Provocative thoughts at The Rational Male:

For all this easy access to competency, mastery, information-based skills, what we find lacking is real, valuable content. It’s great that we have access to the tool boxes of old order masters, but what do we build with those tools? Thus far, not very much. Usually those tools build rehashes of old order ideas to be sold as something novel in the digital age….The ease of the digital new order makes us lazy. For all of the access we have now, for all of the information we have, we’ve never been more unmotivated. The process of mastery, the process and dedication needed to attain it, used to contribute to the creative impetus required to use it. Today we’ve never been less creative in our thinking. It’s why we keep returning to old order stories and movie franchises. We just retell the same old order thinking stories in more advanced and colorful ways with the technology of the digital order. But we just repeat ourselves; or we add some social justice twist to stories that were timeless because the art took precedence over any other consideration.

When something is easy to make, it’s value diminishes. It’s incredibly easy to get your book/video/movie made, and incredibly hard to get it seen, because it’s full of an ocean of content. So the corporations rely on known stories, as trustworthy means of creating interest. But they aren’t that reliable, and lots of people are bored by them.

So if it’s easy to master doing something well, what makes the difference?

The only answer can be persistence, and the grind.