Mastery

The human mind can model anything. Well, not anything . But most things. Mastery has the edge of Awesome where society values it.





How to get it?
Mastery basically means you understand fully how the underlying system works. In video games what we are really doing is modelling, figuring out, the system and then beating it with that knowledge. Anything else in life follows exactly the same process - games are just a condensed or simplified version of the reality we see everywhere else around us in life.

Mastery then, might be called total knowledge, total understanding. If you have mastered the art of hunting, it means you generally know the techniques and scenarios involved, it means you will have acquired the relevant skills in that area. The guitar player knows every local space of his instrument, through his brain's associations including what a guitar *is*, all of which are built and refined over probably a long period of time. Whether you use a bow & arrow or a computer, your mind has intricate & intimate (close, detailed, rich) knowledge about what to do with these objects at various levels of interaction. A person with many friends has mastered what that takes, involving how to treat people in a positive manner, how to gain someone's interest in conversation, body language and so on: these are the required skillsets of this area.

Gaining mastery involves having a goal. A guitar player has WANTED or NEEDED to play the guitar, we might say. If you do not care, or do not want to put something at the center of your life, then you will not master it in a short space of time. This is why people might say to "do what you are interested in", in life.

A general rule offered by is to put around 10 000 hours into that thing you wish to do. It really is not a lot of time considering the average human lifespan. How much do you want it? The answer is within you aready; it has already been built, so to speak.. someone with a need to be famous or gain attention might become good at that. Time is just a multiplier for the deep intention and commitment you have: all the time in the world will not make a great hacker or philosopher or programmer if the person does not understand the deep inner drive for something more, indeed something that requires them to take risks and put that need before everything else.