21/08/2025
Determination, Consistency and Commitment: The Decline of Foundational Virtues
By Sam Markey
Every teacher I’ve ever known has had the same complaint: “Students today aren’t like we were.” I used to laugh at that, thinking it was just the usual grumbling of one generation about the next. But the longer I’ve taught and trained, the more I see it myself. Not in everything, but in three particular qualities that once felt like the backbone of learning: determination, consistency, and commitment.
These virtues used to be assumed. If you wanted to get anywhere in a serious craft — whether that was martial arts, music, or even painting — you understood that effort and sacrifice came with the territory. Now I often see them treated as optional extras, like an accessory you can leave out of the box.
And that worries me. Because when those virtues weaken, the whole structure collapses.
The Old Way
When I started training, it was never easy. I remember long trips on buses that broke down in the middle of nowhere. Cheap hostels, floors harder than stone. Meals skipped because the fare went on travel. The exhaustion that followed me like a shadow.
And yet, I didn’t resent any of it. It was proof I was serious. If I wanted the knowledge, I had to go to the teacher. That’s how it was. You didn’t expect them to knock on your door.
Looking back, I realise that half of what I learned wasn’t the techniques at all. It was the patience of waiting. The humility of bowing. The resilience built one sore muscle at a time. No book or video can pass that on. It comes only from living it.
The New Way
Things feel different now. Students expect the teacher to bend, to travel, to adjust to their convenience. Even when teaching is free — which in itself is a gift — I see that sense of “well, what will you do to make this easy for me?”
It’s part of the wider world we live in. Nearly everything today is delivered on demand: food, films, endless streams of information. The hidden lesson is: “Why should anything be inconvenient?” But real growth doesn’t work that way.
When the student stops journeying to the master, something vital is lost. It’s not just logistics. It’s respect. The relationship begins to flatten into something more like a transaction. And once it’s transactional, the lessons that require humility and persistence don’t really take root.
Learning as a Commodity
I’ve noticed people treating disciplines the way they treat subscriptions. If it doesn’t entertain fast enough, they cancel. If it asks for time, they call it inefficient.
But mastery isn’t a streaming service. You can’t consume it passively. You have to endure it. Absorb it.
And here’s the irony: the more you truly learn, the more you realise how small your knowledge is. That humility is what separates the serious student from the dabbler. Yet too often I see people boast early, mistaking a glimpse of the surface for the depths. That false confidence is the trap psychologists call the Dunning–Kruger effect, though I don’t need the term to see it playing out in real life.
The Mouse Utopia
This loss of grit reminds me of John Calhoun’s famous mouse experiment in the 1970s. He built a perfect little world for them — food without end, clean water, safety, comfort. At first the population boomed. But then things started to unravel. Mothers abandoned their young. Fights broke out. And some mice — the “beautiful ones,” as Calhoun called them — withdrew into grooming and eating, doing nothing else with their lives.
They had everything. And yet, they collapsed. The colony went extinct not because of scarcity but because abundance stripped away the challenges that gave life its shape.
That feels uncomfortably familiar. Students today are surrounded by abundance: free knowledge, online resources, constant convenience. But without the hardship, the virtues that matter most don’t grow.
What It Costs
On the individual level, resilience weakens. Without practice in enduring setbacks, the first serious difficulty becomes a wall instead of a hurdle. Confidence becomes shallow, puffed up by fragments of knowledge. Depth vanishes because consistency never takes hold.
On society, the damage is collective. Traditions thin out, stripped of the respect they once commanded. Communities lose their depth, turning into clubs of consumers instead of fellowships of learners. Expertise itself is devalued — everyone thinks a few hours of exposure makes them an expert.
And in the workplace, the same pattern shows. Impatience with growth. Shallow skills. Reliance on convenience and constant feedback instead of initiative. Mentorship breaks down when younger workers expect to be carried rather than coached. And resilience? Too often it crumbles under the first real pressure.
What We Can Do
So what now? Complaining alone changes nothing.
I believe the answer lies in reintroducing challenge, but in controlled and meaningful ways. Success must be measured less by speed and more by endurance. Teachers and leaders must model commitment instead of just preaching it. Humility and reflection should be encouraged at every stage. And above all, students must become active participants, not passive recipients.
None of that is glamorous. But neither is real growth.
Choosing the Harder Path
The truth is, we live in an age that makes ease seductive. But virtues like determination, consistency, and commitment cannot be downloaded, delivered, or shortcut. They must be earned.
Masters will always exist, but they reveal their depth only to those willing to walk the long road. If you expect wisdom to come to you, you may never taste it.
In the end, this isn’t only about skills. It’s about the kind of people we become. Do we endure? Do we persist? Do we contribute something lasting?
The mice of Universe 25 had no choice. They collapsed under the weight of their own comfort. We do have a choice. We can take the easy road, or the steep one. The easy road feels pleasant at first. The steep one hurts, but it forges something real.
And at the heart of it, that’s all determination, consistency, and commitment really are: choosing, again and again, to take the harder path — because it leads somewhere worth going.
