That's just the illusion that's created by the inexperience of most JavaScript developers. You don't have to continually learn the bleeding edge stuff. What they don't tell you (arguably, because it doesn't pay their bills) is that what you should learn is the language. Once you understand that, you can comfortably adapt to any new library/framework/whatchamacallit relatively quickly.

Most of what you've described is just peer pressure. The only reason I know that is that I shared this exact opinion until I said "this is stupid" and started doing things my own way (to much success and peace).