 What's up everyone? I am pumped to talk to you guys about Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Robert Piercig I'm super grateful that one of my best friends Greg Harner had read the book and passed it along to me as a birthday gift recently and It was definitely one of the best books I've ever read. It's actually known as one of the best-selling philosophy books of all time Also as one of the most widely read philosophy books ever There have been millions and millions and millions of copies sold worldwide across 23 different languages And it's kind of funny because Robert after having a hundred and twenty one different rejections Ended up landing this as such a popular philosophy book I think one of the reasons why it ended up being so popular is Because he had a lot of breadth studying philosophy also he had an IQ of 170 which is One in about 50,000 people have that he graduated high school at age 14 And he was interested in science itself rather than any professional career path so basically in trying to understand what the essence of philosophy Science the nature of reality are Rather than following a career path in the actual economic machinery itself And I think that one of the reasons why he was so successful also was because that he follows a Rhythm in his writing that is of one of the highest cadences that I've ever kind of Took taken in it only took me about three days And he weaves together the biggest philosophical questions with within this 17-day motorcycle cross-country adventure to his son and in the first couple of days he was with his two other friends and so that's kind of One of the ways that he makes it relatable is that he's able to weave in these most complex philosophical questions in with something as Simple as a motorcycle cross-country adventure. It makes it more relatable So I would like to just pop things off and just start it off with this question. What is best? what is quality and a lot of what we have going on in our civilization is we have a A non focus on those questions if you think about it in school Did you ever have a time that a teacher or another student around you asked you those questions? What is best? Or what is quality? Because if we don't have our society pressing us to Figure out what those things are The likelihood that we just become cogs in the machinery increases. So that's why those questions are so important So maybe rather than asking one of your friends when you see them again, you know Hey, what's new instead of asking them that try asking them. Yo, what do you think is best? And just see where that conversation leads you So I'm gonna go ahead and wander into what is the most upstream issue so the downstream we have today's Church of Reason and economic machinery and things like that which have done good jobs in many ways But also have their own malevolence is that we'll talk about but I'm gonna head upstream for a moment. So if you think about Consciousness if you think about awareness if you think about perception These are the most fundamental characteristics of experience of phenomenology. There's nothing more fundamental than your consciousness than my Consciousness than our consciousness than this awareness Nothing is more fundamental than that And so because of that we are We are In deep need to understand what it is That's why it's basically this pinnacle of metaphysics It's this pinnacle of synthesis between science and spirituality is consciousness is awareness in the studying of that and understanding it What Robert did a good job of explaining was what happened with Immanuel Kant and what happened was that a Similar to what Nicholas Copernicus did when he Identified that it's not the earth. That's the center of the universe But that the earth orbits around the star that our son that There was this big sort of shift in perspective and consciousness that occurred slowly But it took a little bit of time and Kant did a similar thing where he said that it's not just this blank Slate that we're born with this blank slate But rather there is something called a priori and a priori can just simply be thought of as the 3.5 billion years of biological evolution that we went through before getting to this point So meaning from a single-celled organism Understanding sensing its environment right so that's where we had people like James Cook on our show That was talking about the the sort of internal consciousness understanding of keeping some sort of a ledger of an environment right and having that style of of Balance between that so it's sensing of an environment and making decisions based on that and so from that moment of the initial cell on the planet all the way up through the development of the Multicellular organism all of the Cambrian explosion and the different sea creatures all the way up to when they come on to land all the way up through the Reptilian era through the dinosaur era the asteroid collision the chimpanzee and then the human that there was this deep deep process of building up these biological a Priories and that's why when a mouse that has never seen a cat before and this is clear in scientific literature Gets even just the scent or the hair of a cat near it. It fear response and runs away So there is this lineage of epigenetics for mice that have been stacking up Over time and it's similar with us as well That's why when we think about this a priori we wonder is good built into it is Quality built into our a priori Do we inherently know what is good and what is not and then Then is it up to that free will to make the decision to head towards the good on an individual level on Manifesting our destiny into the world and our unique gift into the world and our highest moral potential and also on a collective level For us to as a civilization heads head towards what is the most? Benevolent future trajectory for us for all of us and rather than something that's more malevolent and so that sort of idea of unpacking what is our a priori Perceptual infrastructures that exist and another way of kind of understanding this is music, right? You hear these these beautiful tunes and rhythms and and melodies and harmonics and singing and orchestras and symphonies and That's why when you hear Bach or Beethoven or Mozart That your entire body gets chills sent through you and that's why they're known as the top Composers of all time and that's why you go there instead of listening to somebody just like scraping on a violin randomly, right and so This is the idea you have an inherent perceptual ability to sense good and to sense quality and that ability may even be ultimate reality, which will get to towards the end and And So just the unpacking of that is its own that's its own book and that's its own Documentary and that's its own and we're gonna be working on projects like that that really begin unpacking what that a priori Awareness infrastructure is that is then Basically Triangularly parsing our world for what the star is at all times And that's why right when you hear the music you can sense it But you it's not a logical reasoning thing you after you sense it then you break down logically Oh, well Mozart is incredible because of x y and z so it's an a priori snap to sensation of the good and to of quality and and not so much of The downstream is the reasoning part of it more so and that's why the Greek had the word arete for excellence and That the more that we sort of commune with what these ancient spiritual Wisdoms are the more we commune with those that are basically dead the more that we really begin to understand like What can I pull from like the ancient Egyptians and the and the Mesopotamians and the Indus Valley and and the Vedas and Zoroastrian and Judaism and Christianity and Islam and and Buddhism and Hinduism and and Taoism and Confucianism and the African Vodun traditions and the Native Americans and shamanism and plant medicines and that style of indigenous wisdom What can we basically begin pulling from them as a pattern of how they how they understood and embodied some sort of a metaphysical good or quality into their spirit in lives and how they basically leveraged that in order to live lives that were more Towards that good and quality as we saw in the Greek in many people say that the Greek Civilization was actually one of the peaks of Philosophy that we've ever had and I completely agree with that And there's some sort of a strange there was no division between good and truth is what we think It's a very interesting subject But then all of a sudden truth won over good And that's why we led to the world of reason and sort of the Aristotelian division of everything rather than that platonic sort of good one Ideology and there's a synthesis that needs to happen between the two where you can have truth and reason and science and Technology be synthesized with quality good values That style of thinking art and spirituality and that's basically one of the key essences of my life And it's a key essence of chapter 7 the sorting algorithm of high-level perception that would be published here in a couple weeks and that style of thinking of the synthesis of these two sort of dominating ways of perception and feeling and embodying and being and Catalyzing Advancements in the world is basically one of the most critical essences that we need to do in order to most properly move forward So that's basically what a big chunk of what Robert was writing about was it was that the reason lacks Values it lacks that quality and that that's causing all of these other downstream issues in our 20th century In the 20th century we experienced as Nietzsche said the death of God and we experienced 150 million or so deaths due to that secularization due to that nihilism due to the dropping of that Pinnacle star of the highest possible morality There was not so much of the embodiment of atlas and Buddha and Christ and there was more so the embodiment of some sort of a possession of of Secularization and it as Max Weber says a disenchantment and That sort of desacralization ended up catalyzing a lot of the malevolence downstream that happened with the Holocaust and with the the gulag and with the great leap forward and shine in with pulpa and with the Armenian Greek and Assyrian genocide that that these these types of Malevolences are very specifically honed from the from the most upstream issue of sort of reason not having a Heart and a value and a quality Or an understanding of the good and I think that's super-duper important for us to have Identified and today in the 21st century people feel like cogs in the economic machinery And this is a big problem with what we see in in places and in modernity like like China Is that they have a lot of? Communistic social fabric success with eradicating poverty and one not in giving people more But they also have the problem of people losing their individuality and feeling more like a cog in a machine As a replaceable cell in the organism of China And that that's also a big problem, but the United States also has their big problems with the over Individualization to such a point where the lack of sort of Social fabric Infrastructures become sort of secondary and thinking that that's actually not as important for actualizing the basic needs of every single person And so that's sort of an understanding as well in the sorting algorithm It's not just of science and spirituality that need to be sorted and uplifted But also of the left and the right domestically in the US of Nationally on an international level the US and China being able to sort these best practices into a synthesis at the That highest possible that that can be unleashed into the world getting rid of the disenchantments and maximizing the potential of a synthesis of Reason with quality so science also has a hierarchy of facts It was really interesting learning more about Jules Henry Poincaré. I actually Hadn't really come across his work too much But he's a massive massive influence on understanding that science actually has a hierarchy of facts itself And that's where there is you can begin seeing that actually science itself has a Has quality to it as well So there's a star in science as well and a good way to think about this is that it's it's more efficient for you to learn a very general truth in science than it is for you to learn some sort of like a Something way lower on the pyramid on the hierarchy like something that's only specific to the niche of one specific or species right So if I know the behavioral Drive of a single species in biology That's less important than if I know how a cell works and you can understand that the cell the general truths of a cell and of Proteins are way more important because they're applicable across the biological kingdom and spectrum then as the single behaviors of One species and so you can see there is beginning to be some sort of a hierarchy of facts in science as well So that's where you can kind of start beginning to see some sort of a synthesis And it's also very true. We talked about this before on the show as well is that in science if you don't have values and quality and spirituality that enter into science you have problems like the The the Robert Oppenheimer Edward Teller sort of atomic bomb hydrogen bomb era that became unleashed and Because of that death of God But then at the same time if you don't have science enter into the realm of spirituality Then you have people that are trying to peddle things like snake oil salesmen you have people that where there is we need the scientific test to be able to tell if that's sort of That claim that these things are energetically healing that we can scientifically verify those claims so Yeah, we've talked about this quite a bit We need to you know Robert talked about it as a classical the classical being the science and the technology and The reason and then the romantic being the arts and the quality and the spirituality and The values and we need a synthesis between those And that's going to maximize our potential and that every single Art our social fabric itself needs to be conducive maximally conducive incentive wise and inspiration wise to have every single person realize that They're gonna have the most meaning come into their lives by taking on the most burden on their back as in the more Responsibility like Jordan Peterson has been talking about the more you're like Atlas right in mythology the more you're like Christ the more you're like Buddha the more you eradicate the roots of your own suffering Through understanding the breath and understanding the consciousness and awareness and the more that you sort of take on the biggest moral burdens on yourself The more that you're gonna feel like you're achieving a higher level of existence in being and The more that you're gonna feel like you're heading towards a north star, right? We have to we have to head towards something. We have to future author our way So it's a balance between being here and in the now and being super present with also being super oriented towards the future And being honed in on that relentlessly and so it's that balance as well and you basically begin treating good as a noun rather than an Adjective and that this becomes the highest moral conduct of all and I think that's really profound and and Robert unpacked that more in his second book Lila Lila and Inquiry into morals that was written in 1991 whereas Sam Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance and Inquiry into values was written in 1974 so I Also want to Remember just remember that last part that last part so crucial that you have to think about good as a noun rather than an adjective And the more that you think about that the more you realize that it really is like a sort of set of behaviors and principles and Objects and ideas and ideals that I have to sort of think about an embody and work with as Super frequently in order to have that highest moral conduct Another problem that happened in the book Well that I think was one of the biggest problems that super identifies to modern society is that We took this hundred and seventy IQ genius of Robert who was you know, phaedrus at that time and He was you know very brilliant as you know professing in English And he was he was recognizing that rather than teaching his students What quality was that he should be having them understand what quality is themselves? And so that was one of the profound realizations and then started building out this whole idea of a metaphysics of quality And then there was this sort of decision that oh well He's actually insane and then because of that decision and because of the time period that it was in that we could do things like do this electroconvulsive therapy onto him and basically Barbecue him and to await that personality into a new personality and that's a huge problem That's a huge problem. It's not you can't do that anymore today in a voluntary stuff like that I can't do that anymore today against the law, but It is something to think about is that level of neurodiversity if we have these people that are three standard deviations above the mean and IQ and more and their genius visionaries we need to we need to be highly conducive to helping them with storytellers and with and with teams and with further dissemination tools that allow them to actualize their technologies and their stories into the center of the bellicure of that then kind of move everybody up This is a big part of chapter four called portals and high-level perception And that that sort of essence is going to be critical rather than taking that neurodiversity And just throwing it off to the side like it's insanity and then we lose their gifts So that's so that was a very profound point for me as well There are these basically there's these patterns of the most uncommon 1 billion people that have ever lived out of the 100 billion people that have lived that we have the Civilizational inheritance from and the 99 billion common people that have lived Don't have as many of these patterns that the 1 billion really uncommon people do that have basically made the world that we live in today And so we need to identify what those patterns are and amplify them more for everybody And that the sort of in the bucket of frogs example the center of this evolutionary pacer can't be Pulling down these genius level frogs that are trying to escape out of the bucket and help other people move forward And that's what we have with these like resentment and and and jealousy and envy that happens in that center of the of the bell curve so All right, I'll move into some of the last things here. So I think that one of the most profound things that Especially that joren peterson has been teaching about has been this idea that it's quite possible that A a metaphysics an understanding of how we got to where we are today is through an idea of that Uh, if you think about back to the age of chimpanzee slowly evolving into the sort of prehistoric humans what what happened was there was a moment of of sex sexual selection that occurred where It became more and more clear that that women had the choice of declining men in the hierarchy and so That made men more self-conscious. So basically it made men more Aware of their place in the hierarchy. It made them more aware of their behavioral patterns So women declining men in sexual selection Made men more self-conscious and so it made women more self-conscious and it made us together more aware So that was potentially this is an idea. It was potentially the birth of metacognition so sexual selection may have birthed metacognition And then metacognition may have given rise to what is good It may have given rise to values. It may have given rise to quality And so that idea of metacognition Sort of enabling the bifurcation of what is good and what is bad is another profound idea That it's possible that we then realize that I can use my free will In order to decide to make good moves to climb up this hierarchy of competence And then the higher I am on the hierarchy of competence the more likely I am to propagate my genes moving forward with a very high level female player A very profound idea and then even downstream from that is that these ideas So basically we took our metacognition and we took the ideas of values and quality and what is good And we put those into stories And so then those stories we put on you know, the big cave paintings from 30 000 years ago We put them into we wrote them on papyrus on stone And we began telling these stories orally through traditions over these tens of thousands of years And the idea is that those that were better returititions those that used the essences of persuasion of ethos logos Pathos the more that you can talk from a place of authority from a place of logic from a place of emotional persuasion When you tell stories the more your means will communicate Into the other persons of receiving genes And then that person will take their genes and be able to more successfully propagate them downstream So storytelling became one of the most critical aspects of our evolutionary history And it was really the ability to take quality what is good What is value and put it into like a compression algorithm into these stories And that's a big that's the that is the Old Testament basically And that the more that you realize that you know, able made that massive sacrifice And that kane made that horrible decision of killing Able in that resentment and jealousy that his sacrifice wasn't as good The more that you see that and embody that and realize that and understand that The more your genes are able to propagate at a higher level because you understand What is at the top of that sort of idea of values and quality and what is good And so we've been passing that down for tens of thousands of years now And it's a really interesting evolutionary story arc if it's true But at the same time there was this There was this really good, uh, there was this really good quote that was that was said by By robert in In the book as well That it was something along the lines of like that uh fagress Do we really need to know what is do we really need someone to tell us what is good and what is not And I think that that is also a really good Really good idea as well as that do you really need these So it's this balance between needing these sort of stories over tens of thousands of years And also understanding that you have this a priori infrastructure that enables you to sense What is good and of high quality so it's a balance between those two things And then Sort of you know, kind of rounding it off at the very end I'd like to say that I think that the idea of roberts metaphysics of quality is super duper interesting and it's very possible that As he says that it's possible that Quality is maybe Actually ultimate reality quality might be That sort of a priori filter that we have on our Awareness that sort of gives rise to those immediacies and consciousness the first ones that we sort of become aware of That that may in fact be ultimate reality that may be god it may be dao it may be the brahmin it may be It may be the essence of of ultimate reality and if that's true then It could imply it at a deeper Darwinian metaphysical level and not just at an individual level meaning that It's not only important that you with your individual decisions become christlike buddha like The highest level of morality possible through A synthesis of both your own a priori essences But also through understanding these deep literatures of tens of thousands of years But also that every single decision that you make actually has to do with the destiny of the cosmos at a deeper level so meaning that Your decisions butterfly effect out into civilization and then civilization's trajectory Goes towards that fork as well of if civilization's going to make it in our next big steps or if it's not And so that's the sort of darwinian metaphysical level is that in order for us to get to the next sort of Uh, we're potentially what I hypothesize in in chapter 10 called infinity in the book That it's possible that what we are as ultimate reality is that consciousness exploring infinity And that as robert pier success is that that quality a priori filter that we have on that is also ultimate reality In the sense that our free will decision making of going towards the good or going towards the bad that is A that's synthesized with the darwinian metaphysical level if we're going to make it to our Consciousness exploring infinity to the next recursion is very important And so every single decision that we make has to do with that trajectory if we're going to make it the snake eating its tail The oroboros symbol are we going to make it in the way? We do that as via john smart's Transition hypothesis meaning we actually go inward through the the vr the neuro prosthetics the ai age the agi age That it's a synthesis of all the simulation theory technologies that exist and that soon will have In an infinite amount of new universes that we'll be able to transcend into and that will be like this in the candy stores Just chocolate and that as donald hoffman says is that we're going into vanilla and strawberry and mango and cookies and cream And all the new flavors of consciousness ice cream that we'll be tasting that may not be these four-limbed two-eyed Carbon-based dna encoded creatures of consciousness, but rather different soul vehicles in those next recursion So we may be using different soul vehicles in the next recursions But in order to get there you need to think about this metaphysics of quality at your own moment-to-moment decision level chapter two is called seed theory In high-level perception and I talk a lot about the bifurcations that exist Every single one of those bifurcations you need to think about And really open up your heart to can I be good at this bifurcation? Instead of reacting to this stimulus that's trying to get me to be bad That's trying to get me to name call back at someone that's trying to get me to hit someone That's trying to get me to be violent or malevolent What if I instead take the moral burden on my back and make the good decision to stay calm And to stay loving and to stay compassionate and then to watch that anger and malevolence dissipate in that other person It we're triggered with these things all the time But it's up to us to have that high level of Metacognition and to realize that these things are happening to us and for us to aim in that direction Of the highest metaphysical good of that metaphysics of quality of values of what is good But also at the highest Darwinian level that we got to make it as a as a civilization You can think about it as one cellular organism that really wants to divide To undergo mitosis the whole planet But that our little cell cycle our our self checkpoint that we have to get to that checkpoint in order to divide And to go into the recursion But in order to get there all of the little organelles Inside of the cell all the different nations and all the different molecules like us individuals I need to have a high level of intracellular communication In order to be able to get to that cell checkpoint and to undergo mitosis and to go through the recursive process into the next Flavors in the infinite candy store that we're exploring So maybe that consciousness is exploring infinity And it's a big unbounded map and we're forever doing that And that your Metaphysics of quality your values your determining of what is good with your free will Determines how successful we are Achieving both you are individual goals and our collective destiny So every single decision you make has to do with the telos of the cosmos That's a big thing That's a big thing I love you very much Thank you for tuning in I'm super grateful for Robert Piercic. He passed about three years ago in in 2017 I highly recommend readings and in the art of motorcycle maintenance He's I think he's one of the best synthesis that has been around in a long time and Yeah, he was it's one of the best books. I mean, he really does a strong job at at Synthesizing all of the perennial philosophy But also at putting it in a really beautiful motorcycle adventure story at the same time And so I highly recommend reading it. I'll put a link in the bio to it so you guys can check it out And then his other book lila as well lila and inquiry into morals Check that out as well That kind of goes a little bit deeper on to his metaphysics of quality He has a there's a couple people online that are talking about it as well That you can find it's moq metaphysics of quality.org moq.org. I'll put that link in the bio too Check some stuff out again. Ask people what is best instead of what is new really start asking that question. What is best? Also, what is quality start asking people those big questions? Thanks, james appreciate the comment about awesome talk shout out to you shout out to you guys Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm super grateful for our audience that we have it's still at the early stages guys We have about 75k subs after about three years of going hard at this And still the early stages we're about to blow up. I'm about to publish this big synthesis. It's super explained like I'm five It's super visual. It's super beautiful and super short I'm pumped for you guys to all take that in and then for us to talk about our next chapter because The next chapter is huge and it's a big surprise for you and you'll see where that's going In about less than about less than a month You'll see where where we took the next chapter and how we're getting at the throat of the awakening and how we're Moving things forward at a at a bigger level. So I love you all very much big love to robert pierce Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance check that out and godspeed to all of you as well on your north star journeys and Crush it crush it guys. We got this big love Comment subscribe share the video if you found it enriching you guys know what to do Bigest of love