Learning Without a Goal: The Joy of Learning

In the United States, learning is seen as a means to an end, not as an end of itself. You go to college to get a degree that will net you a good-paying job. You learn new skills on that job to get a promotion that will increase your wages. You learn that side hustle to make more money on the side. Education ties with money. Money, in American society at least, is the final measure of someone’s worth. Education becomes just another commodity to consume and to show off your social status. Much of this comes from the wide economic inequality and American disdain for the poor. Fancy college degrees are like driving a Porsche. Learning is the key to making more money, and money is the key to higher social standing. However, in reality no one pays attention to who drives the fancy cars or wears the fancy clothes. Rather, they are more concerned with picturing themselves in those clothes and cars (Housel, 2020).

When you make learning a means instead of an end, you reduce the value of one of the best methods of enriching life. Making money the final measure of value also reduces the quality of life.

I fell into this thinking trap too. I have 5 degrees, all of them chasing the abstract idea of “career.” I come from a poor family. We wanted for nothing, thanks to the hard work of my parents. But we also didn’t have extras outside of renting a video game over the weekend. No traveling. No vacations. No school trips. I was raised to loathe debt, so I worked hard to pay off my student loans and to get the most practical degrees for my interests. I chose wrong in that regard. My point: I chased learning as a means to an end rather than an end. Now, it’s not entirely wrong to do this. However, if it is the only way you think, as I thought for so long, you miss out on one of the great joys of life. For those of you who have been burned by bad education systems: yes, learning can be a lot of fun. Most importantly, learning provides a means of self improvement. And I’m not speaking about making money:

Virtue, then, is of two kinds, intellectual and moral. Intellectual virtue owes both its inception and its growth chiefly to instruction, and for this very reason needs time and experience. Moral goodness, on the other hand, is the result of habit, from which it has actually got its name, being slight modification of the word ethos. This fact makes it obvious that none of the moral virtues is engendered in us by nature, since nothing that is what it is by nature can be made to behave differently by habituation.

What Aristotle is saying here (in Nicomachean Ethics): learning is the key to intellectual and moral virtue. You cannot make goodness a habit without first learning that habit. Musashi, although from a military angle, suggests the same idea:

If you merely read this book you will not reach the Way of Strategy. Absorb the things written in this book. Do not just read, memorise or imitate, but so that you realize the principle from within your own heart study hard to absorb these things into your body. […] You must cultivate your wisdom and spirit. Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the Ways of different arts one by one. When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realized the wisdom of strategy.

While both men see learning as a means to improve, they also suggest the process is endless. Learning is both a means and an end. It’s fine for learning to be seen as a means to an end. Sometimes you need to approach it that way. Education can lift people out of poverty. However, seeing learning as only a means loses what Aristotle and Musashi point toward: learning as an end that creates the means.

Learning for its own sake creates indirect benefits, be it money, virtue, or martial wisdom. You don’t have to chase these things when you learn. It happens on its own. I use JP as a way of directing and expressing my own learning. Sometimes I research with an end in mind. I want to write an article about this or that topic, so I go research it. In the process, I usually stumble across several more ideas I want to learn more about. At times, they appear as articles here. Other times, I let the knowledge simmer. Either way, I have fun learning these odd bits of facts. And they aren’t always related to Japan or to history. For example, the other day while researching for an article, I fell down a rabbit hole of a new type of business. Automated stores that track your purchases using cameras and weight sensors are becoming reality. You can’t shoplift in these stores! They won’t let you out until you replace the items or pay for them. However, this leads to wide implications for labor, the economy, and leisure. The rabbit hole became a galaxy of questions that I wasn’t chasing at the beginning. Learning for the sake of learning.

Many people avoid learning as an end because it is uncomfortable. It requires you to challenge your assumptions and viewpoints. At times, we hold these assumptions and viewpoints as a part of our identity, our self. Challenging them, realizing they are, perhaps, wrong, can upend your world. As Musashi wrote:

What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing. It is not included in man’s knowledge. Of course the void is nothingness. By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist. That is the void. People in this world look at things mistakenly, and think that is what they do not understand must be the void. This is not the true void. It is bewilderment.

Everyone views something in a mistaken way, whether politics, identity, nature, astronomy, or even anime and Japanese culture. The void, as Musashi discusses, is the knowledge of an opposite. It is the reality hidden behind and within the labels we use. For example, let’s say we see someone marching for a cause we detest. Let’s get more concrete. Let’s say I see a white supremacist marching. My initial reaction is to think they are ignorant and uneducated. While this may be true, I am not privy to their thought patterns. I can’t know that maybe they developed their viewpoint because his mother was killed by a black man. I can’t know that maybe he has black friends but supports some other part of the supremacist’s organizational ideals. By learning these ideas may exist, I learn my originally considered reasons may not exist for this person. This isn’t exactly what Musashi refers to with “void,” but it touches on the concept. All of these things could be that person’s reality, the void, that I cannot see. Learning for learning’s sake allows you to remain curious even in the face of something you detest. It allows you to be comfortable, or at least a little more flexible, with holding an idea that conflicts with your mental framework. At the same time, this doesn’t mean you need to compromise your values. Holding conflicting ideas informs and enhances your values because you make a considered choice.

Everyone has limits, and learning as a means reveals these limits. Another personal example, I lost my grandmother to COVID-19 back in 2019. And this loss would have been prevented if everyone wore masks properly; she caught it from someone who failed to wear a mask properly around her and shortly after was diagnosed. I’m not an angry person, but when I saw the anti-mask people I burned with anger. While I know their arguments of personal freedom and the like, I cannot hold that in my mind. From my view, they were acting as children who put themselves first and in doing so killed people like my grandmother. I cannot, no matter how much I learn, change this view. Nor do I feel a need to do so. Selfishness is childish. And I include myself in that assessment.

But enough of my rant. Learning for its own sake is challenging and forces you to face the ugliness of reality with an open mind. But we each have limits as to how far we can face this. And that is okay. Despite this problem, I still find learning a joy. It enriches my life and makes it interesting. A day where I don’t learn something new is a wasted day. Learning allows me to continually challenge my views and aim toward increasing virtue. Learning, falling down rabbit holes, is fun. I hope you will also reconsider how you approach learning. Do you learn just for the sake of learning? Do you learn with a goal in mind, be it money or a blog post? Learning as a means isn’t wrong. It can lead to viewing learning as an end. A life where learning is an end that challenges and makes you grow is a rich life indeed.

References

Harris, Victor, tr.(2013). The Book of Five Rings. Gramercy (first published in 1645).

Housel, Morgan (2020). The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness. Harriman House.

Thomson, J.A.K., tr. (1953). The Nicomachean Ethics. Penguin Books.