Is the whole world of knowledge worth child's prayer to dear, kind God?

[RomanRussia]

 "Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature--that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance--and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

 "The Brothers Karamazov" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

 Tell us and tell the truth!...

[carnage_complex]

Let progeny decipher the shards, right?  Let 'action' hold its own today, because excessive thought only repudiates any kind of action...according to the reasoning of most of Dostoevsky's revolutionaries (which was spot on; the prolific revolutionaries of today, like Anders Behring-Breivek, still use this same rhetoric) anything up to and including apocalyptic violence is necessary *today* in order to create the possibility of a tomorrow in which it becomes possible to question the morality of what was done before.  According to the rhetoric of such people, the content of this banter is immaterial, because said banter would not exist if not for the actions of the speakers' ancestry.  Again and again we see this concept throughout Dostoevky...the old pawnbroker, Shatov, Fyodor Karamazov.  Sacrifice is the inevitable precursor of any form of action, you cannot have something without giving up something else.  The problem is that the question of progress gets convoluted by malcontents who don't really know just what it is that they want. 
    Would I do it?  No, I would not.  And that is why I will never amount to anything.

[RomanRussia]

Would I do it?  No, I would not.  And that is why I will never amount to anything.

 To never amount to anything is to have no ground under own feet? To decide anything one is to have ground to propell from?

[carnage_complex]

To never amount to anything is to have no ground under own feet? To decide anything one is to have ground to propell from?

    Actually, I'm more prone to considering this sort of torpor 'underground.'  I've amounted to absolutely nothing thus far in life in the sense of 'worldly action.'  It's the hubris of the Information Age man; I'm a spectator, I watch everything, I 'do' nothing and when the time comes for 'action' of some kind, I'm so bogged down in moral compunctions that it becomes impossible to do anything.  Example: take interpersonal conflict of any kind.  I rarely have this, because I am 'nice' to everybody, a form of passivity which in of itself is Underground, but never mind that.  Take the rare instances where somebody has assumed an antagonistic role in my life.  Let's say I have reasonable grounds on which to believe that the person is a jackass.  Most people would leave it at that and go in, horns bared, charging at the 'wall' and end up either winning or getting chucked out the window, either by the person they were fighting or the person who they were unwittingly trying to 'save.'  In my case, thought never translates into action, because I sit back and consider.  Though the person at hand could be the architect of 'my' misfortunes, perhaps this same person has been very kind to someone else.  In this spirit, it becomes impossible to assess a totality of character, and one is forced to become a smiling lackey by default. 

[RomanRussia]

 ouch creepy! Am shuddering. Interwoven post!

In my case, thought never translates into action, because I sit back and consider

 Confusius once said: "Old age, believe me, is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as spectator."

 You are young lad and for you just sit back and contemplate rather than do the action. Are your thoughts of the transitoriness, the insignificance and the aimlessness of life, of the inevitability of death, of the shadows of the grave, and so on?

 If the question would have really stood out in the real life as the outlined in thread I believe it would take the man of action beforehand to solve it as it always go in the real life. That is what I insist on.