Now, as a result of spending so much time thinking on it, usually your method will work because you aren’t teaching methods from a book or a tape, you’re teaching real quality. You’re teaching stuff that actually works because you’ve thrown out everything else.
You find yourself driving down the road, peering into people’s souls through the car window. You go to the supermarket and can guess the history of your paper-or-plastic bagger.
Do you take seriously this idea that you can set out to teach people tennis (or do whatever ordinary thing), and then become really really good at that thing (because you’ve spent a lot of time… thinking about it? because you’ve come up with your own methods? not clear), and then, as a result of being really really good at this more-or-less ordinary thing, you come to understand, like, everything, and can determine people’s life history and personality and ‘souls’ etc. just by looking at them? Is this a thing you’re proposing in all seriousness? Or is this some sort of… very flowery metaphor?
Philosophy teaches us, “When you understand one thing, you understand everything.”
What philosophy, exactly, teaches us this? I would recommend not listening to such a philosophy, because it is manifest nonsense. (The remainder of that paragraph is likewise woo.)
How is it that total commitment got such a bad name?
Because many (probably most) things aren’t worth totally committing to. (For example: tennis.) People who totally commit to those things are making a mistake, and wasting their lives.
If he “got a life” and went out and socialized, he wouldn’t be thinking about finding the path to the best way. What this pro would have is a life filled with thousands of meaningless little events that he can’t remember anyway and a modest paycheck which he utilizes for the promulgation of even more events. Tell me, is that a life?
Yeah. (Though the thing where you travel the world and get more cultured and so forth sounds pretty cool, too.)
P.S.: Re: the author’s note: This reinforces my view that Pirsig’s “metaphysics of quality” is nonsense.
Do you take seriously this idea that you can set out to teach people tennis (or do whatever ordinary thing), and then become really really good at that thing (because you’ve spent a lot of time… thinking about it? because you’ve come up with your own methods? not clear), and then, as a result of being really really good at this more-or-less ordinary thing, you come to understand, like, everything, and can determine people’s life history and personality and ‘souls’ etc. just by looking at them? Is this a thing you’re proposing in all seriousness? Or is this some sort of… very flowery metaphor?
What philosophy, exactly, teaches us this? I would recommend not listening to such a philosophy, because it is manifest nonsense. (The remainder of that paragraph is likewise woo.)
Because many (probably most) things aren’t worth totally committing to. (For example: tennis.) People who totally commit to those things are making a mistake, and wasting their lives.
Yeah. (Though the thing where you travel the world and get more cultured and so forth sounds pretty cool, too.)
P.S.: Re: the author’s note: This reinforces my view that Pirsig’s “metaphysics of quality” is nonsense.