Is the Desire for Knowledge Dangerous?

I recently finished reading a mother of a book about Robert Moses.

I also happen to live in NYC and I also happened to buy a car recently.

Of course, these fact may suggest that I'm now suffering from near all-time highs of cognitive dissonance.   I'm not.  I know why I want and need the car.  I also don't like what cars do to the landscape of American cities.  I never have liked it, and I especially don't like it now that I've read the book.

I think that trains are generally better than cars, and that car growth has generally destroyed some neighborhoods.  Compare commercial strips that exist under a raised highway against commercial strips that are under raised trains tracks and the results are striking, no?  I mean, there are no more neighborhoods left under raised highway.  They're dead zones.  Train tracks?  Not the same.  The neighborhood might not be perfect, but it is almost always vibrant.

Anyway, I proceeded to get into a ridiculous argument with my wife over this very thing as we drove, appropriately, toward the highway.

She said: but sometimes you need to drop off your mother with three bags and there's no train.

And she was right.

But that doesn't mean we need to restructure our communities toward highways.  The efficiency of trains just wins hands down in cities with heavy core like NY, where lots of people come every day (without their mothers and three bags).

But it strikes me that all of my reading on this subject might be detrimental.  Perhaps I'd be better off letting go of it and just not thinking of it.  Ignorance would lead to less fights with wife.  Less fights would lead to higher levels of happiness.

So the old motto has a foundation after all?