also, i meant that violence is not a "necessary" evil. its an evil that exists, wether necessary, wanted, or ignored, or superfluous, extra and a flunk of evolution, none of the views about its functions should ignore the fact that it is there nevertheless, in a purely descriptive way, there.

ignoring that it is there, on the other hand, might leave it unchecked, and by the time it makes itself irrevocably known to you, it might be hard to reign back in.

On the topic of learning for learnings sake, the problem of utilitarianism is that the utility functions are far to broad to be useful.

a piece of useless knowledge could very well be useful as trivia chit-chat in a context where it would help ot bond and create very useful relationships with people. there's no way to know a priori in what way something might be useful.

however, you could at least try to predict the utility of a topic somewhat, in order to inform your choice about the most productive things to learn about, comparatively.

some things in life are just "best guess" kinda things.