The goal of this blog is to empower ourselves as learners, skill-builders and autodidacts. As such, we have to be aware of the outside influences that will hijack and jeopardise our learning efforts.

We’ve spoken about learning myths, mindsets, and other crucial concepts that are strongly rooted in your own behaviour and mindsets.

But learning has a strong social component too, and it's crucial you're aware of it if you want to kick ass in your pursuits. Today we’re going to discuss what George Leonard called The War Against Mystery. He was talking about the 1970s consumerist culture in America. If it was a considerable problem fifty years, it's a humungous problem now.

I want you to take this very, very seriously. This war is stopping you from learning. It’s stopping you from serious dedication and devotion. And it’s jeopardising your happiness and ability to reach your potential in life.

What Is The War Against Mastery?

Nowadays we have an endless amount of consumption available to us. There is a never-ending array of non-necessities out there. The economic system requires higher and higher levels of consumer spending to be viable. The only limit to our consumption is the amount of money we have, and our limited capacity for intake.

In essence, society and culture is very anti long-term effort and anti-perseverance. You’re more profitable as an impatient, distracted, omni-seeking consumer and pleasure junkie than you are as a dedicated skillbuillder and learner.

Have you ever noticed that you’re continually bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, quick fixes, and instant success? This infects all areas of consumerism, from entertainment to music to medicine to sports, and yes, to learning itself.

You can see our dependence on constant highs in the overuse of mobile phones and technology. We can plug into WhatsApp, social media, or Netflix and enjoy an interrupted flow of stimulation. It also shows up in our health system and dietary habits.

Ads are stimulating and exaggerated, and promise products that somehow skirt difficulty and effort. They appeal to hedonism and are directed at our lower self.  You're swamped with climactic moments that conceal all the preceding effort.

Even sports ads, which promote an area that requires a superhuman amount of effort and persistence to master, are filled with quick snippets of the best shots, the trophy winners, the orgasmic highs.

They teach you that life is a series of highs and climaxes. There’s no plateau!

Attention Harvesting

There’s also a lot of attention harvesting now. YouTube thumbnails are an excellent example. They make you believe that the next 5 minutes of your life will be an extraordinary high and give you some miracle cure.

This even happens in the realm of learning! 

You log into YouTube thinking that you’re using it for good, but you’re just getting sucked further into the illusion. The YouTube videos that tell you you can learn something in a week are straight up lying to you.

The fancy new product that will suddenly transform your skill level is also a hoax.

If it worked, it would be justifiable. But most of these solutions were never designed to do as promised. They were designed to get you to open your wallet and spend money, while walking a fine line between not lying to you but also covering up the truth and bending the truth to fit advertisement regulations and so on.

Right now, there is a great danger that we become unable to face the harsh realities of learning and getting good.

The Harsh Realities of Learning

Here goes.

Getting good is not sexy. It requires hours of repetition, sweat, doubt, months where you see no improvement, moments of boredom, admission of weaknesses, and more pain and struggle along these lines.

It's not sexy. But these are the elements that lead you to real success, to real satisfaction, because mastering a skill is not only your ticket to financial success, career success and so on, it gives you a deep sense of satisfaction, not a flimsy five-minute hit.

The majority of life isn’t all shiny, flashy and fun. That’s true even if we love our life and are happy: most of it is quite mundane. You can’t run away from this. If you do, you'll wind up developing addictions and vices of all kinds.

You can’t achieve anything meaningful without diligent effort and drudgery. It just doesn’t happen. Mastery doesn’t bring quick rewards, but it does bring real, lasting rewards.

How Can We Overcome This?

This might sound depressing, but it's deeply empowering. You must stare it in the face and see it for what it is before you can hope to transcend it. Now we've stared a little, let's talk about how to go beyond this insanity.

See yourself like Neo in the Matrix: everything that’s going on around you is an illusion. You’re submerged in a gooey liquid, plugged into machines, hypnotised by false digital realities. It’s time to unplug and slide down the shoot into the Real.

First, don't blame anyone. It’s not society’s or the system’s fault. Really, it’s the fault of us all. It’s down to our animal-like needs.

Become acutely aware of your needs for instant stimulation, for short-term results, for distraction, for addictions. Be aware of anything that jeopardises or discounts the value of long-term effort and dedication.

And also, learn to take advantage of the time you’re living in. We have incredible resources that the masters of the past could only dream of. Cheap books available quickly. Libraries. Online courses. Podcasts. The internet. Tutoring websites. There is so much information available.

And remember to step apart from the Zeitgeist. The pandemic-like need for quick results, flimsy entertainment, and catchy headlines pose a serious threat to the neophyte in any field.