The world is the true classroom. The most rewarding and important type of learning is through experience seeing something with our own eyes.
So there was something of a learning curve with doing your own thing and people seeing you outside of the band. I mean people have never really heard my voice before - or heard a whole record of mine before. So it was a completely new experience.
After you start learning all about the mechanics of piloting a riverboat you stop seeing all the pretty sunsets and you start thinking about the weather.
I enjoy learning about different periods and people and then taking what's universal about the human condition and seeing where it matches up. No matter where you are certain things unite everybody.
Seeing much suffering much and studying much are the three pillars of learning.
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.
Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence seeing how you react. If you're in control they're in control.
To attempt this would be like seeing without eyes or directing the gaze of knowledge behind one's own eye. Modern science can acknowledge no other than this epistemological stand-point.
We have a hunger of the mind which asks for knowledge of all around us and the more we gain the more is our desire the more we see the more we are capable of seeing.
When AI approximates Machine Intelligence then many online and computer-run RPGs will move towards actual RPG activity. Nonetheless that will not replace the experience of 'being there ' any more than seeing a theatrical motion picture can replace the stage play.