Societal over-commitment to learning

The ultimate limit to societal learning may lie in the consequences of unrestricted societal over-commitment to learning. As enthusiastically described by some organizations, learning is not limited by its relationship to other social pressures but this leads via the 'eternal student' to a society dedicated to the consumption of information and totally unable to focus that learning for action (on the world problematique for example). This raises the question as to what extent learning systems do, or should, empower users to act.