The Everything-Else-Is-Bad-For-You of Pooh

Perhaps if the author hadn't taken a no-holds-barred offensive stance against everything apart from Taoism, or if he hadn't torn the characters apart to get them to fit around the characters he needed them to be to get his point across, I might have thought his words were more worthwhile. But as far as this book is concerned, everything except Taoism is the root of all evil in the world and must be stopped with the principles and application of Taoism, and the beloved characters from Winnie the Pooh were left as casualties in the aftermath.



Learning about Taoism was interesting, and the use of Winnie the Pooh in orchestrating that was creative (hence the two stars instead of one), but the entire book was riddled with accusations about every other mode of thought being unambiguously inferior to Taoism without even the consideration to say that there are benefits to them. Near the end of the book, the author even has the gall to say that being clever or scholarly (as opposed to following the way of Tao) will bring about the end of the world and that whatever is left to the few people who survive won't be worth looking at; that is a bit of a paraphrase, but only a bit.



The book is aggressively against any sort of knowledge-gathering, any sort of self-advancing effort, and basically anything anti-Tao. This moral is expressed by manipulating the characters of Winnie the Pooh by stretching their characterizations out of shape. Poor Eeyore was changed into an aggressive, useless, self-aggrandizing monster for no reason than because he's usually a bit blue. And for being the characterizations of cleverness and scholarly knowledge-seeking, Rabbit and Owl are portrayed as hasty and useless respectively. And Pooh Bear is the Messiah and can do no wrong, even when he's being just as useless as anyone else. The original premise, that Pooh Bear epitomizes Taoist philosophy, may be correct and may be worthwhile, but the slaughter of the rest of the characters just so that they can suit the needs of an extended metaphor is a blatant misuse of them.



The last straw for me was when the author extolled the virtues of a man living over two centuries by following the path of Tao. A philosophy causing substantial enough life changes to prolong the life of someone to nearly twice was the oldest living person at present has lived? And his life is so much better than he can outrun young men? The author has no incredulity and, after that bit, I can't find it in myself to take anything he says seriously.



All in all, it was an interesting premise, but the application just didn't work for me.