The Mind of a Polymath

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain

Note: I found a mentor who’s helping me grow this brand into something greater. I’ve had to revamp my content strategy & spent 50x more time on X (Twitter) this week. I needed a bit of time to adapt to the new workload. Hence, I was not able to write a post for this week. I will be back to my normal posting schedule starting with the next post, which will be about “Ultra-learning.”

This post is a personal essay I wrote about a year back. It’s always interesting to look back & see how far you’ve come.

Introduction:

Your mind is your greatest asset.

But it can also become your greatest liability.

What did Aristotle, DaVinci, and Newton have in common? An insatiable desire to pursue their curiosities.

They were obsessed with the intricacies of the natural world.

Newton is globally revered for his contributions to physics & mathematics, but most people don’t know that his deepest passion was for alchemy.

The art of transmuting regular metals into gold & silver. He spent years of his life pursuing the legendary “philosopher’s stone.”

The Education System:

Nowadays, we’re placed into schools at the age of 3 or 4 years & indoctrinated for another 12 years or so.

Then, if you’re able to survive the process, you’re shipped off to colleges to “pursue your interests.”

If, after all this, you’re able to keep your sanity, you’re allowed the opportunity to enter the workforce & get slapped by the cruelty of the real world.

The guy who’s willing to sacrifice everything for schooling is the one who will emerge victorious in this vicious system.

Has education become more of a business?

Why did we allow this to happen?

How could we deny ourselves the opportunity to follow our dreams?

Learning is the innocent pursuit of curiosity, not the indoctrination of schooling.

When did it become “ok” to trade our livelihoods for alphabetic letters?

Human Potential:

True enrichment of the mind occurs when you’re in the “flow state”.

It’s when you choose a challenge that pushes you slightly beyond your skill level and successfully complete it. This releases a batch of positive neurotransmitters which signal to your brain that you’re making progress & evolving.

This positive attribution with learning is what drives the flywheel effect required to become truly educated. This automatically enables a framework of thinking in your mind called “The Scientific Method”: to hypothesize, plan, execute, fail, try again, iterate, fail, try yet again, and try over and over again till till you’re able to synchronize & extract the result you want from the very core of the universe.

Without this flywheel effect happening at a microcosmic level, how can we expect to holistically evolve into our ideal society?

Without individuals pursuing their own curiosities & contributing their own ideas to a multitude of diverse fields, how can we unleash our true caliber as a race?

Multidimensional growth is required, in order for us to truly achieve global peace & unity.

We fight amongst ourselves for petty reasons. Falsely justified, unchecked egos cause cataclysmic events that can’t be reverted.

Take Hitler, for example. He wanted to be an artist at “The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts.”

He had a deep passion for art & capturing the sublime intricacies of the world. He was rejected from the academy 2x, because the admissions officers thought his drawings lacked “artistic talent”.

Not to mention, he was also told that his art didn’t show an “appreciation for the human form.”

Man, did he take that to heart. I can’t help but think how differently things could’ve turned out if the admission officers had disregarded talent & allowed Hitler to pursue his passion.

Closing:

We need to look back at history & learn from the great polymaths that came before us. Their curiosity & desire for knowledge is something they nurtured throughout their lives. We can re-ignite the passion that was lost during our time in the societal indoctrination system.

Talent can be lost & it’s subjective. Passion on the other hand can’t be taught. It’s a feeling from deep inside that strives to manifest itself through your existence as a medium.