In my experience lot of people operate on 'autopilot', and I find it incredibly sad. They have all of humanity's knowledge accessible to them in their hands through phones, I wish they would sometimes stop to search and read and learn and expand their internal knowledge bases. I wish people were more curious and open-minded.
I've personally always derived a lot of joy from constantly learning and improving myself and it's baffling to me how little growth and positive change I see in many of the people around me over the years.
Yeah, but whipping out your phone could be deemed autopilot, in fact, I would say it's a defining feature of modern implementation of autopilot.
I kinda feel like what you're getting at is that your iteration of autopilot is better than others. In the abstract most people are pulling information out of the web and ostensibly using it to construct a model. The difference here is priorities and to some extent the framework of moral schematics.
I would expect you're under the impression that what you're doing is productive, and productivity is good. That's not necessarily the case though - that's just a lens that post-Christian western society has adopted for scrutinizing individuals, and frankly it's a little harmful.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, I feel you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about productivity, I'm talking about stagnation in life (in terms of not 'growing' as a person).
My point is that it's easier than ever before to improve yourself through readily accessible resources. I wish more people would.
It can be through learning about different people's experiences, considering alternative opinions, thinking about views that oppose your own, studying social sciences, having conversations, and so on.
It seems to me that the people you describe as being on "autopilot" tend to be people that, for whatever reason, do not place a lot of value on the concept of improving oneself (at least, improving oneself in the manner you described, via constant learning, curiosity, and open-mindedness). These people simply have other priorities/worries taking up their time - making money, taking care of family, etc. I myself feel much like you - if I'm not constantly studying something or learning a new skill, I feel like I am stagnating. However, it is hard to make the case for people to constantly accumulate knowledge when most people have the knowledge they need to get by and accomplish their goals. What benefit is it for me to practice piano as a software engineer? I get a profound sense of satisfaction at seeing my skill improve and deeper appreciation for professional musicians, but is it necessary for me to do so? What does the average person really get out of reading, say, Plato's dialogues, when it comes to things like establishing a stable life, climbing the corporate ladder, or paying their bills, if they already believe they have a grasp on things? What is the case to be made for continuous improvement over improvement to the point of necessity, and no further?
From what I've pieced together, you have some value system that assesses goodness of growth. Growth is arbitrary and personal. You've set up a red herring in your idea of growth.
To frame it from first principals - we live in a continually evolving system, it's basically mandatory for any individual to "grow" in more ways than one: firstly, people have to navigate that ever-changing environment and as such are exposed to novel information and they have (at a biological level) to update their priors; secondly, at a biological level, invisible though it may be, people are in constant flux internally, now it's speculation, but I'd posit that at a biological level emotions, and boredom, and restlessness are all evolutionary features to press people towards some point, and as a sub-point to this, we're constantly remodeling our brains with our minds and thus I would posit we can confer "growth" as, ostensibly, an individuals model is constantly reorienting itself closer to the ground truth that the stimuli from the environment inculcates.
What I'm saying is that from my view, the contour you've used to define growth is a trajectory towards some point /you/ approve of, some average of things that are made visible to you by others. It seems you want more people to conform to your trajectory, which hey, that's fine, but you shouldn't harbor the expectation of people to do so. Some people want to memorize trivia about Game of Thrones so they can be the go-to authority in their social circle on the topic. Other people like to ride out their cognitive-emotional rollercoasters while rolling around in bed late into the day. Other people keep their growth dead silent. And every other conceivable permutation of that is going on right now, it just doesn't look productive.
And it's good this way. If everybody conformed to one particular trajectory most would quickly be left behind. If everybody followed a single trajectory, we'd lose the treasure of the many diverse forking paths that make up the human space.
School/Uni burns people out on learning stuff. They finish that then want to do other things, which may not involve learning something new.
But also plenty of people have anxieties about their livelihood these days thanks to wages, the economy, and the state of the world. It might be baffling because you lack perspective on that front by not having a shit life!
Every day on Reddit, I see people asking "Should I learn X?" And it's so fucking stupid. Why ask? Try to learn X. If it's boring, stop. There are no grades. There is no penalty for dropping out.
There are legitimate questions to ask, "Is book Y worth the money?" "If I learn Z, will it increase my job prospects?" But "should I learn X?" is a bad question, and only something as awful as years mandatory schooling can make someone think it is a good one.
Every day on Reddit, I see people asking "What is X?" And it's so fucking stupid. Why ask? Try to learn what is X by yourself, you are literally two clicks (long press and touch or whatever) away from getting an answer. But people don't want to do that (and some of them don't even know, for sure). But they are totally okay to register on Reddit, ask that question (and maybe even come some time to receive the answer).
In my experience lot of people operate on 'autopilot', and I find it incredibly sad. They have all of humanity's knowledge accessible to them in their hands through phones, I wish they would sometimes stop to search and read and learn and expand their internal knowledge bases. I wish people were more curious and open-minded.
I've personally always derived a lot of joy from constantly learning and improving myself and it's baffling to me how little growth and positive change I see in many of the people around me over the years.