Not Now

The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I largely disagree with nearly all of this book. He does have a bunch of good points and they are certainly helpful to a wide segment of humanity, but I find that if you take his teachings to their logical conclusion it makes you a dullard. His grasp of science when it comes to coming up with evidence of his views is also rather dubious. Personally, I don't think one needs to destroy the ego in order to be happy, you just have to learn to not obsess over the past or future. A "self" without an education, beliefs or ambitions, even if one is free of suffering, strikes me as a unfulfilled self; a self I wouldn't want to be.
His theory that humans were at one point all perfectly conscious, not obsessed with time and impermanance, and there was a "fall from grace" which led us to the way we are now is straight up false. I wouldn't address it if he was working some religious angle but when he tries to make that a fact there's just no way it's true. Humans have been acting this way since before there were Homo sapiens. Tolle also makes the tiresome gender argument that because men think with their mind and the ego and women are more in tune with themselves that women are naturally closer to enlightenment than men. He also suggests that women have a greater pain-body, a sort of collective reservoir of suffering that feeds into everyone and is fed by the terrible injustices women have faced in the world, as though being a man in most of history was all fun and games. Being forced to endure agonizing pain just be allowed to be called a "man", sent for in the night by some feudal lord who wants you as spear fodder for his grand army, centuries of being taught to not show any softness or being allowed to be open with your feelings without being called weak, I'd say that might constitute a sizable male pain-body. Plus, and this is just my own observation, I've met more men whom I would consider "enlightened" than women.
As I mentioned before, there are some good ideas in the book and some surefire ways of reducing one's suffering. Stop looking towards the future as a point when you will be happy, focus on the present. Basically, stop putting off your plans to be happy. Don't dwell on the past; recognize it, learn from it but don't define yourself by your glorious or inglorious past. The main problem I have is that if taken to its logical conclusion, Tolle's book seems like the book a dictator would want his subjects to read: don't concern yourself with the past or future, there's no such thing as "bad", if you're upset at anything you simply haven't become enlightened enough, suffering comes from within, never from without. Many of the things he says in the book frustrated me to such great lengths that it took me months to read through it because I would have to put it down every few pages to cope with how maddeningly nonsensical a bunch of his statements are (like how truly great artists come from that intense Presence, devoid of suffering, seemingly forgetting that many of the great artists like Hemmingway and Van Gogh did not come from a calm and centered state of mind). I understand that the premise of what he is saying is that who I think I am is not who I really am and thus many of the ideas I have about the world are incorrect, I also understand that in the spirit of Eastern spirituality contradictions are meant to point to a greater truth. What I do not accept are logical contradictions like having a "no" that is free of negativity.
My final verdict is that while it has lessons that are very useful for many people, the world Tolle would have us live in would be a peaceful but utterly dull and complacent place.

Flavor Tripping

Last night our friend Brian had us over for a rather interesting experiment. He bought these concentrated berry pills, the name of which I forgot shortly after it was mentioned, that temporarily deactivate your sour, salt and bitter taste buds. The result is, naturally that only sweet remains and also the other more difficult to articulate flavors that don't fall into the main four categories. Brian had bowls of lemons, limes, grapefruits, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, salt and vinegar potato chips, various sour candies and a couple different beers for us to sample. The absence of sour is the most obvious thing when you're eating and unless you know the stuff you're tasting is supposed to be salty you wouldn't really notice that absence as much. Straight up table salt tastes like nothing with this stuff and salt and vinegar chips taste like they've been dusted in sugar. You can still tell what fruits you're eating, but in each case the core element in their flavors is missing. Tomatoes were interesting because without the tangy zip that normally dominates their flavor all you get is this almost leafy, earthy...undertaste that's always there but impossible to really parse apart from the main flavor.
One's sense of bitterness isn't completely neutralized, however, Guiness still has a bit of bite that I think is the actual alcohol taste (the head on the other hand tastes sweet) and eating the citrus rinds still tastes gross, but not as bad as it would be normally. There also was a bit of cognitive dissonance when you smell the foods and expect something rather acrid but end up overpowered by the sugariness of a bowl of limes. It really helps you realize that, despite common misconceptions, taste and smell function independently of one another. Thankfully, the pill's effects wear off after an hour or so and you can go right back to puckering when you have a mouthful of sour candies. If the effects were permanant I think it might almost be a Hellenistic afterlife punishment; all the most delicious food in the world but in each case the one thing that made it so good is missing. Overall, I'd recommend it not because it's really terribly exciting but it's a great exercise in making the familiar exotic.