mak3 said:
Main question is - how can any knownledge protect us from anything?
This is addressed more in depth in The Wave series - along with tons of other things. But for a short version:
Basically, knowledge is the basis of choice. Without it, we don't know our options, and we can't make good judgments about whichever choices we know about. Perhaps you could say that the state of one's knowing determines the extent of one's free will.
This is easy to see on the larger, societal scale - whole societies are duped and induced to make bad choices, which have consequences. And in our lives, often we screw up, in bigger or smaller ways - and if we learn from our mistakes, it becomes clear that if we had known earlier, then we could have chosen differently.
Knowledge must of course be applied. For example, it can be the difference between eating toxic garbage and becoming sick and having a foggy mind, or getting healthier and more clear-headed. Psychological and other knowledge can change our relations to others in our lives. And it can change what we do, for a living and otherwise. And so on.
And it helps us see signs in the world that point to what's coming and making choices to be better prepared.
There's also various more esoteric angles to this that you can read about if you're interested (lots of that in The Wave), but the above is the more obvious nuts-and-bolts aspects.
In a nutshell, I'd say striving for knowledge - and applying it - is giving oneself the best possible chance. (In everything - including being of help to others.) There are no guarantees, and we can't know exactly what will happen - but I think that the alternative, to not really care and to not actively strive to learn, is to give up on both oneself and on the world.