When we are young we have to learn in order to start becoming more like those around us, meaning, we have to learn how to walk, how to talk, eat, etc.
These are necessary acquirements. As we grow older and acquire all these “fundamental” behaviors and manners it is then on us to learn how to think like the majority in order to be accepted in our society. That means we should acquire knowledge about things which our society considers important. By that, we lose our individuality, creativity, and freedom of mind; and we become robots; machines that get more and more alike without noticing it.
And if you try to go against the tide you become an outsider, rejected from society. That’s why people get more and more afraid to really be themselves, stand for who they are and love themselves for who they are. Instead, they try to fit in, careful not to be noticed, trying to be like everyone else.
But it’s hard to learn something if you’re not really interested or passionate about it. We only learn what we really want to, what we really feel like is valuable for us.
So when we are young these are basic things like talking walking etc. And when we get older it’s the things we consider important for our life. But as I already mentioned the freedom of choosing what is important or valuable gets restricted more and more by society.
Also, I think that once you reach a certain age people stop being truly interested in things because they had to be interested in things all their life so after a certain point they feel like they had enough input. All the time I hear people saying that when you’re older the brain doesn’t work as fast anymore and that’s why older people can’t learn anything new or at least it takes a lot more time. But I think that is nonsense, because if you want to learn and you are really interested in learning something then you will no matter what age.