Reply To: Question from a BT to and FFB

Ziongate – yes I’m not talking about anything explicitly bad. I’m probably including “junk” books – not anything with explicitly bad things in them but say spy books, thrillers, mysteries. More though I’m thinking the great books – Huckleberry Finn, 1984, Darkness at Noon, Brave New World, Shakespeare, Kafka – books with insight into human nature, history, books that help us understand man’s nature, problems we’ve put ourselves into, how to avoid them in the future, and how to get out of them now.
I understand that all these answers are already in the Torah for the Talmid Chacham who has the keys. Few can study 18-20 hours a day taking brief breaks for sleep and food and find all the answers that way. Maybe the GRA. More can study 12 hours a day but I’m not sure how well people not the GRA (example) can find all the answers to life from Torah. More are regular people like me who work for parnassah and live in some combination of gashmius and ruchnius and study when they can but probably not enough and not intensely enough to find all the answers there. We strive to minimize our attachment to gashmius and strengthen that to ruchnius and try to live “your gashmius is my ruchnius.” I think there is wisdom in secular sources – in the correct sources, not all – and some of us (many of us?) are not yet built in a way we can so fully immerse ourselves in only Torah and nothing secular.