Idea Vacuum

Ideas are neutral.

Ideas by themselves have no right or wrong, good or evil.

Actions can be right or wrong.

Actions can do good or evil.

Reading a Sherlock Holmes story about a murder does not make the reader or the writer a murderer.  The idea of 'murder' in the story is neutral.

Someone who read about a murder in a Sherlock Holmes story and then committed a murder should be condemned for the act of murder, not for the reading of a Sherlock Holmes story.

Without an understanding of what evil is, we are unable and unprepared to avoid it.  How can we recognize evil if we do not learn about it?

Ignorance of bad ideas is not safe.  Acting like the mythical ostrich and burying our head in the sand does not make acts of evil go away.  The ostrich is more likely to be eaten by the wolves with its head buried.

The trick is to learn how to filter our actions based on what we have learned.  The more we learn, the less ignorant we are, the more capable we are of recognizing good, the more apt we will do good.

Have a vacuum cleaner mind and suck up those ideas, clean ones, dirty ones, and ones in-between.  Sometimes it is good when life sucks!