Mastery Does Not Exist

You can be an expert on something but mastery? Mastery is not possible. Why not? Because to have mastery you have to know everything about everything. Can you have mastery of one discipline? No, because mastery of one discipline means you have to know everything about that one thing. 

No one thing stands alone much like the old adage no man is an island. Even one discipline has many parts and each part to be mastered means you must know everything about those things. It becomes exponential in nature. 

In addition the minute you feel you know everything about one thing the click of the moment passes into the next moment and some part of that thing changes with the moment ergo meaning we have not attained mastery.

Even an expert must continually seek out more to add to there current level of knowledge. Both expertise and mastery require something that does not exist. Proficiency may be the real ticket here in this some what philosophical discussion but then again proficiency requires an ongoing and continual process of acquisition of knowledge and experience. 

To attain and remain proficient and an expert or to have mastery is fluid and never ending and that brings me to the quote: "If there is nothing to learn because we know it all, what is the challenge, why would the effort matter, what would be the point?"

Leaning never ends and to be an expert or to have mastery means you have reached the end but that can't be true because life itself is an ongoing event until death and in some belief systems death is not the end either. 

Maybe this is why the actual definitions used in such terms are also not complete but fluid with dependence on such things as the present moment, understanding, knowledge, perceptions, culture and beliefs that also shift and shimmer with the moment. 

An expert has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of and/or skill in a particular area. Mastery is the comprehensive knowledge and/or skill in a subject or accomplishment. Neither of these really denoted a one particular view as to what an expert or master actually is and knows. It leaves a lot of room open to interpretation. At what level of knowledge or skill means you are an expert or master? Does it mean of all those who practice in a discipline that you have achieved levels of knowledge and skill that far exceeds all others? How can you prove this? 

I guess philosophers and scientists have tried to answer such questions since the beginning of time.