In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.
- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer
I’m presently rewriting the curriculum for a new Leftfield course. New for you, not so for me. It's the third rewrite. And that’s after first, second and third drafts.
All of which I had no problem with. But this latest one is really getting on my goat because the catalyst for it was the advice that people: are not interested in learning, only in a tangible, objective, specific, outcome.
I can understand the interest in the ‘transformation’ as they call it, in the course business— you want to move the needle in some respect, obviously, but how are we pulling that off? It sounds like the business plan of Southpark’s underpants gnomes:
Phase 1: Collect underpants
Phase 2: ?
Phase 3: Profit.
That missing step is, of course, where the magic happens. And unless we’re relying on magic wand-type magic, that means learning. But I was mid-rewrite before it occurred to me: what is this strange world? Who are these people not interested in learning?
And when did it go out of favour?
Hoffer wrote the quote above in 1951: a time of glacial change by contrast to the tech-driven, exponentially accelerating pace of the modern day, but in many respects, it seems our appreciation for learning has only waned in that time.
Learning, as distinct from education, you understand. Education hasn’t changed at all. Kids are still schooled for an industrial age. Conditioned to live by the bell, for a workplace and world that no longer exists. Education, remains the regurgitation of facts and figures: as Seth Godin so neatly captures it — will this be on the test?
Six damning words, a sure sign that neither party— teacher or student—is in the learning business. No, education, such as it is, is a good way to arrive at the conclusion you hate learning.
But school is no longer where it’s at. We live in a time of immeasurable learning wealth in which you can receive expert instruction and teach yourself anything. Do a cursory search of kids doing ‘pick any skill’ on YouTube and prepare to be gobsmacked: card tricks, every sport you can think of and Hendrix or Jimmy Page riffs peeled off with perfection.
And these riches beget more riches. There have always been child prodigies but these were people you heard or read about, you didn’t get to see them in action. Now, if so inclined, in whatever respective discipline, you can cue up 15 before lunchtime and this (Bannister) effect is recalibrating our notion of normal with the vanguard of human potential expanding at a speed unimaginable even a decade ago much less the 1950s.
Encouraging, were it not for the fact, that back in the pack we are content to sit and watch. Entertaining though it is, physically we’re going backwards. Life expectancy is in decline and societal fitness in a death spiral.
The 1950s required a resourcefulness and problem-solving attitude that made the average Joe a practical-skilled polymath by comparison to today when changing a tyre, repairing a gasket, and even cooking, sewing, baking, and gardening are year by year becoming the domain of specialists.
From a time when there were no supermarkets, everything can now be easily and cheaply purchased or replaced. Indeed, the moral vacuity of planned obsolescence, demands everything be easily and cheaply replaced. And when already cocooned in comfort, learning just seems like unnecessary hard work. And the less we learn, the less we’re inclined to learn: an atrophying of the mind that makes it more difficult, less likely, still.
Our development is confined to the ever-expanding array of digital skills required to navigate a virtual world. This being less a case of deliberate, conscious, learning as by involuntary osmosis with our digital chops coming courtesy of our engagement with the online world.
Everything else is solvable by (more) consumption or— its service-industry equivalent—outsourcing.
Well, not everything. But it’s not just the corresponding lack of engagement with the real world that accounts for our declining physical capacities — we’ve been going downhill a lot longer than that— it’s that we’ve simply never come to view it as a skill.
In the 1950s, all those little jobs and more meant that basic physical fitness wasn’t a skill so much as a byproduct of everyday life. And then it wasn’t.
So our basic operating instructions have eluded us. And, hey, I get it, I’m as loathed to go to the instructions as the next guy. Certainly to start with the instructions. But if my flatpack bookshelf starts looking like Homer’s spice rack I’ll find my way there sure enough.
But there’s a curious disinterest in the body. Unlike our digital skills, we haven’t been nearly as driven to develop our ability to interact with our physical environments, to engage in real life. We just suffer the consequences. Revise our expectations, decide a shitty spice rack was what we wanted all along and recalibrate our notion of normal in the wrong direction.
And it’s curious because it’s curious. That’s the missing ingredient: curiosity
That by itself, would solve every fitness problem. But you can’t learn what you think you already know, because, paired with the disinterest, there’s an equally curious lack of humility. A strange dissonance.
The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.
- Harry S. Truman
Read any fitness article in the mainstream media and it’s a lottery as to the value of any information contained therein. A 50:50 toss of the coin at best, but more often rare kernels of truth wrapped in layers of bullshit. But read the comments section of any fitness article and, guaranteed, you’ll find it full of two chief characteristics: Error. And surety.
It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect writ large. And even the all-too-rare article detailing clear, common-sense, effective guidance, from a credible professional —often even a doctor— you’ll get:
Gary, 47 from Newcastle saying:
I don’t like resistance training, it makes me sweaty. I just walk everywhere and that’s good enough for me! - 54 likes. And:
Going to a gym isn’t necessary if you just have a little bit of self-control in the kitchen.
SueMagoo56, 68 from Brighton tells us. - 36 likes.
There’s self-selection here, certainly, and you might say people commenting on the net are no more representative of the population than those ringing talkback radio in the wee hours of the morning. And that may be so in some cases, except that sort of mistaken take on fitness is representative of the population exactly. Look around.
So these waters are irretrievably muddied, and despite wide — and unsurprising, given the physiological dictates—consensus as to how we might best go about the business of keeping ourselves ship-shape, there’s seemingly no end to the white coats you can roll out to endorse any agenda no matter how outlandish, and we’re back to a game of my expert vs your expert.
But if the prevalence of myth—mis and disinformation— explains how we come to adopt these ideas— in fact, it’s impossible not to— it doesn’t account for our failing to ever revise them.
Even when we — and most of the people we know— serve as a walking, talking, exhibit A to the contrary, we are still, sure as eggs, that eggs are the problem and if you just cut them out in favour of a green juice you’ll be right as rain.
I’m not out to make fun of anybody, like I said, our information comes contaminated, and it’s also no laughing matter. Our allegiance to falsehoods makes them, in many cases, the metaphorical hill we will literally die on.
If Gary and SueMagoo are to be believed, if a lack of the medicine that is lean muscle doesn’t lead directly to their demise it will absolutely detract from their quality of life.
And all for simple lack of the error-correcting mechanism that is curiosity.
Because the answers are all there. Firstly, that same expert instruction is all over the place. Should you care enough to question your beliefs and go beyond the mainstream media, a mere one-inch deep and find yourself on a credible forum like Strongfirst, Dan John, Strengthside, GMB or countless others you’ll find guidance. But here you’ll find questions and answers couched in that same quality of curiosity.
Tell me more. Try this. See what happens. A framing you’ll see almost without fail from even the best in the business and one pointing you straight to that great beholder of all fitness knowledge should you be humble enough, curious enough, to avail yourself of it: you.
So with the humility to first accept it (fitness) is a must, your curiosity (and humility) drive you to seek out credible advice. You have the humility to act on said advice and the curiosity to note how you respond to it. Repeat.
And you have yourself a fitness practice: A neverending series of questions and answers all driven by curiosity. And you can enjoy all the good things that come from the cumulative, iterative knowledge of self you might otherwise call learning.
Curiosity makes it possible, but there’s another key prerequisite of the new course— one more thing we can do to make all things fitness easier and even more effective. But that’s next time. Until then:
Curiosity cures: anxiety, ignorance, selfishness, extremism.
Curiosity creates: empathy, compassion, knowledge, growth.
Curiosity prevents: arrogance, judgment, stagnation.
Practice curiosity.
- Mark Manson
Enjoy your weekend.
- OLI