What Taoism can teach us about learning in the age of AI

As our attention spans and cognitive abilities are increasingly damaged by digital overuse and AI-mediated shortcuts, the ability to focus deeply and learn something in depth is quickly becoming a critical skill. 

Never have we had such broad access to information. And never have so many people felt unable to concentrate long enough to truly master anything. Learning is everywhere, yet depth feels elusive. 

In a world where artificial intelligence can retrieve, summarize, and recombine information faster than any human, what remains valuable is the capacity to incorporate it. And for that to be possible, you need to stay with a subject long enough for it to transform you. To develop judgment, sensibility, and embodied understanding.

Engineering scarcity in a world of abundance

It is striking that some of the wealthiest people on the planet are actively trying to recreate conditions of scarcity for learning. Silicon Valley billionaires famously send their children to schools with no screens. The goal is to give the young brains of their offspring the chance to build attention, memory, and imagination without constant digital solicitation. And to give them an edge over hyperconnected, cognitively eroded plebs.

Conscious of the erosion of their cognitive abilities, more and more people attempt to engineer artificial information scarcity for themselves. They block websites, silence notifications, use distraction-free devices, or retreat into “deep work” bubbles. A growing number deliberately swap smartphones for so-called dumb phones, accepting inconvenience in exchange for cognitive space.

Among younger generations, a curious trend has emerged on TikTok: videos of people filming themselves doing absolutely nothing. What looks like absurdity is, in fact, a rebellion against overstimulation—a desire to recover the ability to sit with oneself without external input.

All these strategies point to the same intuition: Abundance without boundaries is not liberating. It is paralyzing. And learning, in particular, seems to require limits to flourish.

Learning when the future is radically uncertain

This matters all the more because learning has lost one of its traditional motivations: predictability. For decades, acquiring skills was tied to relatively stable professional trajectories. You learned accounting to become an accountant, law to become a lawyer, engineering to become an engineer. The link between effort and outcome was broadly intelligible.

Today, nobody knows which skills will be valued among future white-collar workers—or whether many of those will still be hired at all. Entire professions are being reshaped, fragmented, or automated faster than educational institutions can adapt. In such a context, learning can feel strangely demotivating. Why invest years mastering something that may soon be obsolete? 

And yet, this very uncertainty may make deep learning even more meaningful. When external guarantees disappear, learning becomes less about employability and more about orientation, about building internal resources like discernment, aesthetic sense, and intellectual resilience. This is where Taoist-inspired approaches to learning suddenly feel increasingly relevant.

What’s Taoism? 

As one of the great spiritual traditions of China, it is traditionally associated with the Tao Te Ching, attributed to Lao-Tzu (around the 6th century BCE), and later texts such as the writings of Zhuangzi. At its core lies the concept of the Tao—often translated as “the Way”—the underlying, ever-changing principle that governs the natural world.

Taoism is not a doctrine of control or optimization. It emphasizes alignment rather than domination, and harmony rather than performance. One of its central ideas is wu wei, often mistranslated as “nonaction” but better understood as “effortless action”: acting in accordance with the natural flow of things rather than forcing outcomes.

Another key idea is pu, the “uncarved block,” symbolizing simplicity, openness, and unconditioned potential. Taoist wisdom consistently warns against excess—of desire, of knowledge, of intervention—and values emptiness, slowness, and restraint as conditions for clarity. In short, Taoism offers a sharp lens through which to rethink how we learn today.

A lesson from Fabienne Verdier: scarcity as a teacher

I was reminded of this while reading Passenger of Silence, French artist Fabienne Verdier’s remarkable account of the 10 years she spent in China in the 1980s, studying calligraphy and immersing herself in Chinese artistic and philosophical traditions. (Until March 2026, some of her striking works are being exhibited at the Cité de l’Architecture museum in Paris, offering a visual echo to the intellectual journey she describes.)

Verdier recounts the ascetic teaching methods of her calligraphy master. The caricature comes to mind immediately: the merciless master in Kill Bill, forcing Beatrix Kiddo to repeat the same gesture endlessly, withholding validation until the student is almost broken. Repeat and repeat and repeat the same stroke—until boredom, frustration, and despair surface. Wait months, sometimes years, before being deemed worthy of moving on. Prove motivation, patience, and humility before even being accepted as a student.

At one point in her book, Verdier recounts a decisive moment of collapse after being asked to paint endlessly the same strokes—one that her master greets not with concern, but with joy.

After months and months of training, I burst out one winter morning in front of my master:
“I can’t go on anymore; I don’t know where I am. In short, I don’t understand anything anymore.”
“Good, good.”
“I don’t know where I’m going.”
“Good, good.”
“I don’t even know who I am anymore.”
“Even better!”
“I no longer know the difference between ‘me’ and ‘nothing.’”
“Bravo!”

The more I fumed, the more delighted he became, his face radiant with happiness and amazement. He was hopping with joy, tears in his eyes. I went on, overwhelmed by an inner pain, thinking he hadn’t understood what I was saying:
“After all these years of practice, I realize that I am still just as ignorant in the face of the universe. I will never manage to accomplish what you are asking of me.”
“Yes, that is exactly it,” he said, clapping his hands with joy.

He danced in place with an incomprehensible delight. At that moment, I thought he was delirious.
“You have no idea how much pleasure you’ve just given me! There are people for whom an entire lifetime is not enough to understand their own ignorance.”

5 Taoist principles of learning we could all adopt

1. Learning as transformation, not acquisition: In Taoism, knowledge is not something you accumulate but something you become. The Tao Te Ching repeatedly suggests that true understanding comes not from adding more, but from stripping away the superfluous. Mastery is not about collecting credentials or information, but about internal change. Learning is successful when it alters how you act in the world.

2. Patience as a prerequisite: Lao-Tzu famously writes: “I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures.” Patience is a condition for learning to occur at all. Progress can’t be forced. Growth unfolds in its own time, like the seasons. In learning, waiting is not wasted time but part of the process—especially when what is being learned is judgment, taste, or sensibility.

3. Scarcity and simplicity as cognitive discipline: Taoism consistently warns against excess. The ideal learner is not surrounded by infinite resources but protected from distraction. Fewer tools, fewer references, fewer stimuli allow attention to settle. As Lao-Tzu notes: “When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” 

4. Process over outcomes: Taoist wisdom is skeptical of linear progress and measurable outcomes. Learning does not move smoothly from beginner to expert; it circles, deepens, stalls, and restarts. This stands in stark contrast to modern learning cultures obsessed with efficiency, milestones, and KPIs. If you focus too much on results, you miss the internal transformations that constitute real mastery.

5. Boredom and not-knowing as thresholds: Perhaps the most radical principle is the role of boredom. Taoist practices value stillness and emptiness as gateways to insight. In learning, boredom is often the point where superficial motivation collapses—and where something deeper can begin. To tolerate boredom, uncertainty, and silence is to resist the constant stimulation of digital environments. 

Learning humility in an age of hubris

Taoism dismantles the illusion of mastery and domination. It reminds us that knowledge is always partial, that control is fragile, and that force ultimately backfires. Water defeats rock.

Those who claim to know do not truly know. Learning, in this tradition, is inseparable from the recognition of one’s ignorance. Verdier’s master does not celebrate her despair out of cruelty, but because she has finally reached a point where ego, certainty, and ambition collapse. Only then can real learning begin.

This stands in sharp contrast with our contemporary climate of hubris—technological, economic, and political—where confidence is rewarded more than doubt. 

Taoist learning offers a counter-ethic. It teaches that in brutal times, restraint may be the most radical form of resistance.