In every era of each society, there is always a few outstanding achievers who surpassed the norms of their time. What always interest me is never the feat they achieved, but the prior built they trained in.
Take for example Alexander the Great, the Mercedonia legend who conquered countless king and nations was personally taught by Aristotle until the age of 16. What then, did Aristotle primarily teach?
Politics, logic, wisdom, ethics ethos and habits. (I am convinced Aristotle was not teaching ethics)
You will never find these subjects in today’s society, for the modern education curriculum is to build the good worker – not outstanding individuals. This is perhaps why people of today’s era are…somewhat lacking in humanity and self-development.
Like building a machine, humans are similarly built by enhancing specification or attribute. So what exactly should we focus on?
Compare two random individuals, the two primary differences in their character built will be knowledge and upbringing (which in essence is a form of training and experience).
What is the difference between a surgeon, pianist, and a sniper, despite all three having similar dexterity and coordination in finger movements? Knowledge and training.
Knowing too much is not useless, and the overpowered individual knows why. Knowledge improves read. The only difference between a skilled person and a novice is read.
A good surfer knows which tide to go for, and he ignore the smaller ones to conserve his energy. The inexperienced and ignorant person similarly does not know when good opportunities present, and jumped on each and every wave.
Pick a field, rate your understanding in it 1-10, and start reading until your ratings go up. It is easy to get a 6 within a few days. Move on to the next one. You will soon finding yourself drawing references from the things you learned before.
An electrical engineer was learning how to cook spaghetti and devised a faster way to cook them like instant noodles ready in 3 minutes. The engineering knowledge of material strength, air pressure, heat dissipation and microwave is more useful in cooking than I thought. Food is still physics and chemistry at the end of the day.
I am currently learning Aristotle’s teachings.