utopia. There, there's he's very much against that as an idea to think that that would be a possible thing. The only way you could do that is if everyone was living the ideal. And no people, there's a lot of people that don't care about living the ideal. Many people don't care about living the ideal. People don't want, people don't even want uh a utopian society really, in the sense that included in the utopian society is safety and security for all time forever. There is like you are can't you're always gonna be safe, you're always gonna be secure. There's no room for you not to be safe and secure. The issue with that is that people will get bored very quickly if that's the case. And they will not want to, they will not want to live like that, and they'll seek out other things. So part of the the reason that adventure appeals to people, or part of the reason that they're that thrill seekers exist, people love the thrill of something. And unfortunately, thrill only comes from risk, and risk is dangerous. Dangerous is the complete, or danger is the complete opposite to safety. So in order to have a like you can't have a life that's constantly only ever safe and secure, because people are going to get really bored of that really quickly. People are going to want to simulate their own thrill and risk, and we want to go off into the face of danger. And that's an important thing to do is to go into the face of danger. And it's an important thing to do to grow as a person as well. If you are a parent and you're raising a child and they don't come into contact, you don't let the child come into contact with any danger at all or any risk. They are never going to learn properly, and they're going to learn to be reliant on the parent all the time. And when they get uh, I suppose if it's a if it's a world that's utopian, they wouldn't have to worry about potential risk coming. But like it's such a fairy tale to think that you can avoid and eliminate all risk altogether. Like that is just not a world. Like you're banking on the fact that just someone wouldn't be a bad person or break the rules. It's like the only way to do that is by full-on tyranny to the to the furthest degree. And even then, you're probably still like the more tyranny you have, the more rebellion you're gonna get. So it's just not reasonable to think you can live like that. The best way to live would be to allow elements of danger into your life so that you can grow as a person and that you can overcome those challenges, and then you are a stronger person and a more valuable person as having overcome those challenges. So that's what I think on the matter. Anyway, going back to the idea of knowledge and the potential risk of it is like you can't look at knowledge, wisdom, conscious, like higher states of consciousness, and think that that's a goal to achieve. There's nothing wrong with those things in and of themselves. You can use them as tools to navigate through life, but you you should have a goal in life that is beyond those things. And it's interesting, Aristotle says that we are all designed to know things or designed to want to know things. So there's a part of us that are that are always going to seek knowledge and to seek understanding in things, and it's true, the Bible even says, My children are destroyed by lack of knowledge. Uh, God also says, or the the Bible, therefore, God says, It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, it is the glory of kings to seek it out. And all of Proverbs is talking about wisdom and wisdom as being a good thing. And then Ecclesiastes talks about the, I suppose, the vapidness of wisdom as well and of knowledge. And it's like, it's fine to have as long as you know that your priorities are in order and that it's not taking away from you living a fulfilled life. Like obviously, the underground man was hyper aware of things, and perhaps it's true. Like you kind of do see some people living life and just being like, Yeah, look, I have no idea what I'm doing. I just did. I just I was just a I just decided to start doing it and I just didn't stop. And then all of a sudden it works out. And then there's people that sit there contemplating everything and every like perfectionists almo. There's so many, so much room for error, and it's like, yeah, it can immobilize. You. So it can be not always a good thing. And the the Bible verse in Ecclesiastes saying that he who increases in knowledge increases in sorrow. That's crazy. That that's a Bible verse. In much wisdom is much vexation or frustration. So it's a it is a risk. And it's also something that you have to proceed with caution in because you want to know things. I'm obsessed with trying to find answers. I'm a very curious person, but it can lead you astray sometimes and it can distract you from maybe doing things. You can get caught up just sitting there learning all the time. There's one of the biggest reasons why uh young men aren't in the workforce at the moment. The number one reason why people that could be at work that aren't at work is that they're doing extended study. They just keep on getting more and more education. It's just like feeding yourself more and more education. And you can become a glutton for knowledge. You can become a real, uh it could become an addiction of just learning and being in this sense of preparation and never acting upon it. It's very easy to convince yourself, oh, well, I'm not ready because I don't know all of these things. And it's like there isn't going to be a time where you're going to know everything. Like that you would never know everything. It's impossible. And the more, I guess, the paradox of knowledge is the more you know, the more you realize you don't know anything at all. And the more you learn, it's almost like chopping off the head of the Hydra. You chop the head off, three more spawn. It's like you learn one thing about a topic and realize, oh, there's three other things that this topic leads to that I don't know nothing about. And you go down that path, and you're like, oh, you the one that you pick, three more spawn off that one. And it's like, dude, there is so much I don't know. And so knowledge and wisdom are very curious things to acquire. And I think if you have them in their rightful place, in the rightful order, it shouldn't be a problem. But as soon as you start to idolize knowledge and wisdom above all else, that's when I think it becomes a real problem. That's when I think pride can very easily slip in. One of the biggest issues uh people have when increasing in knowledge and wisdom is getting really puffed up and getting really arrogant and prideful, being like this, you know, everyone knows a know-it-all. And it's it's just no one likes to be around a know-it-all. Especially when they deem their knowledge to be to make them superior in some sense, is is you want you really want to make sure that if you're increasing in knowledge, wisdom, and understanding, that you are equally increasing in humility, otherwise, you ain't gonna have many friends, and uh yeah, and probably and when that's the case, people probably don't want to listen to you either. So, anyway, um, there's probably a lot more to say on that, but I'm gonna wrap it up because uh I can do that and it's what I want to do, and um yeah, maybe I'll talk about other things, but honestly, if you want like Notes from Underground, Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground, it's only a hundred pages, give or take. It's a very small novella, and it is really cool. I've only read it one and a half times, uh, because it's kind of set in like two different books in the one, sort of. So I've read the the full book and then I've read like the first book in the book, and um yeah, it's worth reading. It's a very easy read if you read it properly, in the sense that you're not trying to find it as a good story, but you're trying to understand the ideas that are being put forth and how it's written as well. He's obviously writing in a in a sense of attacking ideas almost. So, yeah, if you read it in the right way, it's really, really cool. I'm really excited to read. I just got Crime and Punishment for Christmas, and I'm gonna start reading that, and then I'll have some things to say about that, I'm sure. But in the meantime, let me tell you this. Let me tell you this. It's all trash, it's all garbage, it's all nothing. Listen to me now. The only thing that matters is this. Paul says, I deem everything I know as garbage, as trash. That's what he says, except I reduce myself to know only Christ and Christ crucified. And so in the same sort of spirit, I say everything I just said is trash and garbage and worthless, except for these three things, of course. Christ is king, Jesus loves you, and he's coming back soon. Thanks for listening again. I'm out.