After failing high school - disillusioned with the meaning of life - David drifted until he was introduced to the Metaphysics of Quality. He now spends his time using it to make things better!
Daily exercise is moral
Daily exercise is moral. There I said it. This is an unusual sentence but one that is logically correct and actually also more truthful and honest than any other statement about exercise.
It's a sentence that I can only say because I'm using a metaphysics that is built for this 21st Century. A metaphysics that allows us to move beyond all traditional interpretations of morality and place even everyday activities into a moral context. A moral context that isn't just logically true for me in my place and time - like our current morality would say, but it's true and moral for all people, everywhere.
I can say this because I can philosophically and logically justify the sentence using the Metaphysics of Quality (MOQ). Because unlike Zazen as described in an earlier post, exercise, as static quality; does have clear qualitative justifications for why its a good thing. In fact, whilst it is fundamentally a biological activity - it’s actually something that’s good on every level and this is really why it’s so moral to do every day.
For example, intellectually science is increasingly demonstrating the benefits of regular exercise. It has been shown to benefit the health of both body and mind in many ways. But the biological effects of feeling good as well as the social benefits of looking good are both empirically verifiable and legitimate as well.
And as an aside - this is also another reason why the celebrities I wrote about in my previous post are so good. They show that you can do professional level exercise and yet maintain a moral vegan diet at the same time - both things supported by the MOQ.
Personally I’ve recently been spending up to two hours a day at the gym doing various cardio and strength based exercises. But for someone who has limited free time for exercise, studies are increasingly showing that High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) is an effective way of getting fit and healthy in an extremely time limited way.
Along these lines please enjoy a video above showing a daily HIIT routine that basically anyone can do so long as they are honestly pushing themselves through.
Better Celebrities - Rich Roll and Nimai Delgado
The Metaphysics Of Quality (MOQ) points out that as social values exist; celebrity culture is unavoidable. Because of this we should thus encourage those celebrites that are moving society in a better direction. Two of those celebrites are Rich Roll and Nimai Delgado.
Two vegan athletes, breaking stereotypes of vegan protein deficiencies and showing that you can still live a healthy life and actually thrive on a purely plant based diet.
I’ve written before about the morality of a vegan diet and that’s why these two athletes are celebrites supported by the MOQ.
Enjoy a preview of their chat above or you can listen to and watch the whole podcast here.
Why I Sit Zazen Daily
Ultimately nothing exists. Science thinks matter ultimately exists - but experience shows that it doesn't. And ideas - what are they beyond thoughts about experience? What are ideas exacly? What are words - what is anything?
So try to catch that essence of the universe and it seems like you can't do it. In fact experience shows the ultimate essence of the universe is both infinitely describable, yet indescribable!
The Tao Te Ching says it best..
“Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.” - Lao Tzu
But at the end of the day we're alive and we can't help but speak, define and create things. Especially as Lao Tzu demonstrates; about the ultimate essence of the universe. That's why it's good instead to make statements such as 'Quality exists and is the ultimate source of everything', because we can't help but speak and so it's best if we define things as best we can.
Yes, it's true that we can deny that Quality exists and deny that it's something we know before we speak about or define, and many do - but this is dishonest. You can't get out of bed in the morning without deciding that it's better to do so.
And so instead, if we're being honest; it's best that everything we do and say is in alignment with this ultimate essence of the universe.
But how do we best do this? How do we best experience and become intimately acquainted with this ultimately indescribable essence of the universe? How best do we make it an intrinsic part of our every day lives and so live in accordance with it?
To answer that I point to Zazen and the instructional video above.
By dramatically simplifying our actions to the point where we 'just sit' we are able to experience this essence. With no distractions and no thoughts to hide what is right in front of us all the time in each and every moment - we can experience and become acquainted with what Zen calls the 'original self' and the Metaphysics of Quality ultimately calls 'Dynamic Quality'.
But to sit for this reason, or for any of the increasing number of reasons why meditation is good for you also is actually wrong. Because if I sit for these or any reason I'm not 'just sitting' but actively doing something for a reason..
And this is why the best answer to why I sit is silence, the statement that 'Zazen is useless', and the daily ding of a meditation bell.
She's a judge!
From a biological perspective men and women have very different needs and I'm not so sure our shared cultures have fully come to terms with this fact.
Generally speaking, evolutionarily, a man's needs are very simple, whilst a woman’s a bit more complex. Rather than simply a partner with obvious aesthetically genetic beauty; as a judge - women choose what behaviours and traits a man needs to display for those traits to continue and ensure the survival of our species.
Below Robert Pirsig talks about the need for a man to ensure he can satisfy her in any way she deems necessary. But what are those requirements she creates? Are there some traits in men that the majority of women - consciously or otherwise - look for? Perhaps there are biological traits that all women look for because it gives them hints that he will be able to provide for them, provide safety, and ensure the survival of their offspring?
And if that's the case, then is the commonality and biological nature of those traits fully appreciated and understood by our culture? Or is it that because our culture doesn't use the Metaphysics of Quality, they're not appreciated and fully understood?
This is the question that I want to answer in a future post. It's a moral question because it gets to the heart of the types of questions the Metaphysics Quality shows its strength in answering. It will allow us to easily distinguish between biological value and social value and then to use intellect to find the best solution. A solution which would appreciate that biological quality exists and yet lights the way to the the moral and intelligent way of dealing with it. But for now - enjoy the below beautiful quote from Pirsig in Lila..
"From the cells' point of view sex is pure Dynamic Quality, the highest Good of all.. This same attraction which is now so morally condemned is what created the condemners.
Talk about ingratitude. These bodies would still be a bunch of dumb bacteria if it hadn't been for sexual quality. When mutation was the only means of genetic change, life sat around for three billion years, doing almost no changing at all. It was sexual selection that shot it forward into the animals and plants we have today. A bacterium gets no choice in what its progeny are going to be, but a queen bee gets to select from thousands of drones. That selection is Dynamic. In all sexual selection, Lila chooses, Dynamically, the individual she wants to project into the future. If he excites her sense of Quality she joins him to perpetuate him into another generation, and he lives on. But if he's unable to convince her of his Quality - if he's sick or deformed or unable to satisfy her in some way - she refuses to join him and his deformity is not carried on.
Now Phaedrus was really awake. Now he felt he was at some sort of source. Was this thing that he had seen tonight the same thing that he had glimpsed in the streetcar, the thing that had been bothering him all these years? He thought about it for a long time and slowly decided that it probably was..
Lila is a judge. That's who lay here beside him tonight: a judge of hundreds of millions of years' standing, and in the eyes of this judge he was nobody very important. Almost anyone would do, and most would do better than he.
After a while he thought, maybe that's why the famous 'Gioconda Smile' in the Louvre, like Lila's smile in the streetcar, has troubled viewers for so many years. It's the secret smile of a judge who has been overthrown and suppressed for the good of social progress, but who, silently and privately, still judges.
'Sad Sack.' That was the term she used. It had no intellectual meaning, but it had plenty of meaning nevertheless. It meant that in the eyes of this biological judge all his intelligence was some kind of deformity. She rejected it. It wasn't what she wanted. Just as the patterns of intelligence have a sense of disgust about the body functions, the patterns of biology, so do Lila's patterns of biology have a disgust about the patterns of intelligence. They don't like it. It turns them off."