Pursuit of Mastery in the Modern World

[ryoko]

Hey @Leo Gura, how are you?

Been a while since I last logged in. 

Recently I rewatched some of your older videos related to society and wage slavery. And this time I'm finding holes in your logic. 

I was considering a scenario where you've found out what you wanna do and it is not likely not meant for the current generation. We can take Van Gogh for example. Or for current times, let's take graphics programming.  

I'm not a graphics programmer but this is the perfect example to explore this scenario. Graphics Programming in general is super hard and takes a long time to learn. What I love about this person is, they started learning programming in their late 20s and took the time to learn it and it's been nearly 8 years since. He can make money with his current skills, but he got his priorities straight, he's working on his own big project.

There's always something new to learn, you can keep mastering multiple disciplines surrounding it. And this is so exciting. While the cost being, you are forced to stay poor for a very long time, if you truly wanna just master it and do your own thing. This notion of mastering something simply for the love of it, it's so rare, and unnecessarily difficult because now they have to worry about stuff they don't wanna worry about, working gigs just to afford living, all of these are basically distractions for their long term project. 

What would be the best way to pursue a life of mastery, assuming you're not gonna monetize one bit of it. I am appalled at how money comes into this conversation at all, when it shouldn't. 

Coming back to Van Gogh. He died a poor man. A genius the world couldn't fathom during his lifetime. And he had his values straight as well, and I'd argue that very feature which made him reject society's silly games is what made him the genius he is. We have a very few geniuses who refused to take part in society and economy, simply because it made no sense to them. 

I'm brainstorming ways to sustain such a lifestyle to the most extremes. Learning something difficult for 30 years straight, without any distractions. 

 

Edited July 19 by ryoko

[jimwell]

1 hour ago, ryoko said:

We have a very few geniuses who refused to take part in society and economy, simply because it made no sense to them. 

Being an inventor or innovator, and being an entrepreneur are different things. Think about Nikola Tesla. If he had never been born, I wouldn’t have been able to reply to this post. You wouldn’t have been able to start this thread, and this forum wouldn’t exist in the first place. The modern world and its technology wouldn’t exist. That’s how impactful Nikola Tesla was. By this reasoning alone, he should have been the richest or at least among the top 10 richest men in the world. But no, he died poor.

[LordFall]

2 hours ago, ryoko said:

What would be the best way to pursue a life of mastery, assuming you're not gonna monetize one bit of it. I am appalled at how money comes into this conversation at all, when it shouldn't.

 

Be careful of demonizing money. Money is a universal medium of value. Meaning that if you can't monetize your craft/passion its most likely because it doesn't have value or you're not good at business. If you're not good at monetizing your thoughts/they're not very valuable what makes you think you're not thinking/working on nonsense? 

Plenty of useless and toxic stuff gets marketed and sold well but plenty of high quality concepts do as well. Thats why mastery is such an interesting concept, you should master something thats both useful and valuable. 

[ryoko]

@jimwell Good point. You had given a better example. Thanks. 

 

[ryoko]

Okay, I've brainstormed this further. 

First step, buy land in a fairly isolated area, likely near the woods, even a small patch of land will do. Ensure you'll get water, electricity, internet with ease. 

Build a small outpost, comfortable enough to keep living there, but frugal. Remember, this is a house for one man. So, keeping it minimal is fine. Get a dog, even 2. Befriend the neighbors. You'll usually find simple people as neighbours, be humble. Be part of their little community, those yearly meetups, festivals, or weekly campfires. Practice basic martial arts, learn to wield a knife, workout everyday, build strength, blend in. Farm veggies, start small. 

Once you've done that you've basically built yourself a very frugal living space where you can live comfortably for as long as you need to. There are definitely risks and mental costs which comes with this, but that's to be expected. It all depends on your goals, temperament, priorities in life.

Remember, we're all human, embrace your mortality. Doing this you'll find out more about yourself. Trust your instincts. It's not for everyone. 

[ryoko]

Depending on your needs, switching to a living space cheaper than your current one, out in the countryside, could be an ideal variation of this, if you need this only for a few years. 

Fully commiting to the original plan is perfect for those who want to master living off the grid, and doesn't have too much technical constraints. There's instances of climbers living near camps, this is akin to that.