What Good Is Knowledge?

In 1597, Sir Francis Bacon wrote in his Meditationes Sacrae that knowledge itself is power. It influences. It empowers. So how can information help us release guilt, regret, shame, and worry?

We can understand that guilt, regret, shame, and worry are not 4 independent stressors, but are often interrelated. They represent a virtual linear cascade that begins with guilt and, like a musical crescendo, builds in intensity and duration, culminating in shame and worry.

Rather than struggle against them all, an endeavor that will quickly exhaust us, we can focus on the causal guilt.