Bookworm Transcripts

00:00:00

I'm excited this week Mike.

00:00:02

That makes one of us.

00:00:04

I kind of figured you would say that.

00:00:07

How badly do you hate me for choosing this book?

00:00:11

Uh, let's just say I didn't realize what I was getting into until I started it.

00:00:15

And at that point it was too late to say I'm not reading this.

00:00:18

Yep.

00:00:19

But I will be more diligent in the future.

00:00:23

In reviewing my selections before you approve them.

00:00:28

Is that what you're saying?

00:00:29

Yeah.

00:00:30

So what you tend to do I think is not put them on the document until right before hoping that I don't see them.

00:00:36

Correct.

00:00:36

And if I see one that I have any red flags about in the future, I'm going to have to like stop the recording, go research this thing, and then give the okay.

00:00:48

Okay.

00:00:49

Fool me once.

00:00:50

Shame on me.

00:00:52

Or whatever that saying is, you know.

00:00:54

Yes.

00:00:54

Congratulations.

00:00:56

You got me to read a fiction book.

00:00:57

Not even a fable, a completely fiction book.

00:01:00

It's biography.

00:01:01

No, no.

00:01:02

So this will be entertaining.

00:01:06

But before we get there, I guess there's a big teaser.

00:01:09

We should back up and do follow up of which there is only one and it belongs to you, Mike.

00:01:15

Yeah.

00:01:16

I was hesitant to even put this one on here because I did not think I would be doing anything with this and turns out I didn't do anything with this.

00:01:26

So my follow up was to consider which token that I am leaving people, but I didn't really do anything with this.

00:01:34

And when I said it, I kind of knew that this wasn't going to translate into action in any ways.

00:01:41

Like it's a good thought experiment for me, but not as per usual for my action items.

00:01:47

Not something we can never mark as as done.

00:01:52

So I don't know, I said specifically in that episode, I wanted to consider this as I interacted with my kids and not in the business context, not because they brought it up in like a customer support context.

00:02:05

And I do plan to plan to evaluate that a little bit more just being more careful of how I am reacting and recognizing maybe what path that is pushing people down inadvertently.

00:02:21

But yeah, the tokens were kind of a failed thought experiment for me.

00:02:26

I'm sorry.

00:02:28

That's okay.

00:02:29

It's worth a shot.

00:02:30

Yep.

00:02:31

But at least it's something you can try to do again next time.

00:02:33

I think it's that that's the beauty of this is you don't always have to say I failed in the last two weeks, but you get another two weeks, try again.

00:02:41

Yep.

00:02:42

That is true.

00:02:42

It's the benefit of this stuff.

00:02:44

All right.

00:02:45

Follow up is out of the way.

00:02:49

I suppose we should jump into this and I have to admit, I'm maybe a little more excited about this than I probably should be and I think it's partially because I know you hate this.

00:02:57

I'm sorry.

00:02:59

Yep.

00:02:59

Apologies, but it must go on at this point.

00:03:04

We can't go backwards.

00:03:05

Today's book is Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance and I have to admit that I kind of have this thing for philosophy.

00:03:18

In the back of my mind and I have a thing for Aristotle Plato, Hume, like I have a thing for philosophy and I knew this was a philosophy book.

00:03:31

I didn't say it and I it comes across as a fiction book, but you should know this is a loose biography.

00:03:42

It is a work of fictionalized autobiography, according to Wikipedia.

00:03:48

Yeah.

00:03:49

So it's it's a difficult one to put into a category.

00:03:55

There are a few facts within the book that I know are quite embellished, if not completely manufactured, but they are put there in order to help drive the story that Robert Percy wants to tell.

00:04:11

And I I have very mixed feelings about this book.

00:04:16

I'm guessing yours are less than mixed, but I think this will be at least an entertaining conversation.

00:04:24

I relate with Clinton on Goodreads who says I feel like Robert and Piersig has wronged me personally.

00:04:30

And I have a feeling you would lump me in with that.

00:04:35

I'm sorry.

00:04:36

I do apologize.

00:04:41

So I want to start this by saying that if you are going to read this, this particular episode is one you don't want to listen to because I am going to and I'm sure we will ruin this story.

00:04:54

I don't think there's a way to go through this without ruining it.

00:04:58

I think, you know, with all of our other books, there's not really a story that you could ruin.

00:05:05

I mean, you're going to get we give away all the facts and some of the points in the book that we find helpful.

00:05:11

So maybe that's kind of a spoiler, but in this particular case, you are on a journey literally with him and I'm going to tell you how it ends and it's going to ruin the story for you.

00:05:22

Apologies.

00:05:23

That was the only interesting part of the entire book.

00:05:26

It took 400 pages to get to the moment of action.

00:05:30

And it's like the last three pages to.

00:05:33

Yeah, and then you just like, okay, cool.

00:05:37

Not a great way to end a book, by the way.

00:05:40

Sure.

00:05:41

Sure.

00:05:42

So before I jump into telling at least part of this story, I want to know, like your view on philosophy and books on philosophy in general because I feel like that's going to set the stage for what we go through here.

00:06:01

There is probably half of this book.

00:06:03

We're not going to discuss because it's just way too complicated to discuss if we understood it.

00:06:08

A lot of it.

00:06:09

I did not, but I'm curious, Mike, what is your view on philosophy in the books on it?

00:06:15

Do you read them?

00:06:16

Do you think it's a complete waste of time?

00:06:18

Do you think philosophers are crazy?

00:06:20

Well, what are your thoughts?

00:06:21

Philosophers are crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm opposed to it.

00:06:25

And I use, I based that based on my own college experience, so I went to a small liberal arts college and one of my favorite classes there was philosophy.

00:06:34

I took multiple philosophy classes with a guy just because of who he was.

00:06:38

His name was Dr. Abel and he was a tall guy, probably about six, six and really skinny, crazy white hair that was going all over the place.

00:06:48

Everybody knew you don't sit in the front row because if you do, you're going to get spit on.

00:06:52

He would come into class every single day with pants that were too short and a collared shirt where part of it was tucked in part of it was hanging out just completely disheveled kind of reminded me of Kramer from Seinfeld.

00:07:02

But it was one of the most entertaining classes that I'd ever been in and I like the philosophers that we talked about there and he mentions a lot of them in this book.

00:07:13

He talks about Kant and talks a lot about the Greek philosophers, ancient Greeks, Aristotle, stuff like that as he gets into the end of this book.

00:07:23

But the way that he talks about it, it's not even like a, I don't know how to describe it, educated dialogue where you go back and forth and you unpack the ideas.

00:07:33

He's literally just telling you about a dream that he's having and framing it as a conversation with a ghost, which was really a past him and some of the stuff that he did in a previous life, so to speak.

00:07:49

So I think I would be open to unpacking a philosophy book on bookworm.

00:07:58

Depending on the philosopher, I would probably have pointed opinions about whether I agreed or disagreed with them on a lot of things.

00:08:05

But this one is kind of like you can't even disagree with it because he's telling you a fictional story based on his real life, whatever.

00:08:12

Right, right. And he is classified as insane within the book too.

00:08:19

So you're kind of left with this weird.

00:08:22

Do you trust what he says?

00:08:25

No, because because in the book, he is admitted and goes through a procedure to help him not be insane and theoretically he gets better quote unquote better in.

00:08:42

Let's back up.

00:08:43

So the whole story is that they are going on a journey and they is Robert, his son, Chris, and then another couple that goes on a motorcycle trip with them, John and Sylvia Sutherland.

00:08:57

And they are going on a trip from, oddly enough, Minnesota, west to Montana and beyond.

00:09:06

And the premise of why they are going on this journey seems very wishy washy to start and it gets worse as they go on because they're not really headed anywhere in particular.

00:09:20

And yet they are on a journey and they drag you along with them.

00:09:24

And as part of this, his son, Chris has his own dilemma.

00:09:31

He's working through mentally, but we're not really left understanding what that dilemma is until like the last probably 10 or 15 pages of the book and the author, Robert is going through a lot of mental turmoil, trying to understand what is reason, what is quality.

00:09:52

What is the classical and romantic views on things and life?

00:09:57

Like this is some pretty heady stuff, but it seems like this Robert is constantly trying to piece together his former self, which he refers to as Phaedrus.

00:10:08

And Phaedrus was a very tormented man, I would say, ends up in an asainous islam.

00:10:17

I think some of that's a little bit hard to understand.

00:10:22

Under goes a procedure to, which is like electro shock therapy to remove this craziness in his head and then he becomes this new person who doesn't remember what his old self was and is now trying to piece it all together.

00:10:37

And that's the journey you're on him trying to piece together his former self understanding his former self Phaedrus, Phaedrus's understanding of reason and philosophy.

00:10:50

And just the journey he went on to become insane.

00:10:53

It's a rough journey to go on, I would say, but so much of it is revolving around the process of maintaining a motorcycle, which is kind of a weird correlation.

00:11:04

I think because he's he's using that as a jumping off point to discuss some of these philosophical thought patterns.

00:11:12

And I have to ask Mike, I don't see you as a gearhead.

00:11:18

Are you a gearhead?

00:11:19

No, there is literally nothing in this book that appeals to me.

00:11:22

Okay, I was going to ask and my question is, I'm a bit of a gearhead.

00:11:27

Like I understand like he's saying, you know, points and spark plugs and changing oil and stuff like I understand like pretty much everything he's talking about there.

00:11:37

If you don't understand that, do you still follow what he's referring to in this?

00:11:43

Because I felt like I did.

00:11:44

That was my favorite part of the whole book, honestly.

00:11:47

Okay.

00:11:48

Now, I also saw, I don't remember where I saw it.

00:11:52

I was reading through some of the other stuff that people have written on Zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance.

00:11:59

And Robert Piersig himself said, it's not a very good book from a philosophy perspective.

00:12:05

And it's not a really even a good book from a motorcycle perspective.

00:12:08

A lot of the, even the motorcycle information is wrong.

00:12:10

Yeah.

00:12:12

Like the authors said that.

00:12:14

So I just feel like the whole way this is kind of put together, you did a great job of summarizing two parts, I would say of this where he's battling these inner demons and he's going on this long road trip.

00:12:25

The road trip by itself, by the way, that kind of intrigues me.

00:12:27

Maybe not on a motorcycle, maybe not camping on the side of the road like they were doing, but sure.

00:12:31

I do understand and I'm intrigued by like, just go and don't worry about time.

00:12:37

Don't worry about where you're going.

00:12:39

Just you'll get there when you get there sort of a thing.

00:12:42

That's kind of, that's kind of a cool idea to me.

00:12:43

I'd like to do that at some point someday.

00:12:45

But then on top of that, he pretends he's a Greek philosopher and he tries to weave in his philosophy on quality and values and all this stuff into the narrative and it just, it does not work.

00:12:56

It is so disjointed.

00:12:57

There will be long sections where I'm like, hey, this story is actually kind of cool.

00:13:01

And he's telling all the details like where they're going, what they're seeing.

00:13:03

And then he goes into this big long monologue.

00:13:06

I say monologue.

00:13:07

He's talking about Phaedrus.

00:13:10

And it's like 20 pages long and it's okay, when is this ever going to end?

00:13:14

And then it goes back to the story and there's like three sentences and then he's back into the philosophy and it just doesn't tie together very well, in my opinion.

00:13:23

There are a couple spots where it does, but the majority of it, I'm like, why are we going back here now?

00:13:28

I don't know.

00:13:29

Just tell me what happens.

00:13:31

Sure.

00:13:32

Yeah.

00:13:33

And I think, you know, that's part of this whole trip is that he's, he's like trying to find himself.

00:13:40

I got the sense of like he's on walkabout here.

00:13:43

He's out trying to figure out who he is and his background and his history.

00:13:49

So he's, he does like he tells the story of, you know, I'm changing the oil on my motorcycle and then, you know, two sentences later, he's going down this path of what is quality and an argument that he has or a debate of sorts mid class with a professor.

00:14:06

Like, and then he goes back to, you know, and then the rock started falling.

00:14:11

Like we thought we were under a rock fall on the mountain.

00:14:13

Like these are two very different stories.

00:14:16

So you kind of have to jump back and forth.

00:14:19

I will say my ADD brain loved that to some degree.

00:14:21

It's like, hey, we're talking about this.

00:14:23

Oh, now we're over here.

00:14:24

It's like, so that, that part was intriguing.

00:14:28

I think it's, it is hard to as somebody who kind of gets into motors.

00:14:34

Like I struggled with some of what he was doing with his motorcycle.

00:14:38

Like he changed the oil.

00:14:40

I don't know how many times.

00:14:41

Yep.

00:14:42

And my thought was you've driven like 150 miles.

00:14:46

Exactly.

00:14:47

And all in one spell and you're changing the oil again.

00:14:51

But that had to happen to set up the subplot with the stepfather.

00:14:53

Yes.

00:14:54

And I was like, I don't understand what you're doing.

00:14:58

Why are you doing that?

00:14:59

That doesn't make sense.

00:15:00

So I got totally distracted by that.

00:15:02

And then he's off on some other thing about Hume and like, I, I'm, I'm not with you.

00:15:08

I think some of the ideas were fascinating.

00:15:11

And I did get, I actually do have an action item out of this, which I'll get to.

00:15:15

But I, I'm with you.

00:15:17

It is kind of disjointed.

00:15:18

It was at least I found an entertaining read, at least to me, to watch this tormented brain.

00:15:25

Maybe that's that masochistic.

00:15:26

I don't know.

00:15:27

Should have watched me try to read it.

00:15:29

Then you could have seen another tormented brain.

00:15:32

Sure.

00:15:33

Sure.

00:15:34

No, I, I did find it interesting.

00:15:37

I made it 300 pages in.

00:15:39

And then I gave up and thought audio book.

00:15:42

Yep.

00:15:43

This is the only second time I have given in and gone to an audio book.

00:15:50

The other one is the infamous Amanda Palmer episode with the art of asking.

00:15:56

So.

00:15:57

That puts it in pretty good company, I would say.

00:15:58

At least this one.

00:15:59

I didn't feel defiled when I got done with it.

00:16:03

Sure.

00:16:04

There's, there's really, you know, I, I feel like I'm not going to give away the end of

00:16:09

the story yet.

00:16:10

Um, but there's one philosophy point here that I feel like I wanted to go through.

00:16:17

Tell me if you don't want to do this, but this whole concept of classical versus romantic

00:16:22

views of life and things, because I feel like this is a central point to his whole journey

00:16:30

in that it's, he, he abandons this about halfway through the book, I think.

00:16:36

He does reference it a little bit later on, but he, he poses this as a very fundamental

00:16:43

aspect of his entire tormented thought process because you're right.

00:16:49

He does pose himself as a Greek philosopher, but I don't, I don't know that I follow all

00:16:55

of his trains of thought.

00:16:57

And some of them, I think like I'm finding a lot of flaws and what you're thinking and

00:17:01

you're saying it's everybody else's flaws, but you have to keep in mind he's insane in

00:17:06

this part.

00:17:07

So it's like this weird, like your narrator, you feel like you want to trust, but you can't.

00:17:12

So it is, it's weird.

00:17:14

Yes.

00:17:15

I know you didn't trust him.

00:17:16

It is weird.

00:17:17

You want to unpack the classic versus the romantic views and kind of define what they

00:17:21

are?

00:17:22

Sure.

00:17:23

Do you want to start?

00:17:24

You want me to start?

00:17:25

Uh, well, classic versus romantic, the, if I were to summarize this, the classic would

00:17:31

be like the logical, rational romantic would be the emotional side of it kind of left-brain

00:17:38

versus right-brain.

00:17:39

That's not a one to one match, probably a poor comparison, but that's kind of the description,

00:17:44

the descriptions that he used, that was sort of the takeaway that I got because he talks

00:17:48

about how the classical view will connect all the dots and it's really logical and you

00:17:53

arrive at this conclusion and the romantic view is like, no, that's wrong because it

00:17:56

just feels wrong, you know?

00:17:58

And again, grossly oversimplifying this, but that's a very, very short synopsis, I

00:18:04

would say.

00:18:05

Probably an easy way to, maybe not an easy, but a way to see this.

00:18:12

Either on this trip and Robert, the author, the narrator is constantly tweaking and adjusting

00:18:20

his motorcycle.

00:18:21

He's checking it for high temps.

00:18:24

He's, you know, lubricating the drive chain and such.

00:18:27

Like he's doing a lot of these things, but the guy and his wife who he's with, John and

00:18:32

Sylvia, they have this nice BMW motorcycle and they do none of this.

00:18:39

They're pretty good at keeping it clean, but they don't ever check anything on it.

00:18:44

They just drive it.

00:18:46

And with a lot of that, it frustrates Robert because he can't understand why they wouldn't

00:18:57

want to understand the machine that they are writing.

00:19:00

So he's completely dumbfounded by this.

00:19:02

And that's what eventually takes him to this thought process because in his mind, with

00:19:07

the rational thinking, logical brain that he comes at that with, the maintenance of the

00:19:13

motorcycle is an understanding of the parts of the motorcycle and how they operate.

00:19:18

Whereas to John, the motorcycle is a means to writing in the open air.

00:19:25

It's kind of a freeing, you know, joy-filled thing.

00:19:29

It's just supposed to work.

00:19:31

Follow the instructions right at the way you're supposed to and it should just work.

00:19:35

You don't have to understand all the details into it, but use the thing freely.

00:19:40

That's kind of how I took it.

00:19:42

Like the classical side is thinking about the logical pieces, whereas the romantic side

00:19:45

is kind of the art filled, you know, just understanding the whole and the joy that comes

00:19:52

with it as opposed to the logical pieces.

00:19:54

Yeah.

00:19:55

Is that fair?

00:19:56

It is.

00:19:57

So classical would be the systems, the laws and the logic, whereas the romantic is the art

00:20:02

and the beauty, basically, the feelings.

00:20:04

Yes, absolutely.

00:20:06

I don't know where else to go with that.

00:20:08

Well, I think there's not obviously a right way to view the world and it is kind of interesting

00:20:16

how he tries to combine these two together, not just in the narrative of how he approaches

00:20:25

motorcycle maintenance in the actual story itself, but also in the philosophy section.

00:20:33

You know, he tries to talk around all sides of this.

00:20:37

At one point, he's kind of frustrated because he sees these two sides and he just cannot

00:20:43

figure out a way to combine them together.

00:20:47

And I don't know which one you tend to lean towards, but I would say I'm probably more

00:20:56

of a classical thinker than a romantic thinker, which maybe is at the heart of me not liking

00:21:05

this book, even though the person in the story, the author in this fictionalized autobiography

00:21:15

is kind of leaning more towards that way.

00:21:17

I kind of think he maybe started off that way and then kind of like a pendulum swing.

00:21:23

You know, you start off with one thing and you recognize some of the flaws.

00:21:25

You kind of overcompensate swinging the other way.

00:21:28

That's kind of how I viewed his perspective throughout this book.

00:21:32

But I feel like he had a flaw in this because, you know, even he can kind of lull you into

00:21:40

this in thinking like you are one or the other.

00:21:44

That was my problem with this is because he wanted you to think that, you know, John

00:21:49

was a romantic thinker, 100% didn't deviate outside of that.

00:21:56

Like that's the way he positions it.

00:21:59

But he himself is a classical thinker and never deviates outside of that.

00:22:05

But the problem with that is that he does have in the way that he poses his later arguments,

00:22:13

he comes at them from a romantic view without realizing it, I think.

00:22:17

Right.

00:22:18

So he deviates from that depending on the topic in the area you're discussing.

00:22:26

What am I in all of this?

00:22:27

I think I float between things.

00:22:31

I have a tendency with books.

00:22:35

I have a tendency to be on the romantic side, which is probably why I enjoyed this journey

00:22:41

to a fair amount.

00:22:44

That's probably why.

00:22:45

And if you go back and listen to some of the other episodes, I have a tendency to do this.

00:22:49

I tend to look at broader pictures.

00:22:51

I don't have a tendency to hang up on little tiny details.

00:22:54

Like that's kind of my view and the way I come at these.

00:22:59

And I think that's some of the tension that you and I deal with, Mike, is like, I feel

00:23:03

like you like those details.

00:23:05

I'm putting words in your mouth now.

00:23:07

I do.

00:23:08

I feel like you tend to like that.

00:23:10

You like the rational and the systems and each step is super important in that process.

00:23:15

I tend to like glaze over some of it.

00:23:18

I just want the bigger picture.

00:23:20

So with books, I think I tend to be on the romantic side.

00:23:24

Did I put a picture on you correctly?

00:23:28

Yeah.

00:23:29

No, you nailed me.

00:23:30

I'm curious.

00:23:31

Did you ever take the Colby assessment?

00:23:33

No, I feel like you asked me that regularly.

00:23:36

I think that should be an action item for you.

00:23:39

Come on.

00:23:40

All right.

00:23:41

Well, no, it's really not that important.

00:23:42

But one of the scales in there is fact finder and I am a high fact finder.

00:23:46

So I would guess that that leans naturally towards the classical mode of thinking, but

00:23:53

I'm looking for another contrasting data point in order to justify that.

00:23:58

We can run with just that one for now.

00:24:01

It's a very empirical way to come at it.

00:24:04

Yeah.

00:24:05

Well, I think that what he strives for in the book is the balance between them.

00:24:11

There's a whole section where he unpacks the classic versus the romantic views.

00:24:19

And he kind of talks about how they appear to each other.

00:24:22

So like to a romantic, the classic mode, he says often appears dull, awkward and ugly,

00:24:27

like mechanical maintenance itself.

00:24:30

Nothing's figured out till it's run through the computer a dozen times.

00:24:32

It's got to be measured.

00:24:33

It's got to be proved.

00:24:34

It's oppressive.

00:24:35

It's heavy.

00:24:36

It's endlessly gray.

00:24:38

But the classic mode, the romantic view is kind of frivolous, irrational, erratic.

00:24:44

It's untrustworthy, interested primarily in pleasure seeking, shallow of no substance.

00:24:49

I think if I were to pick one of those that I align with, obviously it's the classic one,

00:24:54

but I'm wondering how much that's influenced by my inherent, like the way that I work to

00:24:59

try and uncover all of the facts.

00:25:02

Could you be a high fact finder and still have a romantic view of things?

00:25:07

Like do you default and still default to the romantic way of thinking?

00:25:11

I think maybe you could, but it seems to me that the classic thinking and the fact finder

00:25:17

kind of align.

00:25:18

Sure.

00:25:19

I think where I...

00:25:21

So this is a piece that I struggled with because he gets into how motorcycle maintenance

00:25:30

falls into the classical side.

00:25:31

I think that's a fair assessment of the way he comes at this.

00:25:35

And my sense is I have a tendency to be that way, but with cars and the way that I maintain

00:25:43

vehicles.

00:25:44

Like I'm pretty particular with wanting to make sure that it's done correctly and how

00:25:48

it works.

00:25:49

And I pay attention to temperatures and tire tread and like I watch a lot of this stuff

00:25:54

in the way that he watches his motorcycle, which he classifies as classical.

00:25:59

Now if his thinking pattern is correct, I'm a weird duck here because I've got the romantic

00:26:05

view in one area and classical in another.

00:26:09

And yet he's trying to marry the two and can't do it.

00:26:15

This is the conundrum I found myself in going through this and I was like, "Your thought

00:26:18

pattern here doesn't work."

00:26:20

Which when I stop, take a step back and look at it, well the guy's insane.

00:26:25

So why am I trying to reconcile what he's saying?

00:26:31

Here we are.

00:26:32

Yeah, so you've mentioned a couple times already that keep in mind basically that the

00:26:38

sky is insane.

00:26:40

And that's the most maddening thing about this whole book to me.

00:26:44

Is you're right.

00:26:45

Like he is insane.

00:26:47

And that is the justification to, "I don't take anything that he says too seriously.

00:26:51

You don't want to listen to a crazy guy."

00:26:53

Well, what am I doing for 400 pages then?

00:26:56

What's the point?

00:26:57

It's not even a good story.

00:27:00

I think there's some, I think he's obviously OCD.

00:27:05

And I kind of wondered if he was on some form of a spectrum of sorts.

00:27:10

He's got some weird things that he calls out that are passing thoughts.

00:27:17

He notices very minute details of people's facial expressions.

00:27:22

But he doesn't know the facial expressions.

00:27:24

He notes the emotions behind those.

00:27:27

He knows if somebody is resentful or angry or tormented internally.

00:27:33

He picks that up.

00:27:34

Maybe wonder if he was on the autism spectrum in some form.

00:27:38

But I feel like he's got a lot of issues.

00:27:41

He just does.

00:27:42

And maybe that's my view of philosophy.

00:27:46

I don't know.

00:27:48

All philosophers have issues?

00:27:50

Possibly.

00:27:51

I don't know.

00:27:53

I like philosophy, but I always tend to, my view with a lot of it is that I tend to take

00:28:02

a lot of things with a grain of salt.

00:28:05

And I know that there are little nuggets here and there that will be beneficial or helpful

00:28:09

to me in my thought patterns.

00:28:12

And I think about the whole, what is a chair?

00:28:15

That whole process just, it just bores me and I don't understand why we're doing it.

00:28:22

It just doesn't make sense to me.

00:28:23

And I feel like he does that to some degree.

00:28:25

It's like, what is quality?

00:28:26

I was going to say, so Joe, what is quality?

00:28:29

Yeah.

00:28:30

And it's frustrating.

00:28:32

Like at one point, he even says, you can't define quality, but you know what it is when

00:28:36

you see it.

00:28:37

Like he does do a go down that path.

00:28:39

I don't know.

00:28:40

But at the same time, I'm asking, he's like, why would I want to define quality?

00:28:45

Like that's the backside of this.

00:28:47

Sure.

00:28:48

Great question.

00:28:49

Why am I going down this path?

00:28:50

Let's see, I guess my classical thinking kicking in, I want to know what is quality, but you

00:28:55

didn't give me anything to grasp onto there.

00:28:58

Yeah, he never answers it.

00:28:59

Yeah, which is fine.

00:29:01

There's value just in the thought experiment and unpacking the question.

00:29:07

But I don't know if I'm going to give you 400 pages of my life.

00:29:12

Give me something.

00:29:14

And I feel like if he would have just wrote a philosophy book, maybe he could have unpacked

00:29:18

that a little bit deeper.

00:29:20

It's kind of lost or hidden.

00:29:24

He kind of shows specific pieces of it that he wants to.

00:29:29

It feels like when you read it through the narrative of the story that he's telling instead

00:29:33

of just like, okay, let's get everything on the table and let's talk about this thing.

00:29:38

Because the moment it starts to get uncomfortable, he can switch back to the story in there on

00:29:42

another side road going up a mountain.

00:29:46

And it just didn't work for me.

00:29:48

Maybe you would have enjoyed the story had it all run together.

00:29:53

I'm not sure I would have enjoyed his philosophy, but I feel like I would be more willing to

00:29:58

tackle that.

00:29:59

Again, maybe my classical thinking defaults coming through there.

00:30:04

But the back and forth kind of watered everything down, in my opinion.

00:30:09

And I do still kind of wonder like, how would he define quality?

00:30:12

You have to define it at some point.

00:30:14

Like what do you think about this?

00:30:16

Yeah.

00:30:17

You ask your students and what did they say, but where did you land on this?

00:30:23

And I feel like some of that's what tormented him.

00:30:25

But do you think the, you know, he does going back and forth between what's going on right

00:30:30

now on the journey and maintaining his motorcycle and then going back to the life of Phaedrus

00:30:37

and this rational thought journey he's going on kind of feels like he's trying to merge

00:30:43

classical and romantic himself.

00:30:45

Yep.

00:30:46

I agree with that.

00:30:47

I just don't know what it looks like to successfully do that because I don't think he did.

00:30:53

Well, again, he's insane.

00:30:56

So here we are.

00:30:58

Let's I'm just, I'm going to ruin the story here.

00:31:02

So the story goes, go ahead and ruin it.

00:31:06

No one who listens to bookworm to get abbreviated versions of books should be reading 400 pages

00:31:10

of this anyways.

00:31:13

So you get towards the end.

00:31:15

Okay.

00:31:16

They're headed west.

00:31:17

They're making it towards the coast.

00:31:20

And as they're coming up on this, there's a dream that recurs inside of Robert and it's

00:31:31

a confusing dream.

00:31:32

But what it eventually comes down to is this question of are you insane?

00:31:40

And up to that point, Robert has been saying, no.

00:31:45

I wait, yes, I'm getting it backwards now.

00:31:49

See, this is messing with me.

00:31:51

Up to that point, he's saying yes that Phaedrus wasn't saying.

00:31:54

Like he would admit that.

00:31:55

He also said he was a ghost.

00:31:57

Yes, he's saying Phaedrus was a ghost and that this ghost is coming back and haunting

00:32:02

him.

00:32:03

And yet this whole journey seems to be about the process of discovering who was Phaedrus.

00:32:08

And when they're getting towards the coast, his son, Chris, like has complete meltdowns.

00:32:13

And it's like Chris can sense the falseness in everything his dad is saying.

00:32:19

And when they get towards the end of this, Chris is having his meltdown and Phaedrus comes

00:32:26

back out of Robert.

00:32:29

His old self comes out and they're kind of clever with the formatting of the book and

00:32:35

changing the font in the book so that you can tell who is who who's speaking here.

00:32:41

So at that point, Phaedrus comes out, Phaedrus comes back, his old self returns and he starts

00:32:47

answering Chris's questions and Chris picks up on dad's back, his old self is back.

00:32:56

And Chris then asks the question, were you insane?

00:33:01

And the answer flips from yes, Phaedrus was insane to no, I'm not.

00:33:08

And it's like everything gets better.

00:33:10

And this is the part that completely messes with you, I think, because at that point,

00:33:15

you want to think that everything is better now.

00:33:19

Phaedrus is back, he's his own self and they make it like it comes across the way that

00:33:23

the story ends.

00:33:24

Like it's almost like a homecoming, everything's jolly, everything's great.

00:33:30

That's the way it ends.

00:33:32

But if you stop and look back at what he was just referring to before all of that happened,

00:33:37

he's telling the story of Phaedrus and how he came to this insanity.

00:33:42

And in that he's showing how despondent and like he's hurt himself, he's urinating on

00:33:51

the floor, like he's just a complete wreck of insanity.

00:33:58

And that's what he went back to.

00:34:01

You have to realize he went back to that madness.

00:34:05

And yet it's posed as if that's a good thing and a homecoming and Chris and his dad are

00:34:10

now finally united.

00:34:12

And my thought was that's tragic.

00:34:15

So there you go.

00:34:16

I think I just ruined it.

00:34:17

It's a tragic ending.

00:34:18

But not as tragic as the actual end of the book.

00:34:21

Correct.

00:34:22

If you read the afterward, that's yeah, I'll let you ruin that one.

00:34:29

Do we want to spoil that?

00:34:31

I kind of feel like we should, just so people don't waste their time.

00:34:34

I think you have to now.

00:34:36

Okay.

00:34:37

Go ahead.

00:34:38

All right.

00:34:39

So the very end of the book, it kind of sounds like Chris is growing up now, everything's

00:34:44

good.

00:34:45

And then he gets murdered in San Francisco.

00:34:47

And you're like, what?

00:34:49

Yep.

00:34:50

And then just way far out there for me, he and his wife, the author of this fictionalized

00:34:56

autobiography, Robert and his wife get pregnant.

00:35:01

He's 50 something.

00:35:02

He's like, no, I'm not going to have another kid.

00:35:03

They decide they're going to get an abortion.

00:35:06

They decide not to.

00:35:07

They have this little girl, I think, named Ness.

00:35:10

And he's like, it's Chris reincarnate.

00:35:12

And that's kind of how it ends.

00:35:14

Yes.

00:35:16

It's so weird.

00:35:17

Yes.

00:35:18

And the big question after I get done with this is like, okay, why?

00:35:24

Like, what did this book do to me?

00:35:29

Well, I think back to one of the questions that Jim Rohn had mentioned, he has a series

00:35:35

of questions about the people that you allow speak in your life.

00:35:39

It's like, who am I allowing to speak into my life?

00:35:42

What effect is that having?

00:35:43

And is that okay?

00:35:45

And it's like, okay, I've just allowed Robert Piersig to speak into my life.

00:35:48

What effect did it have?

00:35:49

And I was like, nothing.

00:35:52

Is that okay?

00:35:53

No, it's not okay.

00:35:54

It's a waste of time.

00:35:56

At least that was my impression at the end.

00:36:00

For the podcast, I hope people know that put a microphone to my face and I get more animated.

00:36:06

I'm usually pretty chill about this stuff.

00:36:09

But I was physically upset.

00:36:11

My wife saw me reading this book and she's like, are you okay?

00:36:15

I'm like, yeah, fine.

00:36:17

I just got to finish this book for a bookworm.

00:36:20

She's like, well, you look angry.

00:36:22

I'm sorry.

00:36:23

I did the two.

00:36:26

That's okay.

00:36:28

It's all right.

00:36:31

It's one of the things that I'm glad that I can say that I have read this.

00:36:35

I don't think that it really impacted me much one way or the other.

00:36:41

It is what it is.

00:36:42

There are a lot of other things that I've wasted time on.

00:36:47

But it's definitely not something that I'm going to go read again.

00:36:50

I'm not trying to jump to the end here, by the way.

00:36:53

I just want to temper this a little bit.

00:36:55

I'm not actually upset that I took the time to read this.

00:37:00

It just was not enjoyable for me.

00:37:02

That's fair.

00:37:03

But it doesn't have to be either.

00:37:05

I don't have to love every book that we read.

00:37:08

It's pretty unrealistic to think that you're going to love everything that you read.

00:37:13

Yeah, especially when you read this many.

00:37:15

And sometimes the ones that are hard, the ones that you really got to work through,

00:37:22

they do end up being impactful at the end.

00:37:24

I think back all the time to the innovators dilemma by Clayton Christensen.

00:37:29

That was not a fun read.

00:37:30

It was really hard to get through.

00:37:31

Read like a dry college textbook.

00:37:34

But I still remember some of the lessons from that and I recall those frequently in

00:37:39

conversation with people.

00:37:41

So I don't anticipate that happening with this book though.

00:37:44

But you have to think back to the art of asking how many times do we reference that

00:37:50

book, not because of what's in it, but the book itself.

00:37:55

My guess is this will come up again in the future, but quite possibly not specifically.

00:38:01

So I am willing to admit that I just don't get this book, by the way.

00:38:06

I don't think I'm alone in that.

00:38:08

Wikipedia says that it was rejected 126 times before finally being published.

00:38:20

And it took a New York Times editor who basically said, I can't evaluate the philosophy, but

00:38:26

it's a good intellectual read.

00:38:29

And then it kind of took off from there is kind of my understanding of the history of

00:38:33

this.

00:38:34

But I feel kind of like, and again, classical thinking bias here.

00:38:39

Have you seen those videos of like the banana duct tape to the wall in the museum and then

00:38:44

somebody comes up and they eat it?

00:38:46

Right.

00:38:47

Yep, I've seen that.

00:38:48

Everybody stands in shock like, how could you eat this priceless piece of art?

00:38:51

Okay.

00:38:52

And it's a gag to really the art is the performance and the reaction that people are able to get.

00:38:57

I think of another one, like they had that incredible, like $1 million painting and then

00:39:04

it kind of like auto shreds as they're all looking at it.

00:39:08

And I think both of those things are kind of points and like, we take this stuff too

00:39:12

far, like we take ourselves too seriously, especially the romantic side, where it's like,

00:39:17

oh my gosh, this is so beautiful.

00:39:19

Everything is beauty and everything.

00:39:21

No, sometimes it's just a banana duct tape to the walls.

00:39:24

Not really.

00:39:25

Sure.

00:39:26

Incredible work of art.

00:39:28

And I totally admit that I don't really get modern art.

00:39:33

And again, I have my wife is really into art.

00:39:36

She was a fine arts major.

00:39:38

So we've been to the museums and looked at the paintings and things like that.

00:39:41

I really do appreciate the talent that it takes to create some of these things.

00:39:44

But some of this stuff is just completely over my head.

00:39:47

I remember one of them was like three urinals in a wall next to each other.

00:39:51

It's like, that's a $3 million art piece.

00:39:55

I'm like, no, it's a couple of urinals.

00:39:57

And so I understand that I don't get this.

00:40:02

And some people can, some people really, I believe that they will read this and they

00:40:07

think, oh, this is absolutely beautiful.

00:40:08

This is great.

00:40:09

But I also think that maybe we should dial that stuff back a little bit.

00:40:13

I kind of feel like you dig the depths of human understanding and then you go crazy

00:40:19

and someone's like, oh, he dug too deep.

00:40:21

That's kind of what I feel like happened here.

00:40:23

It's like you're trying to show through the philosophy section how smart you are.

00:40:30

And yeah, you probably are pretty smart.

00:40:31

But like just admit that you don't know everything and move on.

00:40:35

Like there's an 80/20 here in terms of the value we can get from this.

00:40:40

And I feel like it's kind of dangerous to be looking so hard for something in something

00:40:53

and not being willing to just be like, well, no, this isn't for me.

00:40:57

And I think that's the value judgment that needs to be made.

00:40:59

It's not that this is bad.

00:41:00

I don't want to say that Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a bad book.

00:41:05

But there is nothing of value here for me and that is okay.

00:41:11

It can be the thing that somebody else needs and they can it can be worth millions of dollars

00:41:17

to them.

00:41:18

And to me, this is a banana duct tape tool wall.

00:41:22

And I you can say, well, you just don't get it.

00:41:24

That's fine.

00:41:25

I guess I don't really want to get it.

00:41:27

Like I'm fine.

00:41:28

Find the way things are.

00:41:29

Yes, I want to know what I don't know and I want to see things from different perspectives.

00:41:33

But I feel like having to come to an agreement and see things the same way is really not

00:41:42

something that is worth striving for.

00:41:45

You can spend a lot of time in a lot of effort trying to agree.

00:41:51

And sometimes, I mean, it's an inquiry and a values.

00:41:54

That's the subtitle here.

00:41:55

My values are going to be different than rubber piercings.

00:41:58

So it's okay if I arrive at a different conclusion.

00:42:03

Whether that's classical or romantic based on what is before me.

00:42:08

What's the phrase you don't really understand something until you're able to explain it to

00:42:12

a third grader.

00:42:14

And something that I've always struggled with when it came to philosophy is that there's

00:42:20

a tendency to use big words, fancy phrases for things to explain a concept.

00:42:28

And it becomes almost elitist in that most people can't understand it.

00:42:36

And there's even a section in this where the chairman of a specific board, I'm drawing

00:42:43

a blank on what that board was called, but that chairman had written some lectures and

00:42:50

some material that he was reading.

00:42:54

And it felt so disjointed and out of sorts that he felt he couldn't understand it.

00:43:00

That's how I feel.

00:43:02

Not all philosophy, but some of it can be.

00:43:05

And there's bits and sections of this that I think fall into that category.

00:43:10

And I would join you in saying there's a lot of this that I probably don't grasp.

00:43:14

I feel like there's a fair amount of it that I did.

00:43:17

I can't say that that process has brought me to a point where I need to have a bunch

00:43:25

of action items or some form of revelation of sorts in my thinking and my beliefs.

00:43:33

Like I don't find that it leads to that.

00:43:36

I read one review that said that this particular book is one that they aren't sure what to

00:43:41

do with it, but they sure are glad they read it.

00:43:44

And I was like, okay, yeah, I can kind of see that.

00:43:48

But I think there's...

00:43:49

For me, I'm not sure what to do with it.

00:43:51

Therefore, I'm not glad that I read it.

00:43:54

Yeah.

00:43:55

And that's kind of the...

00:43:57

Sometimes we read books and we're like, yeah, I don't have any actions on items on this,

00:44:01

but I'm glad that I went through it.

00:44:02

Like that happens once in a while.

00:44:03

It kind of motivates you in some form.

00:44:04

I don't feel like this motivates me really in any way, except maybe one.

00:44:10

So let me... here's the one action item I have on this is that I want to just renew my interest

00:44:16

in paying attention to my kids primarily and just being attentive to detail in that form.

00:44:24

Because that's one thing that you see a lot, especially right at the very beginning.

00:44:30

He's referencing how he sees the blackbirds.

00:44:33

These blackbirds that are...

00:44:34

What are they?

00:44:35

Red-winged blackbirds?

00:44:36

I forget what they were now.

00:44:38

He sees these and he points them out to his son Chris who's on the back of the motorcycle

00:44:43

with him and Chris is like, "What?

00:44:46

Why are you pointing out the birds?

00:44:48

Who cares?

00:44:49

They're birds."

00:44:50

Like that's the sentiment that Chris has.

00:44:54

He sees the value in noticing all of the beauty in these things, which again is this clash

00:44:58

of classical and romantic here.

00:45:02

And yet it's happening inside of him and he won't acknowledge that.

00:45:06

So I do think that there's a little bit of a motivation, at least in me, to slow down

00:45:12

a little bit.

00:45:13

I have a tendency to pack things to the gills and leave no margin for things.

00:45:16

Maybe I should reread margin.

00:45:19

It's something that I have a tendency to do.

00:45:21

It's just the way that I'm driven towards.

00:45:24

So this is at least a motivator to me to back up, slow down.

00:45:29

It's okay.

00:45:31

Stop and smell the roses that sense.

00:45:33

Because if you read the journey here, the actual motorcycle trip, there's a lot of times when

00:45:39

they're like, "Oh yeah, that's really cool."

00:45:40

And then they stop and go walk around and experience it.

00:45:43

Awesome.

00:45:44

I would love to do a road trip like that where you can just take your time.

00:45:49

You see something interesting?

00:45:50

Go check it out.

00:45:51

Don't just drive by because you're trying to get somewhere.

00:45:53

Go on a leisurely trip.

00:45:55

That's going a long road trip.

00:45:57

That's something I would love to do at some point.

00:45:59

So if anything, you can at least get that motivation out of this mic, I think.

00:46:04

Yeah, I'm intrigued by some of the descriptions of the small towns that they go through.

00:46:09

I'm fascinated by small town life.

00:46:14

I have told my wife multiple times recently, like, we've been places where it's like 200

00:46:20

people.

00:46:21

And I'm like, "It'd be cool to live here."

00:46:23

She's probably like, "What?"

00:46:25

No.

00:46:27

But there's just something about that slower pace that I find really fascinating and intriguing.

00:46:34

That comes through in some of the descriptions that they have.

00:46:36

And they mention by the time they get to the west coast that everybody's kind of in a hurry

00:46:40

or looking to get places.

00:46:42

Just like at the beginning of the book, when Sylvia noticed that she, I forget how she

00:46:46

phrases it, basically it seems like everybody is driving zombies.

00:46:51

They're part of this big funeral procession.

00:46:53

They're completely emotionless.

00:46:54

They're just going.

00:46:57

And I don't want to fall into that, that obviously.

00:47:01

So I do think there is the whole middle section of the book.

00:47:05

I've found the places that they went and the conversations that they had with people.

00:47:10

Pretty fascinating.

00:47:11

And on one level, I do kind of want to do that.

00:47:14

It probably will never happen, but it is interesting.

00:47:18

Yeah, I grew up in a small town.

00:47:21

The town I grew up in had 700 people in it.

00:47:23

Yeah.

00:47:24

Get it.

00:47:25

My mom is from a town in Minnesota, Welch.

00:47:30

That was 60 people.

00:47:32

She went to a one room schoolhouse.

00:47:35

I remember when I was little, we would go home to visit my grandma and my grandpa.

00:47:40

And there was a local newspaper and it would be front page news.

00:47:44

The Schmitzes are in town.

00:47:46

And.

00:47:47

We had a newspaper, huh?

00:47:51

Dead.

00:47:53

I don't remember a whole lot about that because I was pretty young at the time.

00:47:58

But I do remember like there was one restaurant slash bar at like the bottom of the hill.

00:48:05

And people would just go there and they'd hang out and they'd visit like all afternoon.

00:48:09

No one was in a hurry.

00:48:11

They just spent time together.

00:48:13

And I do really like that.

00:48:14

I feel like that's kind of impossible to do once you get into a city or even a large enough

00:48:21

town village, whatever where it's normal quote unquote.

00:48:27

I feel like it's easy to get swept up into that.

00:48:30

And it's almost like you have to put yourself in that atmosphere in order to achieve that

00:48:35

level of chill.

00:48:37

But there were a couple of other cool ideas in here, by the way, that I wanted to call

00:48:44

out.

00:48:45

So not all bad here.

00:48:47

He talked about at one point the cure for stuckness.

00:48:52

And this is when he was going through these flashbacks of what he had done in a previous

00:48:57

life.

00:48:58

He would ask his students to write these reports.

00:49:03

And there was one story in particular where this girl could not figure out what to write

00:49:08

about as he asked her to write about the town.

00:49:10

And then he's like, just think about one street in the town.

00:49:12

Still didn't know what to write about.

00:49:14

Think about what one building on that street still didn't know what to write about.

00:49:18

Now he's frustrated.

00:49:19

He's like, okay, go outside.

00:49:20

Look at the top brick in the upper left corner and write about that.

00:49:24

And the requirement was like a thousand two thousand words and she comes back with a ten

00:49:27

thousand word essay.

00:49:29

And by starting really, really small, basically, she was able to get it done.

00:49:34

And another point he told someone to write about one side of a coin.

00:49:41

Like idea is still the same focus on the small details that can help get you unstuck.

00:49:45

Very small point in his story, but I really liked that.

00:49:50

I guess if I were going to have an action item, it would be focus on bringing things smaller

00:49:56

and smaller.

00:49:57

That's not new information to me, by the way.

00:49:59

That's something that I remember learning when it came to task management because you

00:50:04

put things on your task list and you get intimidated by how big they are and you just

00:50:08

push them off.

00:50:09

The advice is always break it down into the smallest possible chunk.

00:50:13

Same principle I think applies here, but to creativity.

00:50:16

Sure.

00:50:17

Yeah, I think that's, you know, he does have a few points like that in here, but I, none

00:50:24

of them really jumped out at me.

00:50:26

I was more enthralled with, you're crazy than trying to take out like the thought patterns

00:50:33

that were able to be translated.

00:50:36

Because I was just, you know, early on, I think it's, you know, within the first hundred

00:50:40

pages, he mentions this process of the electroshock therapy to, and that's the point at which

00:50:47

you can tell.

00:50:49

Phaedris is his old self and then there's his current self and there's those two competing

00:50:54

mentalities.

00:50:55

Like once I became aware of that split, I no longer trusted the narrator in the whole

00:51:01

story.

00:51:02

I never really knew if I should be agreeing with him when he had those thoughts or saying

00:51:11

your split.

00:51:12

So I don't know how to take this.

00:51:14

So yeah, again, I don't know what that means for like the book itself.

00:51:18

Like, can you trust it?

00:51:20

Can you try to glean positive things from this?

00:51:24

I think if I'm going to try to pull anything major out of it, it's like you have to look

00:51:28

very broad.

00:51:29

You can't look at the details.

00:51:31

Maybe that's my romantic side coming out.

00:51:33

But my tendency is to try to summarize the whole thing.

00:51:38

And my, my tendency there is that with this, it, it can drive you to a point where you just

00:51:46

want to be more mindful of what's going on around you.

00:51:51

That's pretty much what led Phaedris down this whole path of trying to understand what's

00:51:56

going on in life was just paying attention.

00:51:59

Noticing what was going on, studying things and paying attention to the details.

00:52:03

Although I think he took it too far, I think there is some value in doing that on a smaller

00:52:08

scale.

00:52:09

But I don't know that I could have gotten to that from this story without seeing how far

00:52:15

he took it and how bad it got as a result of, of doing that.

00:52:20

Thus, I think there's some value in it, but he's still insane.

00:52:26

Well, do you know what Robert Piersig did for a living prior to writing this?

00:52:32

I don't.

00:52:33

I don't.

00:52:34

I should have looked him up a little bit more, but I didn't realize I needed to understand

00:52:37

him more until it was too late.

00:52:39

He wrote computer manuals.

00:52:41

Huh.

00:52:42

So don't do that.

00:52:45

That's quite a leap from computer manuals to philosophized fiction.

00:52:51

And I would just argue it wasn't quite as successful as a lot of really smart people

00:52:58

seem to think it was, but that's fine.

00:53:02

One other thing that I thought was an interesting idea, and this kind of illustrates, I think,

00:53:07

the problem with his approach to this sort of stuff, he talks about on page 193 eliminating

00:53:12

the grades and he'll get a real education and he talks about how he wanted to eliminate

00:53:16

the grades from his class and he was looking for other examples of other colleges and universities

00:53:21

that had done that sort of thing.

00:53:24

I think this is a fascinating idea.

00:53:26

I completely agree that if you eliminate the grades, people will learn a lot more.

00:53:31

I think our education system in the US is designed to help people pass the test and then

00:53:36

you immediately forget what you learned.

00:53:40

And I don't think that has much long-term impact in terms of setting people up for success.

00:53:46

Big reason why we homeschool.

00:53:48

I want to instill in my kids the mindset of lifelong learning.

00:53:54

I guess you could summarize that as a growth mindset, but I think it's not necessarily

00:53:59

the same thing.

00:54:01

Growth mindset, you're kind of looking for hard things, challenging things with the intention

00:54:08

of figuring out what you don't know about this specific thing so you can be more successful

00:54:14

at it.

00:54:15

The thing I think is just more curiosity.

00:54:18

How do things work?

00:54:20

That's where the motorcycle metaphor comes in with this book, I believe.

00:54:25

He even says at one point that you are the motorcycle, which side tangent, I guess, that

00:54:30

just illustrates the point, I think, that you have to understand the systems.

00:54:34

And yeah, it would be nice to take a step back and look at the beauty of the whole romantically,

00:54:40

but really, if you don't understand the systems, you're not going anywhere.

00:54:43

So I don't know, I'm probably just picking that out to justify my bias.

00:54:48

But as I'm thinking about this, that's kind of where my mind goes.

00:54:55

But the education thing, he goes all over the country trying to find places that are

00:55:01

doing this thing that he wants to validate, basically.

00:55:05

He finds one place, Reed College, I think, which I remember from the Steve Jobs autobiography.

00:55:10

I believe that's where he went initially up in Oregon or Washington.

00:55:16

And they weren't really doing it right.

00:55:17

So he found another place.

00:55:19

Was that Chicago, the University of Chicago, where he ended up?

00:55:22

I think so, yeah.

00:55:23

Okay.

00:55:24

So he ends up there and kind of still doesn't find what he's looking for.

00:55:30

And at that point, I was ready to sail out loud to him.

00:55:34

Dude, quit running all over the country trying to find this thing.

00:55:37

Just be okay with it as it is.

00:55:39

Right.

00:55:40

Or create it.

00:55:41

Or yeah, exactly.

00:55:43

But there's so much work that goes into trying to find somebody else that is doing this thing.

00:55:49

And I was like, that's a waste of time.

00:55:52

But it did remind me, though, the University of Chicago thing.

00:55:55

At one point in that he's on the board at this one section, and then he wants to switch

00:56:01

to a different section.

00:56:04

And he writes this letter, basically, where he thinks he's going to get fired.

00:56:08

And instead, they switch him over there.

00:56:10

And he's basically just trying to cause trouble is how I read it.

00:56:13

He gets put in this class with this guy.

00:56:16

And he's trying to point out the inconsistencies because he's kind of put his stake in the

00:56:24

ground as like, we've got to figure out what quality is.

00:56:28

We've got to figure out what truth is.

00:56:30

And so they're getting into Aristotle and all the Greek philosophers and things like

00:56:34

that.

00:56:35

And he's his teacher in this class who takes over and he thinks that he knows everything.

00:56:43

And he's just looking for people to be combative with.

00:56:48

And then he finds this guy and they go back and forth.

00:56:50

And at one point, Robert wins the argument by using what is in the text itself.

00:56:58

And so that's kind of like, ah, gotcha, you know, and that story in particular resonates

00:57:04

with me because I had a similar experience.

00:57:07

Really?

00:57:08

I did.

00:57:09

Philosophy class.

00:57:11

Not well, religion.

00:57:13

Okay.

00:57:14

So I mentioned I went to a small liberal arts college and freshman year I was taking an

00:57:20

intro to theology class.

00:57:22

This was a Catholic college.

00:57:24

So Christian in name anyway, and the intro to theology class, we were looking at all of

00:57:31

the different religions, which is fine.

00:57:34

I want to understand the other religions when it got to the Christian faith.

00:57:40

However, the Catholic educator did a very poor job, in my opinion.

00:57:47

So I, if I could go back, I would not do this, but this is what I did.

00:57:53

At one point, she was going through a section in the textbook about how you have to make

00:58:01

up your own decisions about whether you are going to listen to the elected leaders that

00:58:08

are above you.

00:58:11

And I raised my hand and I said, well, actually, you know, Romans, I quoted the verse to her

00:58:17

in class, where it says respect the governing authorities.

00:58:21

Yeah.

00:58:22

And I'm looking back at it now.

00:58:24

I could totally see how that was a, not the right way to do that.

00:58:27

I was a young punk.

00:58:29

Thought I knew everything.

00:58:31

And I do believe that I did understand that better than, than she did at the point, but

00:58:36

I realized now I probably completely embarrassed her in front of the class.

00:58:41

And she got the last laugh though, because this class, we had a couple of tests and a

00:58:46

couple of assignments.

00:58:47

One of the assignments, we were doing a book report, literally a book report, read the

00:58:54

book, write something about it.

00:58:57

But I handed in that assignment and I had not properly cited the source material, even though

00:59:07

she knew exactly which book I got this from.

00:59:10

But I messed up the formatting in the footnotes and she's like, you didn't search your sources

00:59:14

properly.

00:59:15

You plagiarized.

00:59:16

I'm going to take you to academic court.

00:59:18

And I'm like, you kidding me?

00:59:19

You know, I didn't plagiarize this.

00:59:22

So she, okay, fine, but I still have to give you a zero for the, the paper.

00:59:26

The paper was worth a six of my grade.

00:59:28

So I went in that class from an A to a C. So she won, but.

00:59:33

Good job, Mike.

00:59:35

Yeah.

00:59:36

That's kind of, that's kind of how I, that brought flashbacks to that when I was reading

00:59:40

that section.

00:59:42

Although he kind of made it seem like nothing super bad ever came from, from his back and

00:59:49

forth, other than he felt bad about, about things and tried to, tried to make peace.

00:59:56

So he ran away, didn't he?

00:59:58

After the big showdown, it was a day of some sort, it was kind of a showdown and then he

01:00:03

just never went back.

01:00:04

Well, I remember he said that he, after that, he did ask a couple of questions in class as

01:00:11

kind of like an olive branch where the other person, he was setting them up basically to

01:00:16

appear very smart.

01:00:18

Right.

01:00:19

So the guy, he could tell he was just super bitter and shut them down right away.

01:00:22

So he's like, okay, I guess I'm not going to win him back.

01:00:24

Sure.

01:00:25

That's probably when he took off.

01:00:27

Yeah.

01:00:28

One of the things that I got out of this, and this is not a quote directly from the book,

01:00:34

but it's the concept of if a job is worth doing, it's worth doing well.

01:00:40

I kind of picked that up from his, maybe this is his OCD on maintenance of the motorcycle

01:00:47

itself, but it seems like every time he would take on an endeavor or a new train of thought

01:00:54

would give him an aha moment.

01:00:56

Every time that happened, he would just pour into it to do it with excellence.

01:01:02

And I can admire that.

01:01:06

I think there is something to be said that if you're going to do something, it's worth

01:01:09

doing it.

01:01:10

Well, my complaint with that particular process and that thought pattern is that sometimes

01:01:17

things are better off just done, not done so well that it takes a long time to do it.

01:01:26

I can mow the lawn.

01:01:27

Great.

01:01:28

I can do a great job with it.

01:01:30

If I do it extremely well, if I take the time to do it with a lot of excellence, sure,

01:01:35

it's going to look nice, but doing it with 10% less effort would get it done in half

01:01:41

the time.

01:01:43

And most people can't tell a difference.

01:01:45

No, it's okay.

01:01:48

This is something I deal with a lot with the IT world or the sound and video world in that

01:01:55

with what I do, I can tweak the EQ on a guitar to the nth degree.

01:02:02

I can work on a vocal performer's microphone and try to get it set absolutely perfect.

01:02:10

But that last bit that I'm going to spend trying to perfect that, the vast majority,

01:02:16

99% of the people in that room will never hear the difference.

01:02:20

And that's okay.

01:02:21

So although I think there's something to be said for doing things well, you know, when

01:02:26

it matters, I think you can take it too far.

01:02:29

And I think in this case, Mr. Roberts went just a little, you know, just a little far

01:02:34

here.

01:02:35

Sure.

01:02:36

I think this is unless there's something else I think you want to go through.

01:02:41

It's like, I don't know what else to say about this book at this point.

01:02:45

Yep.

01:02:46

I think we are good.

01:02:49

So I guess action items would be next.

01:02:54

Hey, I could tell we're worn out from this one.

01:03:00

Here's the thing.

01:03:01

So I've got the one action item.

01:03:02

This particular book is one that has encouraged me to slow down a little bit because of the

01:03:08

journey on the motorcycle.

01:03:10

I can't say that the philosophy side of this is really driven much for me as far as value

01:03:16

to pull from it.

01:03:17

It's a fun, I found it to be kind of a fun journey to read through.

01:03:22

Maybe again, that's the romantic side coming out.

01:03:27

But yes, I have that one action.

01:03:28

I would just slow down, pay attention a little more, be a little more mindful.

01:03:32

It's forever a good reminder for me.

01:03:36

Before I get into style on reading, I think I know the answer to this.

01:03:39

What did you get for action items out of this mic?

01:03:42

I got nothing.

01:03:43

And that's kind of frustrating because like I mentioned, there's a couple points that

01:03:46

I wanted to talk about and there's some things of value to unpack there, I believe, that very

01:03:53

easily could have translated into action items.

01:03:57

But there wasn't anything that I wrote down.

01:04:00

Sure.

01:04:01

And in goodreads, they have all the people that have rated it and there's something like

01:04:06

185,000 ratings.

01:04:10

And when you rate something on goodreads, you have the opportunity to put who it is recommended

01:04:16

for.

01:04:17

And there's obviously a lot of one-star reviews, which are the people who did not even finish

01:04:24

reading it.

01:04:25

So you got to kind of throw those out.

01:04:26

And then there's the five-star reviews, which are the people who absolutely loved it.

01:04:28

And I think they're kind of crazy.

01:04:29

So you throw those out.

01:04:30

And you look at basically the two-star, three-star and four-star reviews.

01:04:34

Those are the really good ones because they are at least acknowledging both sides in the

01:04:41

review itself.

01:04:43

And there's one in particular that says they recommend it for, and I thought this just kind

01:04:48

of nailed it on the head.

01:04:49

Those tolerant of shallow philosophy, e.g. matrix fans.

01:04:54

And maybe that's unfair to say because I'm not a philosophy major.

01:04:57

I've only had a couple of philosophy classes.

01:05:01

But when I read that, I'm like, "Yes."

01:05:02

Exactly.

01:05:03

Because he talks around some of these concepts and he frames it in this narrative that you

01:05:07

can't argue with, but there's nothing satisfying from the conversation there, at least for me.

01:05:13

There's not enough there in the discussion about quality to feel like, "Okay, well, at

01:05:18

least I am a little bit further along on my journey to understand what this concept really

01:05:23

is."

01:05:24

I understand that this guy has invested his entire life to figure it out, but he doesn't

01:05:28

really share any of that with you.

01:05:30

At least my takeaway.

01:05:32

Again, I know people will argue with that and they're probably right also.

01:05:39

But I think the important question that the book is trying to answer is important, basically

01:05:44

like what is truth.

01:05:46

And it's kind of disappointing to me that he touches very lightly and briefly on a couple

01:05:51

of things that could have been a lot more impactful than they were.

01:05:55

But because you didn't really get into detail on these things like, "What do you do about

01:05:59

eliminating the grades and getting a real education?"

01:06:02

You kind of talked about how you wanted to do that at the school and everybody thought

01:06:05

you were crazy, but I don't know.

01:06:08

I think there's ways to implement that.

01:06:10

I'm so busy reading about Phaedris that I don't have time to unpack it for myself,

01:06:16

which is kind of a shame.

01:06:18

Sure.

01:06:19

Well, let's jump into style and reading.

01:06:21

I think this will be fun too.

01:06:23

But the style that he writes with, I think we have complaints with, at least I do.

01:06:30

I think he, when he's telling his story, when he's telling the motorcycle journey story,

01:06:38

his here and now part of it, I think he does a great job.

01:06:42

I do.

01:06:43

I think it's intriguing.

01:06:44

I was looking forward to those sections.

01:06:45

I wanted to read those pieces.

01:06:47

I was curious what was going to come next.

01:06:49

I felt like he did a great job in setting up the beginning of it and then telling that

01:06:54

story from start to finish.

01:06:57

The part that's a little frustrating is that it's roughly half and half, so it's a little

01:07:03

over 400-page book.

01:07:05

You've got about 200 pages of that story.

01:07:10

You have about 200 pages of his philosophy process.

01:07:15

He bounces between them.

01:07:16

They're split up between the entire book.

01:07:19

I'm not sure I would say he should have done it differently because I don't know that I

01:07:25

fully understand why he chose to do this, but it does get disjointed and it does bounce

01:07:31

back and forth.

01:07:32

Maybe that's a way to show that, yes, he is insane.

01:07:38

I don't know how many times I've said he's insane in this episode, but he's insane.

01:07:44

He does go back and forth so much that it makes it hard to follow sometimes.

01:07:48

He gets into the philosophical conversation in his own mind and trying to determine what

01:07:53

it is that Phaedrus has been up to and what was Phaedrus thinking at this point.

01:07:56

He has his aha moments and I'm just thinking, "Are they about to get to the mountains yet?"

01:08:02

Okay, when's the next part of the journey going to kick off and I was just itching for

01:08:08

those particular pieces.

01:08:10

I don't follow a lot of his philosophy pieces, but I find myself glad to have gone through

01:08:16

it.

01:08:17

As far as rating goes, I am going to put this at a 3.5 because I don't think it warrants

01:08:24

more than that just because I don't find it as super motivating and thrilling, a thrilling

01:08:30

read and super full of things you can take away.

01:08:36

But I also find it's an interesting read to have gone through.

01:08:41

This is one of those books I think that fits on the spectrum of ones that I feel like you

01:08:47

kind of need to read if you're going to read a certain style of book, but it's tough to

01:08:53

get through at times.

01:08:54

It kind of falls into that whole, if you follow Mortimer Adler's list of great books,

01:09:01

the classical Western books.

01:09:03

You mentioned Zadler in this book, by the way.

01:09:05

Adler's part of the story too.

01:09:09

That list of books is one that a lot of people say they want to have read the classics, but

01:09:15

they don't want to go through the process of reading them.

01:09:19

Sure, I get it.

01:09:20

I might fall into that category.

01:09:25

This book has an element of that in it.

01:09:28

I can't say I'm going to recommend this to anyone other than people who kind of get deep

01:09:34

into philosophy of which I'm not sure I know any.

01:09:39

That'll tell you how many times I'm going to recommend this.

01:09:43

In my particular case, I'm glad to have gone through it, but I don't think it warrants

01:09:46

anything more than a 3.5, so that's where I'm going to land.

01:09:50

Now I'm waiting on pins and needles to know what you're going to say.

01:09:54

I want to address something that you just said about the classics, because that's something

01:10:00

that I hear frequently too that people want to have read the classics, but they don't

01:10:05

want to put in the effort to read the classics.

01:10:09

My reaction to that maybe is a little bit different, where I'm just like, "I'm not going

01:10:14

to read them.

01:10:15

If I don't want to read it, I'm not going to read it."

01:10:17

Life is too short to read bad books and bad being subjectally defined as something that

01:10:24

you don't want to read.

01:10:25

It's not going to solve a problem that you have.

01:10:28

It's actually, by the way, one of the justifications for a lot of the books that I choose to read,

01:10:33

but that doesn't mean that that is a criteria that everybody should use when selecting a

01:10:37

book.

01:10:38

You don't have to read a book because it solves a problem that you have, but that's just my

01:10:43

selection criteria, and I'm okay with that.

01:10:46

I'm okay with being an uncultured swine if I don't read the classics.

01:10:50

The people who are going to look down on me for that, I don't want to hang out with them

01:10:52

anyways.

01:10:53

All right.

01:10:54

Fair enough.

01:10:56

But the other thing that you said, and I agree with this, is you get into the story and then

01:11:04

he goes into the philosophy and you're like, "Just get back to the motorcycle parts."

01:11:08

I had the exact same reaction.

01:11:11

To me, that was a little bit alarming because I'm not a fiction guy.

01:11:16

That just illustrates for me where this book I feel completely falls down is the philosophy

01:11:23

sections should have been fascinating to me because I like that stuff.

01:11:28

I want to understand how people think about things even if I don't agree with it.

01:11:33

I remember in philosophy getting into the id and the ego and the sigmund Freud.

01:11:39

That's a crazy philosopher right there, by the way, if you look at his life.

01:11:44

But it was still fascinating to me to learn about that stuff, even though this is again

01:11:48

a completely crazy guy, you have to temper that with what you're learning he believed.

01:11:54

And then you wrestle with those questions and you figure it out for yourself.

01:11:57

That is appealing to me.

01:11:59

It's kind of alarming to me that I wanted to just skip over all of the philosophy stuff

01:12:04

in this book.

01:12:05

So you wanted to read the fiction story.

01:12:08

Yeah.

01:12:09

As I got further into this book, that's what drew me and kept me going was, "Where are

01:12:14

they going to go next?"

01:12:15

I'm totally going to bring this back on you.

01:12:16

You know that, right?

01:12:17

Well, you can, but I'm just saying, if the fiction was the best part of the story for

01:12:21

me, you know I'm not reading this very high.

01:12:24

Sure, sure.

01:12:25

It's been around for 25 years and it's sold probably millions of copies.

01:12:32

So I will give it a half a star for that and put it at 1.5.

01:12:36

Wow.

01:12:37

Is this our lowest rated one?

01:12:38

It's my lowest rated one for sure, yeah.

01:12:40

Well, the title on this at the very top says, "The modern epic that transformed a generation

01:12:46

continues to inspire millions."

01:12:48

Nope, not inspired.

01:12:51

Sorry, Robert.

01:12:52

Nice.

01:12:53

All right.

01:12:54

You ready to be done with this one?

01:12:56

Yes, please.

01:12:57

Let's put this one in the trash.

01:12:58

I mean, on the shelf.

01:13:00

It's just one you're actually going to sell, get rid of?

01:13:03

No, I'll keep it around.

01:13:05

I'm definitely not going to recommend it to very many people though.

01:13:08

Again, I totally get it.

01:13:09

If people like this sort of thing, I just think it tries to do a bunch of things and

01:13:16

any one of those things done in isolation would have been better.

01:13:18

All right.

01:13:19

That's fair.

01:13:20

Well, we can put it on the shelf.

01:13:22

That's OK.

01:13:23

What's next, Mike?

01:13:24

Next is, "Good to Great," which I have started.

01:13:25

I'm three pages in and already have more notes for.

01:13:29

Ha, ha, ha.

01:13:31

All right.

01:13:33

I think that's all you need to do for intro, right?

01:13:37

Well, do you need-- all right.

01:13:40

So I put my next one following that in the outline.

01:13:42

Do you need to go vet it first?

01:13:44

I don't think so based on this title, but I don't know, maybe.

01:13:49

The title's fascinating.

01:13:51

All right.

01:13:52

OK.

01:13:53

So the next one following that is the antidote by Oliver Berkman.

01:13:58

And the tagline on this is, "Happiness for people who can't stand positivity."

01:14:06

Positive thinking.

01:14:07

Sorry, got that wrong.

01:14:09

Happiness for people who can't stand positive thinking.

01:14:12

I feel like that's at least a step away from philosophy, fictional autobiography.

01:14:19

Could be.

01:14:20

Well, it's definitely probably a step away from the fictional autobiography.

01:14:24

OK.

01:14:25

Positive thinking, happiness.

01:14:28

You could argue that that's philosophy, but--

01:14:30

OK.

01:14:31

All right.

01:14:32

Well, modern art version of philosophy.

01:14:35

There you go.

01:14:36

Romantic philosophy.

01:14:37

I don't have any gap books, Mike.

01:14:39

Do you have a gap book?

01:14:40

Well, I still have the B.J. Fogg one that I could not get to because I better start on

01:14:48

Zenon the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.

01:14:50

This one may take me a while, and it took me a while.

01:14:53

Sure.

01:14:54

Made it through, so I'm going to try and finish up the Tiny Habits by B.J. Fogg as my gap book.

01:15:00

But I'm not positive I'll get through that one either.

01:15:03

That is going to be my gap book until I get finished with it, though, because I've heard

01:15:06

so many good things about it.

01:15:08

Sure.

01:15:09

I feel like that might be a media one, too, and that might take some time to get through.

01:15:12

But we'll see.

01:15:13

Yeah.

01:15:14

Again, I don't have a gap book this round, but I do have--

01:15:18

I've had atomic habits sitting on my desk.

01:15:20

I've been kind of reviewing it of sorts lately, so I kind of--

01:15:25

I don't think that would count, but I've been spending a little more time with that one,

01:15:29

lately.

01:15:30

But here we are.

01:15:31

Yeah, I think that wraps things up.

01:15:34

I want to say thank you to the club members who are listening live.

01:15:37

Hello, and thank you for joining us live.

01:15:39

If you would like to listen to these shows live and want to interject comments, because

01:15:46

we do read the chat system as we're recording these.

01:15:49

And if you want to contribute to it as we go through that process, you can join the

01:15:53

club, bookworm.fm/membership.

01:15:56

That'll get you where you need to go in order to sign up and become a part of the club.

01:16:01

Just support the show through a small financial piece every month.

01:16:04

And we are so grateful for those who do that.

01:16:06

You get a bunch of little perks that come with that.

01:16:08

Mike's My Node Files.

01:16:09

Is this the one for this book?

01:16:11

Does it exist?

01:16:12

Did you even make one?

01:16:14

It exists.

01:16:15

I'm not sharing this one, though.

01:16:16

There's nothing in here of value.

01:16:19

They just occurred to me.

01:16:20

All right.

01:16:21

Fair enough.

01:16:22

That's a fair point.

01:16:23

But when Mike does have lots of notes, I'm sure good to great.

01:16:25

We'll have a decent one, too.

01:16:27

Mike does share those.

01:16:29

You can get some great bookworm wallpaper.

01:16:31

This is a lot of cool stuff that come with that membership.

01:16:34

So again, bookworm.fm/membership.

01:16:37

I will say probably the biggest perk for the bookworm membership is attending live and

01:16:44

hearing my unfiltered rants before I get some distance from this and edit everything

01:16:49

down to sound a whole lot nicer.

01:16:52

So if you want to know my real thoughts, then live recording.

01:16:58

All right.

01:17:00

Well, thanks, everybody, for listening.

01:17:03

if you're reading along, pick up Good to Great by Jim Collins, and we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.