it's easy; just read about stuff that interests you. i've always been fascinated by kabalah/qabalah and medieval alchemy, and i've read a metric shit-tonne of classic sci-fi. for example, seeing how poorly xenogears utilized these ideas in its narrative really irked me -- it referenced the sefirot and the zohar without really understanding what they are and thus failed to effectively use them as a symbol, concept, allegory, or metaphor. really, in xenogears, the concepts are just used to give cool pseudo-religious names to stuff. same thing with mgs4; they can talk about proxy wars and reference a zillion military-industrial conspiracies, but when push comes to shove, those ideas are just a thin coat of pretentious shellack on yet another gundam animu "WHY CAN'T WE STOP FIGHTING LOOK WHAT WAR DOES TO US" plot.