Excellence and the Platypus Paradox | The Mike Hill Series | Episode 8 (WiM155)

The "What is Money?" Show

Robert Breedlove

Bitcoin, Breedlove, What Is Money, Investing, Rabbit Hole, Cryptocurrency, Money, Finance, Education, Robert Breedlove, History

4.8 • 710 Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2022

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Mike Hill joins for me for a multi-episode exploration of the masterful book “Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals” written by best-selling author Robert Pirsig. This book may be one of the most undervalued ever written, as it proposes an alternative interpretation of reality that Pirsig calls “The Metaphysics of Quality” (MOQ). According to MOQ, reality is not made up of substance, but rather it is composed of distinct patterns of value. In a Copernican-like revolution of perspective, MOQ sheds new light on age-old debates such as moral relativism, the nature of subject-object duality, good vs. evil, science vs. religion, the importance of freedom, and the primacy of action.

Transcript

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0:00.0	So Persig writes, quote, this may sound as though a purpose of the metaphysics of quality
0:15.2	is to trash all subject object thought, but that's not true. Unlike subject-object metaphysics, the metaphysics of
0:23.3	quality does not insist on a single exclusive truth. If subjects and objects are held to be
0:29.9	the ultimate reality, then we are permitted only one construction of things. That which corresponds to
0:37.2	the quote-un unquote objective world and all
0:40.5	other constructions are unreal. But if quality or excellence is seen as the ultimate reality,
0:47.0	then it becomes possible for more than one set of truths to exist. Then one doesn't seek the absolute quote unquote truth. One seeks
0:57.8	instead the highest quality intellectual explanation of things with the knowledge that if the
1:03.8	past is any guide to the future, this explanation must be taken provisionally as useful until
1:10.6	something better comes along.
1:12.7	One can then examine intellectual realities the same way he examines paintings in an art
1:17.8	gallery, not with an effort to find out which one is the quote unquote real painting,
1:22.6	but simply to enjoy and keep those that are of value.
1:27.7	I love this.
1:28.9	So that's another point.
1:30.9	I think we should really drive home is the equivalence between quality and excellence.
1:37.0	And he gets into the deeper etymological roots of this later in the book.
1:42.8	That's something I've been thinking about a lot lately,
1:45.7	is that it is competition,
1:49.5	which pushes us to excel, right?
1:53.4	Even in the sphere of sports or markets, right?
1:56.8	It is competing with one another that forces us to excel to become better to bring
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